Beautiful Memory of Nicaragua

The full moon lit up the Nicaraguan night sky as we ventured out to find one of the earths most ancient creatures, beautiful sea turtles.  

We took an epic bus ride that included being tossed around in an open air bed of a truck on a dirt road in the evening darkness. In the middle of no where we felt as if we were on a journey to find something special and the anticipation grew.  

We arrived to a pristine beach that is being cared for by passionate biologists in order to preserve the survival of thousands of baby sea turtles.

We parked and got out, stretching after the long ride and anxious to move forward towards the water.

We walked in silence down to the beach under the moon lit sky. We took off our shoes and walked toward the water with dozens of baby sea turtles held tightly in a basket by our leader.

We were to help release these tiny creatures to the sea for the first time.

We were told that once in a while, if we are lucky, we will also see baby turtles crawling out from under the sand where they just hatched. And, if we are really, really lucky, we will witness a momma sea turtle crawl out of the sea and walk up the beach to lay her eggs.

As we walk down to the middle of the beach we release our baby turtles that we were given.

The baby I have is so tiny, so precious. As I hold the 2 inch baby I can't imagine that she is ready to walk on her own, let alone scurry out to the gigantic sea of life.

I whisper secrets of the world to the baby as she crawls out towards the water for the first time. We are told that the baby must crawl the entirety of the beach towards the water in order to feel the magnetic force of the sea. We are told this is so that they will always return back to this beach to lay their eggs.

My advice and encouragement has been whispered softly to the baby as she scurry's slowly forward. Finally a wave comes, but it washes over the baby and it is not enough to carry her out this first try.

I sigh in relief. I hate goodbyes.

Another wave comes and this is it. It is time to say goodbye and let the baby figure it out on her own.

In an instant the baby is gone forever, off to the unknown, off for the start of her adventure.

I think about the next time she is going to crawl back onto this beach, when she is finally ready to come home to lay her eggs.

I smile.

I am then startled into reality as we witness a momma turtle on the beach, laying her eggs under the silence of the moon.

She is huge and she is beautiful.

She lays her eggs and buries them in the sand. We hear someone call out from down the beach and we hurry over to see what she has found.

There are dozens of babies crawling out from under the sand, making their way to the pull of the moons surface.

It is a precious moment, life is being born.

We go back towards the momma and she is walking back to the ocean, her work accomplished.

Under the brilliance of the shining moon we watch her slowly scurry towards the shadow of the crashing waves. Her weight and magnitude carrying her forward.

It is silent.

I think about life and the journey that we are on. The unexpected, beautiful moments that cross our paths.

It reminds me that although time is fleeting, it is in each moment and each encounter that the secrets of our story our being released.. and we must listen or risk missing these secrets.

I feel fully content as I watch her being swept back off to sea, ready to do it all over again, ready for the love of the water to surround her.   

Courage and Joy

Courage and joy are words that now hold an intensely different meaning than they did in my past..

“Without joy there can be no courage; and without courage all other virtues are useless.” ~ Edward Abbey

While Curt was in the Canyon, before he died, he pointed out this quote by Abbey. His interest in it inspired my attention to these beautiful words.

I read this quote over and over, trying to dissect the meaning behind Abbey’s thoughtful words and trying to figure out my husband's reasons as to why he was drawn to them. I thought about Curt out there in the middle of no-where and wondered what that was like.

I pictured him out there with his hands interlaced behind his head, head lamp securely fastened, book on his chest, legs stretched out and cross legged while he looked up at the bright stars and pondered these words on joy and courage that inspired his soul.

Curt had the courage to take risks. These risks led him to travel the world, climb rock, explore ridiculous terrain, kayak world class whitewater, find his perfect career and work hard to excel, wander upon a pretty girl that would change his life and then figure out the rarity of his find, and most importantly cherish and invest time in his beautiful family and friends, knowing love was the most courageous risk of all.

So, as I read this quote, I was compelled to ponder its meaning as my husband did before he died. To understand what joy and courage mean to me in a world that is full of fear and loss. Feelings that I now know too well.

During those first few dark months after Curt died, I didn’t understand this quote. I no longer believed in joy or the remnants thereof and I wasn’t really sure about true courage. When you lose the one person in the world that you would die for, joy and courage seemed to me to be foreign concepts.

So, joy and courage, how do these concepts dance together to make all other virtues matter?

Over the following months I started to figure out the difference between happiness and joy. I realized that although it took me months and months to feel any happiness, I did have joy. I had a deep sense of contentedness from the love that I had shared with Curt and the love I continue to find on this earth.

Love is my possession that gives me joy.

Then I realized Abbey was right… without this deep love in my life I don’t think I would have had the courage it took those first few days after Curt died.

I found courage from the moment that I answered the call and was told that Curt was lying on the side of the river without breath in his chest. I found courage to call his Dad and hear his reaction after I spit out the horrifying words. I found courage to go to sleep that night alone.  I found courage to get on a plane and go to Arizona only to walk into a room where Curt rested quietly on a table. I found courage to walk through airports holding the remains of my husband in a box. I found courage to walk into our Portland home, put down the box on our newlywed bed, and fall asleep next to him every day until I found the courage to move him off of his side of the bed.

I found courage to go to work, to go to church, to get back in my kayak, to start to laugh, to begin to hear myself sing, and to eventually dance.

As time has gone on, sweet time that changes everything, I can see that if we know deep seeded joy because we posses love, then we can find courage on account of this love and joy we have experienced. Furthermore, as for the virtues that Abbey speaks of, courage is what gives us the ability to keep our heads held high and our integrity in tact during the grueling process of grief. A task that is of great weight when your world has fallen apart.

“Without joy there can be no courage; and without courage all other virtues are useless.” ~ Edward Abbey

Mistakes and All

I am fiercely protective of my husband’s name and the light in which he continues to be seen.

As his wife that sentence has, at times, left me exhausted with its implications. The conclusion that I have defined for myself being an unending pressure to keep it all together and to uphold his name every day.

This pressure is a self-imposed feeling of needing to continuously make the right decisions because I am his wife. Pressure that if I let down my guard or make the wrong decisions then others will judge my husband for the one he chose to give his name to.

Curt was a man with a heart that changed the world by exemplifying love, beauty, and no fear. A man of integrity and of passion so electric that you couldn’t look away because you were drawn to his spirit.  A man who chose me to be his partner for life and believed in my every word.

Since he died I have put the pressure on myself. Pressure to be the wife that makes the right decisions, the widow that grieves appropriately, and the woman that chooses the right path for her next journey. Through this I have found myself walking the thin line of needing to let it all go, yet desperate to keep it all together.

This, of course, can’t always happen. I can’t always make the right decisions and I can’t always choose the path that turns into a beautiful journey. So, what I have found over the last year and eight months is that I have no choice but to let it all go and I have struggled with how to do this.

So I decided to travel.

My other love. Travel and it will all make sense. See new things and the picture will become clearer... or so is the eternal hope.

Over the last two months I left my home and my dog in order to figure out what was next. Determined to be present and to let go of the pressures of perfection.

As I traveled I found myself wandering alone exploring this beautiful world. Travelling alone allows you to be just who you are. Not afraid to make mistakes or to let down your guard. Not afraid to be vulnerable to new experiences or to be confident in the decisions you make.

Being alone you rely only on yourself and It was during this process that something started to shift..

While exploring exotic cities, climbing breathtaking mountains, and visiting with people that blow my mind with their beauty and faith, I have slowly felt the pressure start to fade away. I am realizing daily that this same heart that leads me to explore, keeps me strong in times of despair, and adds a spark of life to a conversation, is the same heart that led me to Curt and the same heart in which he fell madly in love with.

Mistakes and all.

Perhaps that is what this time of travel is all about. A path of acceptance towards the fact that time is still moving forward and I am free to be the woman I want to be. 

Wild, free and full of grace. 

The same woman that Curt fell in love with but forever changed by the river of life. A river that does not hold onto perfection, but instead runs on the unpredictable flow of nature. A woman that will once again find love and then feel loss, find faith and then need strength, find new paths and then need help crossing the stream. 

All a part of the beautiful journey, mistakes and all.

~ Melissa Joyce " I think the secret is love."

Letting Go of the Rules

My spirit has always felt wild and free, as if it is constantly aching to move and to experience everything that there is all at once. Those feelings are intoxicating and terrifying wrapped together so ornately that I’m not sure which one I am attracted to more.

My inability to, at times, make a decision, is typically defined by my unnerving ability to go with the flow.

I remember the first time my sister pointed this trait out to me. She told me that what she admired about me most was my ability to adapt to life as if I am a chameleon. When she said this I remember imagining an impressive chameleon proudly perched on a rock, prepared for the next beautiful reflection of life’s unexpected path in it’s skin. I have considered thoughtfully about this trait and talk here about letting go of the rules we set for ourselves.

As if with anything that is given to us, I at times I doubt this about myself. This idea that it’s perfectly acceptable to not choose exactly what I want but instead to just go with the path that is before me, believing with hope in it’s course.

I have felt the good and bad from this trait, both in equal measure.

I have felt the kind of love that so many will never know, and I have felt such unbelievable heartbreak that occurred when the path that I wandered down turned into a dirt road and eventually ended at a stream that couldn't be passed. What I once thought would end in a long, beautiful road, instead ended in a mess that caused heartbreak to me and to the others involved. A messy reality that can be so quickly entered and not so quickly exited.

As Gilbert so poetically stated ““The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving.”

Even still, I am so grateful to be able to look back on the chapters of my life and see the astonishing experiences and people that have entered my life, all because I have let go of the rules that I have for myself. Chapters that were born out of the continuous faith I have in my heart leading the way.

For I know nothing of what is supposed to be, I only know what my heart tells me, secrets whispered so softly that I must remember to listen or they may be missed.

This time of my life is mind blowing and unparalleled in anything I have ever had to know. I literally feel like I'm living half in the past with one foot inching into the future. I think about what I want for myself compared to what I should want for myself, and it is exhausting. One of my biggest worries I’ve experienced with the death of my husband is that I will not be the wife that makes Curt shine in his memories. I am constantly battling a war of living in the past and living in the present, all while looking hesitantly towards the future.

I have gotten very good at multitasking but am ready to let it all go once again. Let go of the reins that are hooked onto a reality that I have no control over.

As we all struggle with this idea of letting go of the rules and expectations we put on ourselves as to how we picture what our life should be, I believe it is important to remember that this present moment is bringing us experiences that are hungry for attention. This is it, this is our neon life.

The rules we set may keep us from an experience that could  alter our paths onto the next great adventure. That may be the biggest mistake there is to be made while we spend our time here on earth.

I am a dreamer and I am a wander. I am going to keep searching for what will make my heart beat faster, even if it is outside of the rules that I have established for myself. I will get hurt and I will wonder if it is all worth it. I will resort back to rules, but only for a moment, quickly to throw them back out when I realize, once again, that this life is so much bigger than the rules I have for myself.

Today I think about this moment, these crazy moments that surround me. As I am packing my bags for my next adventure, I will try my hardest to leave the reins at home and live into my next great, passionate experience. 

Beautiful Box

Curtis Van Alen Joyce

It’s been a year and a half, my love, since you kissed my lips and walked out our front door to go paddle down the Colorado River. The Grand Canyon sun waiting to caress your cheeks and feed your soul as you spent quiet time under the Canyon walls. I will never forget your boyish charm as you packed for that trip and eagerly anticipated your time with God and with your closest friends. Even though you never walked back through our front door, your heart is still so much a part of mine, I’m not sure where you end and I begin. So, I write to you now to share my thoughts on another piece of our story…

I often speak of strength. The strength I speak of was much needed today as I opened the box that your ashes have rested in quietly over the last year and a half. The box that has sat silently for so long was ringing in my ears as if encouraging me to sit down and face another piece of the process. Over the last year and a half I have longed to open it yet fiercely hated the idea. I have wanted nothing to do with the box yet find comfort in it’s presence. Conflicting emotions dancing in the rain.

I know, my love, that you are not in that box. You are so far up ahead that I can consciously express that I know this box doesn’t matter. But, as I already know this, it doesn’t change the current reality of my pain. This pain hasn’t changed over the last year and a half. It is still unbearably sharp, overwhelmingly jagged and so hot that my body physically reacts to the memories that I conjure up when I think of your name.

My love, this is our story, and today was another chapter. I want to share it with you now.

As I walk down the hall to get your box of ashes, all I can think of is your body. A longing that cannot be expressed in earthly terms, flows through my heart and into my mind. I imagine your strong arms and your smile that melted all of our hearts. I reach out and pick you up, a box that holds my whole life sitting quietly and nestled on the shelf as if it could stay there forever, if I let it. All I can think of as I feel the weight of the box against my palms, is that I don’t want this box. I want your smile and kiss and hands and eyes and beautiful mind. I I don’t want this box.

I put on some of our favorite music and I sit on the floor. I put you in front of me, the shirt I have seen you wear a thousand times still wrapped tightly around the box that holds your ashes and bones, all of the Curt that I knew in his earthly body now sits in front of me. It is all there. Wrapped so nicely and sickeningly put together that It blows my mind how crazy this life is.

I don’t want this box.

I slowly unwrap the twine and release your shirt. I hold it as if you are still in it, smelling your body and struggling to stay in the present when all I want to do is go back to the past. But, the past is gone, swept down the river to the next eddie, waiting to be discovered again during our next journey.

My mind races to the time I spent with you after you died. Your body laying so still, so seemingly correct. You were quietly laying on your back with your hands crossed properly on your stomach. I think about walking up to you and holding on so tightly that I couldn’t tell if you were the one that was cold to the touch or if it was perhaps my body that had lost its warmth, our lives being confused for one last time while I still had you here on this earth.

I am startled back to the present. Here we sit, my love, your box on the floor and my legs sitting cross legged, not wanting to move a muscle. I lay the shirt on my lap, hoping that it will be my shield, my strength in physical form as I open the cardboard box that contains the urn. The silly plastic urn that I chose out of the book of packages that the nice funeral director gave to me as I numbly stared at him during the most grueling time of my life. Here you are ma'am, cremation or burial, casket or urn?”

I don’t want this box.

My mind goes back to when we met. That day on the river when I was so terrified of whitewater and you were my fearless guide. I think of your blue eyes that effortlessly stole my heart. I think of how I gave you my phone number and you thought it was going to be a tip… only to realize later  that it was the best tip of your life. I smile and weep. Where did that time go?

I struggle to get the urn out of the cardboard box. It sits snuggled in the box, comfortable in the place it has rested over so many months. I get it out and read the words that are written on the outside. Curtis Van Alen Joyce. March 18th, 2014. Grand Canyon. Flagstaff, Arizona. I weep. My body reacts to your name next to an end date. I don’t want this box. I want my charismatic, handsome, strong as nails, husband.

I think about the time that we said “I do”. I think about walking slowly down the aisle to you as your eyes filled with the most genuine tears you had ever shed, my love. I think about our house and our dog, our most imperfectly perfect life that we created together in Portland. I think about kayaking and hiking and singing and dancing and making love. I think about love and the endless possibilities that are born with jumping off of a cliff hoping that something will catch us when we fall.

The urn opens and I pull out the bag that holds your ashes and bones. I hold it closely, my tears spilling down my face onto the plastic. I think about the song that is playing as I hold what used to be your body. I think of you singing this song and I cry even harder. It is too much, this life is too much. I weep for the life that we had and the life that was supposed to come.

As I weep I think about the times that no one knows about. The secrets we hold close and the times of wonder we shared together alone.

I hold you closely for a while and then I gently put you back. Safely stored until we set you free. I know that time will come, my love, and I know our story will continue onward.

As I take your shirt and wrap you tightly back up, I wipe my tears and look straight ahead.

I have learned so much, my love, in these last 18 months. I have learned that what matters most is the love that we all share together on this earth. I have learned that the truest thing there is will always be there, but we can’t always touch it. I have learned that the world is spinning out of control and my heart aches to let go of the reins. I have learned that the extent of my strength is something that surprises me daily. And today, my love, I have learned that this box is a beautiful reminder that this life is undeniably temporary and I will be reunited with you once again. Until then, I leave you with this..

I love you equal, I love you to the moon, I will love you for eternity.  

Charismatic Energy

There is something so electric in the charismatic energy that some people possess. This world is full of diverse, colorful and beautiful people. We walk next to each other holding tightly to our own realities yet bumping shoulders with those whose realities are completely different than our own. Some we pass without noticing, while some stop us in our tracks. Their light brighter than the rest, their energy so full of life it reminds us that the world that we are walking in is filled with wonder and is desperate to be uncovered.

I think these people are here, all around us, yet rare in their own form. Some are bogged down with the weight of life while others may have been through the same heaviness yet bear no outcome of the weight, only a sparkle that continues to shine brighter as they grow in their understanding of life. The energy I speak of is buoyantly optimistic, light and free in presence, and flowing through beautiful eyes that shine with hope.

When this energy enters the room, you can’t help but divert and look. Their presence is a window to a possibility that awaits. It is their rare confidence that draws you in. Warmth of heart is evident, strength in character is strong, and an understanding of the importance of love is the backbone to the energy that flows freely from their soul.

There is something so electric with the charismatic energy I speak of. It changes something, ever so slightly yet permanently altered. Their energy solidly shifting this story of life to a story that continues to hold true to a hope for the future, hope for love to continue to win.

With eyes that shine and a gentleness that will make others continuously feel at ease, this electric quality is one to strive for. As I look back on the countless letters and notes sent to me from those who loved my husband almost as much as I did, I smile remembering his electric, humble, stunning, deeply compassionate heart. As I move forward I know I will be drawn to those who possess these same qualities and I will forever see a piece of my love in their eyes.

Love will continue to win.

The Secrets of Our Eyes

There is a silent gentleness in our eyes. The kind of quiet strength that comes from living through different colors of pain. Colors that are painted by limitless experiences that vary from person to person. Adverse experiences that shape our hearts and minds to be a powerful part of the world that we now know.

It is far too often more than what some can relate to. This quiet strength that I speak of can be intimidating to those that have yet to come to know it. A strength of beauty and of pain, paralleled evenly and shining through our beautiful eyes. Some look closer, drawn by the raw beauty, while others turn away, frightened of the pain that is too real, reminding them of the absolute certainty of what is yet to come.

There is a secret that is shared through our eyes as we desperately search for understanding of what is going on around us. We all are facing the same obstacles only in different forms. My secret pains are different than yours, but are equal in their measure. Death being only one obstacle in a world that seems to be constantly paddling upstream. The all encompassing moments of our past add to the weight of our eyes that shine in the current moments. Our eyes slowly becoming indefinitely intriguing by the moments that are spent here on earth.

I secretly search others for their stories that seem to shine through their eyes. I wonder about their history and about their passions, the times that have aged them and the times that have taken their breath away. I wonder if they have felt their hearts melt with passion or their pulse fiercely quicken with desire. I wonder about their agonies and what keeps them awake at night. I wonder if they are wondering the same things, inquisitive to the mysteries that surround them.

I wonder if our eyes hold the secrets that can unlock contentment.

Part of what makes our stories complete is filling in the pages of our life with love that comes from those around us. Our eyes shining with others in them. Our stories intersecting together for a brief time or a long road. Our eyes dancing with a light that shines brighter when others are around. Our powerful stories that reflect pain and beauty, will be shared through the heart of our eyes. Our silent strength being passed on to those who may need it and back to us when we need it once again. The perpetual flow of life.