Exploring a Dark Place in the Heart where Remembrance Never Touched the Ground

In out of the way places of the heart,
where your thoughts never think to wander…
-John O’Donohue

Through these decades of remembering the unknown soldiers, I have learned that the most unexpected individuals turn out to be guides and teachers.

He was sitting within a group of soldiers—they were passing time, their attention drawn to the camera—waiting for the order to climb a hill. He held a rifle tipped with a bayonet. I saw fear spread across his face and terror in his eyes. Maybe everyone who watches the trailer for the World War I documentary “They Shall Not Grow Old” sees him.

The instantaneous connection of seeing him sparked an instantaneous response of mercy in me. Through all the turnings of time, the facts remain: he lived and I could see him through the lens of time. It was the seeing him that caused me to respond without resistance. My heart opened and compassion flowed through time and space.
This unknown World War I soldier entered my heart and, unknown to me at that time, became a teacher.

I received an unexpected email in May from an old significant other, my ex-fiancé. In the past, my initial reaction would be anger, “Why is he invading my space?” The script of all his past wrongs would automatically play in my consciousness. This time I recognized my response was neutral. Decades had passed. He wrote about his daughter and reminisced about the fun we had together, which wasn’t anything I remembered. I only remembered his act of infidelity.

I recognized a softening in my heart from the past years and a new truth. There is no separation. If I didn’t block compassion and mercy that flowed through time and space to the unknown WWI soldier in “They Shall Not Grow Old,” how could I quickly block it from this once significant person in my past? Out of the silence – a whisper, “Have mercy on me, have mercy on him.”

When we broke up, I slammed that part of my life into a dark out of the way place in my heart where remembrance never touched the ground. I created a script for that time in my life and stuck to it. I didn’t look back but moved to a new state. I recognized in the intervening years, the unknown soldiers had had taught me to enter the darkness and offered me the light to see.

I took a gentle light, as soft as a candle’s flame, into the unexplored place in my heart. I replied to his email about how we are both older now. As I wrote him, I was able to see beyond one moment in time and saw the bigger picture. I learned the safety and security he could provide wasn’t what my creative spirit needed. He was correct, we had fun in college, but we also had few worries or responsibilities during that time. The conflict started when I was beginning my new career in advertising, he was in law school and we became engaged. The real world was illuminating different needs and dreams.

I had never recognized this when I was twenty-something. We didn’t break up because of his poor decision, it was only the spark that kindled my courage to let go of a relationship that – beyond college – was not going to work for either of us. Mercy touched me as it flowed through me. We were both liberated.