Solitude is within one’s soul and heart

Bird Droppings September 17, 2026

Solitude is within one’s soul and heart

For nearly fifteen years, once a year, my wife has gone to the South Carolina coast for a girls’ adventure. It started with high school friends, and soon sisters, cousins, and other friends joined in. Pat has been to all of the retreats and uses it to refresh her soul and mind after a year of patients and medical phone calls, and in some cases, one call after another. Although she did take her work computer, she also took her Kindle with a lot of free books on it. For me, it means no TV in the bedroom at night. For a good while, it was The Rookie, and now Will Trent. I got to where I could sleep through The Rookie, but Will Trent has a bit harsher tone to it. So, in effect, I am alone. I say that a bit quickly; my grandkids are coming shortly for a few days.

“No person, standing before this mystery, has the wisdom or the knowledge to see across the curtain. But for those who stand before their dead with aching hearts and tear-filled eyes, one affirmation endures. One truth remains…and one light shines clear. Where there has been love, there has been Life. Its birthplace was the human heart where, for thousands and thousands of years, with all peoples in all cultures, it has brought joy…built hope…been the mother of beauty…overcome fear and given a richness and significance to the living of days that otherwise would have been absent.” William Edelen

I have just read through several of William Edelen’s sermons or Sunday symposiums, as he calls them. He passed away a few years ago at ninety-three. He was and will always be considered an extremely free thinker who happened to write about politics, religion, and love in this instance. It has been a few years since my wife went to visit her grandmother’s grave site in South Central Georgia. My wife, her mother, and her sisters all journeyed together and walked through the small church’s graveyard, with their mother narrating and explaining who was there and their relationships to them.

Whenever I get a chance, I walk out behind my brother’s house to my mother’s, father’s, and brother’s gravesite, situated on a hill overlooking a soccer field where children play nearly every day. It just hit me how appropriate it is for their resting spot. Perhaps it was the recent funeral of a friend that made me think this way. Why do we wait for death to impart to our loved ones our innermost feelings? Why do we so often find the time to go to graveyards to honor and muse about what we should have done when they were with us?

Solitude is within us,

An inadvertent meandering through life.
I wander as I journey.
Glimpsing pieces of my life’s puzzle.
Pondering each one more intricate than the last.
Sadly, I grow weary from so many missteps.
Along the boulder-strewn pathway.
Every day older, my physical capabilities diminish.
And my mental aptitude slows.
Names come more slowly.
And memories are often either exaggerated or forgotten.
Guide my thoughts.
What few seem to come to me
All linking me past, present and future.
Pondering reality midst the travels.

Frank Bird III

It has been a few years since I rode a bus in Washington, DC, from the hotel to the Wall. I rode with a busload of high school kids, all giggling, laughing, singing, and yelling, while I sat brooding, wondering how I would react. I measured each block as we drove closer. I soon saw nothing but the Wall, a black ribbon winding what seemed forever through the park. Students were given a token of flower to place at the Wall. I walked over to a large bound volume which was on a table. The book contained the list of names on the wall and a guide to finding where those fallen were on numerous panels. Carefully, on my hand, I wrote the names of friends from High school who perished in Vietnam. I never got to say goodbye to any of them; I was living in Georgia before most went to war, or I was too busy at school or work to realize they were gone. It seems that when I left high school, I didn’t really keep tabs on anyone. Maybe I assumed I would see these guys at reunions and such. It might have been my ever-zealous desire to not be in high school anymore.

“Absolutely speaking, do unto others as you would that they should do unto you is by no means a golden rule, but the best of current silver. An honest man would have but little occasion for it. It is golden not to have any rule at all in such a case.” Henry David Thoreau

After several minutes of paging through the large book, I found a name, and it hit me. It has been nearly twenty-five years since I had seen this guy, and in my mind, he had been very much alive. His name was on the wall about waist height, carved into the black face of an enormously large piece of rock. At that moment the Wall stretched for miles in my mind, and I had to walk away.

“The whole circle of consciousness is an added fact to that of movement. For this reason, we cannot speak of thought as occupying space or having exact locality.” Dr. James Mark Baldwin, Professor of Logic and Metaphysics, University of Toronto, 1890

Several minutes, nearly an hour later, my son found me sitting on a hill on a bench, looking down at the Wall. A squirrel had been running back and forth trying to get my attention, probably wanting a peanut or popcorn, of which I had neither. “Dad, it is time to go,” pulled me back to reality, and I walked with my son to the buses.

“Where there has been love, there has been Life.” William Edelen

Looking back and wondering, even pondering today, do we need to take the time to realize what it is that gives us life? Do we need to recognize more deeply and openly how we feel now while we can? Or should we wait to eulogize and postulate as we close the lid and bury our friends and families? Or should we wait twenty-five years and stand at a Wall or monument or memorial to fallen heroes and loved ones, only to lay a flower on cold marble, or hand it now to warm hands? I think I will stop at the store on the way home today after school, so please, my dear friends, keep all in harm’s way on your mind and in your hearts, and always give thanks. Namaste.

My family and friends, I do not say this lightly,

Mitakuye Oyasin

(We are all related)

docbird