Page 30 of Theo of Golden

And it was everywhere.

The few who did see Theo during that time, a handful of friends and family, saw a desperate emptiness in his eyes that itself was a form of death. No words of encouragement, no news of the marketplace, and no prospect of future endeavors could entice him from the abyss of his loss.

He had other houses to which he might flee and the means to stay away for as long as he wished, but he chose to remain at his home near Paris. His decision not to leave was more visceral than rational.

If he could not be close to Tita’s living body, he could at least remain close to her grave. If he could not feel her breath, he could at least be where she had most recently breathed.

But God, the ache. The ache! Oh God, the ache.

One morning, just days after Tita’s burial, Theo woke before sunrise, dressed, left the house, and began walking. He had no route in mind and no destination. He told no one of his departure. He did not return home until that evening. His friends, in the interim, had worried themselves sick, fearing the worst.

“I have been walking” was all the explanation he gave in response to their questions and scoldings. It was a truthful answer. His walk that day, and for the many that followed, was simply a way to save himself from drowning in guilt and regret.

Springtime came early that year. Some said it was the longest spring France had ever known. And like a blind animal moving instinctively toward a mother’s scent, Theo left the oppressive walls of his villa early each morning to be in the presence of the season’s beauty. Even in his darkest hour, he was drawn, if unconsciously, to space and verdure and color.

And so, he walked. And walked.

Every day.

As if his life depended on it, he walked. Alone.

Tirelessly.

Desperately.

The large plot of land that surrounded Theo’s home outside of Paris was laced with a labyrinth of trails that ran through forest and field. Beyond his own property were miles and miles of hillside and country that he was free to roam. Some days, his lone figure was seen at such long distances apart that locals assumed he must be hitchhiking or driving from one spot to another. But not so. His walking was driven by fear and hope, fear of the thoughts that would catch him if he sat still and hope that he might somehow walk himself into a stupor or oblivion or, better, into the place where he would find Tita.

Pursued or pursuing, he walked.

Bedraggled, unkempt, inconsolable, he walked. Furious, frightened, fitful, he walked.

At day’s end, he would return to the damnable emptiness of his home and, if fortunate, collapse from exhaustion. The temptation to drink or drug himself into sleep was never strong enough to overcome his remembrance of what that power had already taken from him. He would not grant it the pleasure of a third casualty even if, quite strongly, he longed to escape the world.

Eventually, the dark spell broke.

After weeks of walking, the beauty that had surrounded him, beauty to which grief had temporarily numbed him, became consciously present again.

It was evening. The sight of lush fields, the scent of turned soil, the color of innumerable blossoms, and the cool air of April conspired against the death and darkness that he carried into their midst. His first lucid thought — “this is lovely” — felt like a betrayal of his daughter. He tried to stifle it with the argument that, in her absence, goodness was no longer possible in the world.

But then the appearance of additional co-conspirators, a little boy and girl on bicycles, laughing as they tried to outpace a playful dog, struck him with the inescapable recognition that life would and must go on, even if altogether new and subject to a grief that would be present with every step. Theo stopped to let the thought take firmer hold.

He wanted it to prevail. He was tired.

So… grievously… tired.

He walked along a path that ran beside the River Marne. At a high brow overlooking the ribbon of water, he sat. Theo had seen the small bench many times in his frantic ambulations but had never once considered stopping to rest. Nor had he ever seen anyone else sitting there. This time, however, under the spell of a resplendence that would not be denied, he took a seat. His hands were empty. The sun was minutes from sinking below the tree line on the distant horizon. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, yielding as best he could to the slight peace that was trying to claim some corner of his heart.

He removed his hat, bowed his head wearily, and, sensing what was to come, covered his face with both hands. His breath shortened until tears — could there be any left after weeks of crying? — filled his haggard eyes. He wept… and moaned… and choked on his sorrow until one final eruption of longing, and a sob that seemed to carry the hurt of all his stolen hopes, tore through his chest. Bit by bit, he emptied the bitter cauldron of his anguish and then sat in silent stillness. He forced himself to take a deep breath, and then another. His body relaxed. His head remained bowed, cradled in fingers that were soaked with tears. Slowly, a calmness, absolute and irresistible, began to possess him with such presence that, in those moments, he knew his season of darkest grief was over.

He dried his eyes on his forearms, lifted his face, and sat upright on the bench. He heard faint sounds of children laughing in the distance. The last tiny sliver of sun was visible behind trees on the skyline.

When he was able to see clearly again, a motion above the river caught his attention.

A cloud of birds — starlings and redwings, thousands upon thousands of them — flew with synchronized precision, a dancing funnel, undulating in perfect unison. Theo had learned somewhere in his past that the spectacle was called a murmuration. His soul caught its breath at the sight, like a swimmer coming up from the depths. For that moment he could separate beauty from his grief, and celebrate, if only ambivalently, that there was still a world of goodness apart from, or bigger than, his aching loneliness.

Above and behind the aerial ballet of bird flight, the clouds began to robe themselves in color, as if the sky, too, was fighting for the heart of this wounded man. The slow, subtle changes, akin to tilting a cluster of opal beneath light, in which one tint dissolves into another, hinted that the great expanse overhead was alive, a thriving nest of angels and hope.

The sheer wonderment of the moment, the wings of fifty thousand birds, and the intoxicating surplus of beauty, overwhelmed him, as though a rope that had been pulled taut, that tied him to the darkness of Tita’s death, had snapped and fallen powerless to the ground.