An aged garden grows chervil, apples, and thyme. Our crone gathers whatever catches her fancy. She remembers a faraway cottage that very nearly teetered into tears for not knowing the truth of Once Upon a Time. Save yourself a measure of grief. Why fear the nearing of Ever After when the crone is so willing to dunk you into wonder with a tale? Come, listen.

It’s up to you to find what meaning you will.

One winter, when all the world was white except for long black shadows, a lonely wife sat with her husband when he lost the last memory of their life together.

She shrieked into the night.

Thereafter, the wife kept her husband warm by the fire as snow fell heavy outside their cottage. She propped his head upon a pillow of feathers and fed him gruel with a spoon. She told him dear, true stories they once both knew.

No recognition of their life together reflected in his eyes. And a new fear formed itself in the wife’s mind.  

“What if it comes to pass that I forget, too?” 

She could not bear this thought—the loss would be too complete and tragic. And so, she stole outside to her garden of thyme. For in nature is where women best work their magic.

The wife whispered an encouraging spell upon a drop of dew, and quick it swelled with water. A cold wind caught hold of the dewdrop to freeze a glassy shell upon it. With her mind’s eye upon a day years past, the wife set her lips upon the crystal dewdrop and spoke what she felt must never be forgotten:

A beloved memory.

This is how a vision of her wedding day appeared, preserved yet alive, within the frosted world of a dewdrop’s crystal ball.

The wife wiped tears from her cheeks as she watched an exchange of vows inside the dewdrop’s sparkling, swirling snow. Cupping the little world in both her palms, she made her husband a promise.

“Now never to be forgotten, my beau.”

This working of magic exhausted the wife, and she went inside to nap.  

Thereafter the wife whispered a sweet memory into a swollen, frozen dewdrop. All the while she fretted. What might she be forgetting? What else could she do to keep hold of her heaven?

One morning as the wife worked desperate magic in her garden, she noticed that a caribou with large antlers watched her from between snowy trees. She thought nothing of it and went inside to poke at the hearth’s fire.

That night as the wife cooed at her husband, she heard the loud beating of a heart outside. Looking up, she caught sight of the caribou at the cottage window. Thinking such an extraordinary thing might be significant, she opened the cottage door and stuck out her whitened head.

“What are you getting up to?” the wife asked the caribou.

The magnificent beast billowed a white cloud of breath. It walked to the garden with stern attitude. The wife, fearful that its hooves would crush her frozen dewdrop memories, hurried outside.

“Shoo, caribou, shoo!”

This is when the caribou changed into a woman draped in black and wearing a crown of antlers upon her head. The wife recognized Mother Nature at once.

“My, that is a good shapeshifting trick,” the wife said. “But what good is it, you witch? I would rather see you ease my grief.”  

Mother Nature turned her gaze upon magicked dewdrops that glowed like otherworldly orbs in the dusk. Her mouth shaped itself into a crescent smile. She plucked a swollen, frozen dewdrop from its stem to take a closer look.

The wife whimpered and shook.

As Mother Nature wordlessly held the crystallized ball in her hand, the memory’s vision inside melted.

The dewdrop leaked blue and the wife screamed as if cleaved in two. 

“It is a lie that death comes with cold hands,” Mother Nature said in a child-like voice. Her chest heaved with the beating of her caribou heart. “In fact, they are very warm.”

The wife fell to her arthritic knees and raised clutched hands. “Have mercy,” she begged.

Mother Nature plucked a second dewdrop from a curled stem and took a bite as if it were a fruit. “Do you wish to know the truth?” she asked.

“I wish for mercy!”

“Where you find truth, you find mercy,” Mother Nature said. Her black clothing fell away and she sat naked with her knees to her chin. Flowers and butterflies bloomed in her antlers.

“Give me both, then,” the wife wisely said.

At this good request, Mother Nature shifted herself back into a caribou and bowed on one knee. The wife climbed onto the caribou’s back and held fast to its antlers as a storm of snow descended.

The caribou leaned into the blizzard.  

In the blink of an eye, the caribou and wife came to be outside the garden of thyme and outside the Garden of Time. Mother Nature shook her antlers. A fluttering of butterflies and blooms caught the wind and colored it with hues.

So fresh and moist was the air that it birthed countless dewdrops spinning in the breeze.

The wife was amazed to see a brighter and more saving magic than her own. For each dewdrop held a moment of her life, unique and loved, with any bleak shadows removed.

“There is nothing painful left in these memories,” the wife exclaimed. 

Mother Nature held a hand to her pulsing chest. “Eternity peeks into the smallest of things, and never forgets what Love it sees.”

The caribou became a woman again. Mostly. Her ears stayed large and pointed, the better to hear the wife as she wept. “Now you know a secret mercy,” Mother Nature said. “Outside the Garden of Time, your life happens all at once. It is always known and worthy.”

Mother Nature strung dewdrops like pearls to make a necklace. “Moments seem to be strung together one after another, like this,” she said. “Yet all at once they do exist.” 

“My, but your heart is big and beats so loud,” the wife shouted. She covered her ears. “May I keep the necklace?” 

Mother Nature felt compassion for the wife’s grasping at misunderstanding and allowed her to keep the dewdrop necklace.

Neighbors wondered at the sight of the wife returning to her cottage upon a caribou. In days after they so admired the magic of her necklace that the wife feared it might be stolen. She hid the necklace beneath old coats in a chest by the bed. 

For a while the wife turned her thinking to the journey through a blizzard on a caribou, and what it meant, but frankly she could make no sense of it with her head. And so, she tried to ponder the whole affair with her heart.

Which reminded her it was there. Still beating.   

She noticed, too, the beating heart of her husband. The wife took to sitting by the bed and holding a hand against his chest. “I am in you, and you are in me,” she whispered into his ear.

It came to pass that the wife largely forgot about the dewdrop necklace hidden in the chest that was now stuck in a corner. The treasure had somehow lost its desperate importance. She found it more soothing to match the beating of her heart to the beating of her husband’s heart.

“I am in you, and you are in me,” she whispered. And with each additional whispering, she felt a peace come upon her which passed her understanding.

Still, there was grief. The loss of the husband’s familiar uniqueness had power to make the wife weep.

Yet how surprised she came to be when she noticed the spaciousness of her heart held however much grief came to her—with room left over.

Neighbors were confused at how the wife could grieve and be profoundly well at the exact same time. They muttered veiled insults and said she’d lost her mind. And so she had, in favor of her heart. The wife worried herself over none of this.

She preferred to lay one hand on her husband’s heart. And one hand on her own.

“I am in you, and you are in me, timelessly,” she proclaimed matter-of-factly, in the tenderest of tones.

The husband soon lost his unique form and good neighbors in concern for the wife came to bury him. 

The wife discovered she remained whole and complete.

Later the wife lost her distinctive form as well. The husband and wife flowed into one another, as water does. Be relieved this always happens, with or without belief.

Listen. There is a time for everything, and Now is the time for understanding:

All there is, is a dewdrop’s water. No matter how it appears—flowing, frozen, steaming, or seemingly disappearing. There is eternally something there even as it’s ever-changing and shape-shifting.

Life beats like this:  

When seeing what is unique, at its beauty you will weep.

And then comes grief. Breathe.

Look out your window at Mother Nature for mercy’s revelation. Consider flakes of snow falling on a field. Appreciate their spectacular and lovely distinctiveness—and yet, do not forget.

The greater, underlying truth is that snowflakes are, in their essence, not different from one another. They only appear to be so for a short while and come the summer melt back into what they truly are.

Water.

Rushing, beating, Living Water. 

Forgetting is a Trickster.

This Crone Tale is for those who grapple with how to be okay in the face of a loved one’s dementia, or for those who grieve or fear losing a loved one. It’s inspired by those beloved poetic lines penned by William Blake:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower 

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 

And Eternity in an hour 

Inspiration also comes from The Deep Heart, penned by psychotherapist and spiritual teacher John J. Prendergast. The Deep Heart happens to be one of those books you recognize as alive with truth, wisdom, and (big surprise!) HEART. I’m thrilled to have come across this literary, soul-awakening gem. John speaks of what grief feels like when ‘the deep heart’ is awake:

“Grief feels like pure loss without an associated story of victimhood, of someone losing something essential, or of something that should not have happened.” 

Such loss is pure because it contains no storytelling delusion, no moving away from reality Here and Now, no added suffering.

This rings true to me, and perhaps it does to you, too, deep in one shared Heart.

If you liked this story of dewdrop memories and eternity, you may wish to receive new Crone Tales for free. I write one or two a month—for the sake of enlightenment and Wonder.  SUBSCRIBE HERE. 

Remember. Snowflake and water are real at once, therefore there can be no loss. Be comforted with this clarity: Love is safe because Love is divinely Known. What is divinely Known is Real. And what is Real, IS. Timelessly.

Please leave a comment below! It helps me to know how you received this Crone’s tale 🙂

Image of caribou by Dark Moon Art

Image of ‘dewdrop’ by Jordan Holiday

Image of woman in black by Rondell Melling

Image of woman with antlers and butterflies by Mystic Art Design

Image of snowflake by Aaron Burden

Image of heart as trap bait by

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