Echoes

I was invited to join a client at a retreat she was attending in Crested Butte, Colorado.
If you’ve been there, you understand what part of the world I was being invited into. If you haven’t, imagine an idyllic high-mountain village tucked somewhere into the Swiss Alps.
It was one of those twist-my-arm-and-make-me-go invitations.

I’d been there a couple of times before, and the thought of returning was beyond appealing. I like being in places that remind me of my insignificant significance. Places so vast I cannot quite comprehend them, places that put me back into proper proportion. Places that “right-size” me.

I first experienced that feeling six decades ago after climbing a mountain near Wolf Creek Pass in southern Colorado. Standing there, looking west across what seemed like an endless expanse of mountains and sky, I became aware of just how small I was.
Strangely, I found that comforting.
I still do.

There is probably a name for that feeling; the relief that comes from realizing the universe does not depend upon me. That I matter, but I am not the whole matter.
I knew Crested Butte would give me some of that again. I was looking forward to it.

But there was something else I was looking forward to.
I wanted to visit Virginia.
Virginia Satir.

A woman I never knew personally, but a woman who, in a very real sense, helped save my life—and changed the trajectory of at least the next two generations of my clan.
She has been dead a long time.
Her gifts in my life are timeless. Priceless. What would one be willing to pay for the opportunity for their children and children’s children, to be exempted from inherited family pain and dysfunction.
I couldn’t wait to “see” her, though I couldn’t exactly explain why.
How does one grieve someone they never knew?

Or was I grieving at all?
Maybe I was going to honor her.
Perhaps, in the end, there isn’t much difference.

As I drove through Crested Butte toward the mountains where I would be staying, I passed the cemetery. I was startled by how easily I came upon it, right alongside the main road. I had last been there a decade earlier and remembered it as more remote.

As I passed, I unexpectedly (but not surprisingly) choked up as I ofttimes do when my emotions arrive before my words do.
A tear fell.
And I whispered to her, “I’ll come see you tomorrow.”

The next day, after spending time with my client, we found ourselves driving past the cemetery. I asked if she minded stopping so I could see if I could find Virginia’s grave.

I explained that much, if not all, of who I am today, and what I have to offer others, like herself, I owe to this woman I had never actually met.

She agreed. We both went searching. She found Virginia. I am not sure I would have been able to on my own.
We sat quietly and reverently for a while, each with our own thoughts.
Before leaving, I made Virginia a promise.
“I’ll be back in the morning. Just you and me.”

Early the next morning, I packed my things and headed toward the airport. But first, I returned to the cemetery for what will most likely be my farewell visit.
I sat beside her grave.
I ruminated.

I tried to understand why I had needed so badly to be there with her this one more time.
Then I took out my flute and played for her.
And in whatever way such things can be done, I poured my gratitude over her.
Her grave looks to the west, across valleys, toward the mountains.
Sitting there, a vision came to me.

I imagined that during her life Virginia had come down from those mountains carrying a message, one that, eventually, would become part of my deliverance.
And when she died, she simply turned around and walked back home.
But her words remained. Echoing among the peaks.
Into the valleys, bouncing off the sides of the mountains, reverberating from ridge to ridge. Barreling down the valley, reflecting off the waters, heedlessly rushing across distance and time.

Until, somehow, they reached me.
Surrounded me.
Encompassed me.
Delivered me.

Four decades ago, one of Virginia’s beloved students, Sharon Cruse, came into my life. Sharon faithfully carried Virginia’s message to me. She became, in many ways, Virginia for me.
And now, sitting beside Virginia’s grave, I imagined I was finally hearing the message directly from its source.

Virginia didn’t know me, though Sharon says she would have liked me.
Virginia would not ever know my children.
She could never have known my grandchildren.
She could not have imagined the things they would not have to experience because she was courageous enough to face her own wounds, seek her own healing, and then share what she discovered with others.

Her healing reached Sharon.
Sharon’s reached me.
Mine reached my children.
And my children’s healing nurtures and protects my grandchildren.
My grandchildren will most likely never know Virginia Satir’s name. But her spirit infuses theirs.

They will not know the pain they were spared.
They will never know the wounds they will never have to heal.
They will never know the painful, debilitating things that did not happen to them.
But I do.

Without Virginia’s words, and without Sharon carrying them to me, I would almost certainly have passed along some version of what had been passed along to me.
Pain has a way of doing that.
Unless somebody interrupts it.
Unless somebody, somewhere, has the courage to say:
This stops here.
And in that moment moving the wounded into the ranks of the wonders.

Virginia helped teach me how to put down that which had been handed to me.
Because I learned how to put it down, my children do not have to carry all of it.
And my grandchildren do not have to heal from wounds they never received.
I can feel it in their hearts.
I can see it in their eyes.
And, more importantly it is what I DON’T see in their eyes.

They have no idea how much of the darkness of life they will never have to live.
What an extraordinary legacy, to change the lives of people you will never meet by sparing them suffering they will never know they escaped.

I never met Virginia Satir.
But I heard her. Her truths. Her discoveries. Her echoes. Echoes are never exact replicas of the original. They are shaped, polished, honed by those hills, valleys, streams, rocks, and meadows.
And on this morning, as I sit beside her, looking out toward those mountains, I find myself wondering about my own echoes.

Where will they travel?
Whose life might they touch?
What might someone I will never meet not have to suffer because of something healed, I was willing to learn, live, and pass along?

Perhaps the legacy we live is of greater value than the one we leave.
Legacy created not by being remembered.
Or having our names spoken.
But by setting healing in motion and allowing it to travel beyond us, across years, across generations, into lives we will never see.

It became clear that it wasn’t grief that brought me to Virginia’s gravesite that morning.
It was homage.
It was gratitude.
Perhaps a little prayer.
That whatever portal death opened for her, allows just a little bit of my gratitude to find its way through that space.
A prayer that somewhere, somehow, she knows:
Her words made it to me, through echoes reverberating through the mountains. Through time. And through me.