Healing
Lyfjaberg. An Old Norse word, meaning Healing-hill (or Healing-mountain). Also, a beautiful concept.
The Norse believe this Hill to be a place of comfort and cure for the sick and sore. Those who manage to climb the mountain can finally find peace. But first, before finally finding the peace they craved, one has to bare offerings at the shrines there — a gift demands a gift in return.
As you climb the hill and ponder the sacrifice for Lyfjaberg I suggest you lay your Lasts on the Shrine.
It’s summer and you’re playing hide-and-seek with your childhood friends. No one told you it was the last game.
Years later, maybe in another life, you share a bottle of rosé with your best friend. No one told you’ll have a fallout and never see her again.
One busy afternoon, you ignore a call from you grandmother. No one told you it’d be the last time she’d call you.
It’s Sunday morning, you’re getting dressed, prepared to walk the walk of shame from your fling’s apartment. No one tells you you’ll never walk back in again.
One winter, you hike with your best friends to visit the Sphinx. No one warns you it’s the last time you’ll be all together.
Day and night we smash into a bunch of Last Times oblivious to the evanescent nature of every moment we’re breathing. Just as you’re reading this, someone, somewhere is living one of their Lasts.
They’re listening to their favorite band for the last time, eating a pancake for the last time, finishing a task for the last time, taking a shit for the last time, loitering for the last time.
Blind, deaf, unsuspecting, unaware of it.
If you gathered up all these Lasts and laid them all in sequence, you’d be able to put together an entire lifespan.
But who would ever want to live a life of Lasts?
Some are bittersweet. Like small pieces of dark chocolate, 60% of cocoa and heartbreak the Lasts are beautifully aligned for all the nostalgics out there.
Some are precious. Like drinking good coffee on a Sunday morning, listening to the undertones of your favorite band.
Some are dreadful. Like 1st day period cramps and the overwhelming feeling that something is terribly wrong.
The Lasts come in all sizes and shapes, masquerading as utterly mundane items and they bear the scent of fresh-cut grass, wet asphalt, and strawberries.
The Lasts age like wine and they taste better as time passes. When the dust settles. When the ink dries. That’s when you learn to look at the Last, not as a trivial whatever, but as a precious memory.
The Lasts are an acquired taste.
In the beginning, when you realize you’ve already danced your last dance, you’ll rage. You’ll fight, caught in the turmoil of your soul revolting. After a while, though, you learn to love and honor the scent of the Lasts.
Time passes and you learn to cherish and hide them someplace safe, as you’d do with a secret lover. Only look at them when you’re alone, press them against your naked skin, breathe them in, breathe them out.
The Lasts are the memories that stand out. Exactly like those people who leave a mark — except the Lasts are burned within you forever.
You sit in silence and watch the sunrise, once again. The colors…like molten gold.
All of your Lasts are carefully packed and organized by the love you’ve given them. You take each one out and gaze at it, a heirloom from a lifetime ago.
Pondering, wondering, living it, feeling it. Then you place it back in the leather backpack, carefully covering the see-through porcelain in bubble wrap.
The Lasts are heavy from all the years they’ve been carrying. Also, they’ve torn apart from all those times you’ve replayed them. Some are bittersweet, some are precious, some are terrible. They are what they are, nothing more, nothing less.
As you journey up the mountain, your mind and your spirit are as heavy as they are fortunate.
Relived, you breathe.
