They say when you die, you’ll spend 7 seconds replaying your entire life. Maybe it’s just the highlights. Maybe it’s a glimpse of what brought you the greatest amount of peace. I don’t even know if that’s what they really say. I don’t even know who “they” is, but I hope they’re right about our brains replaying the good stuff before we kick the bucket.
When I was a child, I lived in a trailer park in Pueblo, Colorado. My parents worked opposite shifts in order to make ends meet. For a lot of what I can remember of my early childhood, my brothers and I were often left to our own devices, because childcare wasn’t really an option. My parents made too much for assistance but not enough to afford daycare. I spent a lot of my time outside wandering up, down, and between the endless rows of trailers. But the one memory my brain always comes back to is discovering a weeping willow during one of my escapades.
I don’t know if you know this, but weeping willows make music. They sing.
You can’t just expect to hear it, though. You have to pay attention. You have to shut up long enough to notice. And when you finally manage to quiet everything and force yourself to be present, you’ll get to watch it dance, too.
I stood there, underneath the branches as they swayed in a soft, midsummer breeze. I only know now that I was facing west, because for the first time that I can recall, I experienced what gardeners call “the golden hour”. There are two golden hours every day. One in the morning as the sun is starting to rise and one in the evening as the sun is starting to set. It’s that time of day when it feels like the sun is kissing everything it touches and the world seems a little more alive.
The whole world feels golden.
I’m not going to wrap you guys up in meaningless, droll definitions or explanations, but I feel like part of the human experience is encountering something beautiful or profound and being able to find a word for it. It wasn’t until I was smack dab in the middle of my 30’s and started gardening that I discovered the importance of “the golden hour” - because that’s when you’re supposed to feed your little leafy babies out in your little plot of dirt. The first time I stepped outside to see the golden hour after learning its name, it was like finally noticing how ethereal our world truly is. Every leaf became significant and the branches and grass started dancing again.
And then it dawned on me - I finally realized there was a name for what I experienced under the weeping willow.
I didn’t know what to call it when it happened, because children don’t have the luxury of an extensive vocabulary. They can’t quite understand the depths of the emotions they feel.
They don’t know what to say or how to describe it.
I think I felt what can only be described as numinous - a fancy word I learned about 30 years too late and have since become obnoxious about. It describes an experience that feels mysterious, awe-inspiring, and somehow bigger than yourself. The sort of thing that makes you stop talking mid-sentence, because you’ve suddenly realized that you’re standing in the presence of something important.
It’s the kind of experience that you cling to when the entire world feels like it’s collapsing and the oxygen around you feels like it’s dissipating. I replay those four seconds under the willow…. a lot.
I remember how mild the temperature felt underneath those branches and how the sparse, dry grass felt in between my toes.
I remember seeing the golden sun pouring through the leaves as the wind danced with each branch, magnifying the absolute vitality of it all.
It can only be compared to the sound of some divine entity breathing out a contented sigh.
It’s a whisper and a song, all at the same time.
I live for that experience.
Let me clarify - I am alive because of that memory.
It doesn’t bear the full responsibility of having kept me trudging through every valley I’ve ever had to navigate, but it does drive this deep hope that maybe “they” were right about the whole 7 seconds when you die thing.
I hope that when I take my last breath, I see the faces of my children, of my husband, and of every person I’ve surrendered a fragment of my heart to who deserved it.
But I also hope that for just a couple of seconds I’ll get to be a little blonde 5 year old girl who got to see the weeping willow.
Proof that there was a version of me that was capable of feeling something pure and uncomplicated before the other stuff arrived.
I hope that when my soul prepares to leave this plane of existence, I get to see it again, because it’ll prove to have remained untouched.
Depression couldn’t take it.
Poverty couldn’t take it.
Sexual assault couldn’t take it.
Every alcoholic beverage, every drug, every stranger’s bed, every urge to make my own heart stop couldn’t take it.
Everything that happened after those 4 seconds was complicated.
It was a moment of peace that remained intact through everything.
I’m still alive, because God showed a little girl that the world could be beautiful.
And if you’re wondering whether there’s still a part of you the world couldn’t touch… I hope you find it. I hope you remember yours when the world feels too heavy to carry.
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