Long Day Not Over

About two hours south of my city is a tiny little place called Fountain City. To get there, one has to cross Boundaries Road and Bluff Point. At the very edge of Fountain City is a small, unassuming funeral home. A little over three years ago someone I don't know was there, presumably with family and friends to mourn over Him. He liked flea markets and working on small engines. He was a retired truck driver for FedEx, married for 12 years and living in small-town USA.

I was told this man was buried in a cemetery near this small town so I disappeared for the day, left after dropping off the kids, back before they got home. I was looking for a man that I did know. I found neither. I found the cemetery and could not find the grave. I called the funeral home again but the person I needed was unavailable. I returned to the funeral home where the man drew me a map to find the grave. I went back again to the cemetery and, despite the map, could not find the proper grave. I sat upon the grass in the shade of a tree and thought. I tried to talk to God but my own thoughts were too loud to make any sense of his reply, if any. Eventually, I rose to go back to my car and return home, confused and disappointed.

Then I saw it. I saw the headstone marked out by the funeral director. But it was not that of the man. It was his wife's and she was buried with her first husband and under his name. Unsure of the meaning of the trip, the lack of findings and the sheer frustration of it all, I returned to the road to make my way home. I put in a call to the director yet again, to tell him of my findings. Only then did he remember the man that I know to be the same man I knew yet this different man that died there. Apparently, he cremated remains were returned to his native Canada.

I find that out AFTER I drove all the way down, searched for three hours and had to make the return journey empty-handed and still confused. What was the purpose of my journey? Why did I make that quest only to come up empty? It felt so right. I could even trace the things going on around me to elements of The Hero's Journey, which simultaneously gave me the creeps yet led me to believe I was on the right track.

Perhaps it was never about finding where a dead body lay. I have always believed that a body is not a person. It ceases to be a person as soon as the soul moved on. Perhaps the journey, the quest, was about being willing to face a reality different than I expected, different than what I had been so certain of. The Hero's Journey is always a metaphor for life, a reflection of our psyche and the way it affects every one of us. Maybe this journey was more of a metaphor than I realized. In which case the Elixir I returned with is the acknowledgement that things may not have been as I have always believed. And my Master of Both Worlds is the willingness to explore both the Old perceptions and the new ones.

"For the symbols of mythology are not manufactured; they cannot be ordered, invented, or permanently suppressed." ("The Hero with a Thousand Faces", Joseph Campbell, pg 4)