forsaking all others

I wonder if he’s ever forgiven me for the choices I’ve made. This memory floods back only after recently using that camera. The same one I carried the day I went hiking with friends and the rocky ledge we’d tried to traverse gave way. Allowing each one of us to spill down the side of the mountain like marbles let loose from their bag. Scattered and torn we flew. I stopped hard against the trunk of a tree. Had the wind knocked out of me and worried more about the cracked camera lens than anything more vital as we drove the winding motorway to our respective homes. It was only later, when I started hemorrhaging in the back seat of the van that the world starting spinning in uncontrollable irreversible directions. Later when I regained consciousness, friends told me that they were worried about internal injuries. That they rushed me to the nearest hospital – only to find that I had lost something else. The stern face of the doctor telling me in a dream that I shouldn’t have been so careless. All I could think about in the hours that followed was my Uncle Dale. The only tangible evidence of him throughout my life – a story of how he died during a rock climbing expedition in Peru. The name Dale echoed in my head even as I made the call to California and sobbed over and over again I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It’s difficult to lose something that you didn’t even know you had. That you thought you didn’t want. That wasn’t completely yours. And the fact that he’s never allowed forgiveness to say, It wasn’t your fault, leaves me feeling unimaginable and complex responsibility.