To What End?

The end is drawing nigh (an adverb from Old English, esp. West Saxon and Anglian).  April, early spring, the season of renewal, the week before I revisit the Big Island, with memories everywhere in its fabric.  Of times there with my parents and with family friends; of my retreat to find some kind of peace again in the weeks after 9/11. 

I'll be taking my mother's ashes, which will be another end—but to the place of second chances, new beginnings, that place I've written about endlessly, Pu'uhonua o Honaunau, the Place of Refuge of the ancient Hawaiians.  (See the very end of this collection of remembered places.)

"In my end is my beginning," wrote T.S. Eliot in Four Quartets.  And also,

“time past and time future

what might have been and what has been

point to one end, which is always present.”

And to end with (and at the same time begin with), this from David Whyte's "Santiago."

and turning the corner at what you thought was the end

of the road, you found just a simple reflection,

and a clear revelation beneath the face looking back

and beneath it another invitation, all in one glimpse:

like a person and a place you had sought forever,

like a broad field of freedom that beckoned you beyond;

like another life, and the road still stretching on.

image:  Suspension Bridge, Super Beautiful Photos& Art