Fall Hard

People think bull-riding is about learning to hold on tight. Turns out, it’s about learning when to let go…

………….

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

I wrapped my legs tightly around the bull’s quivering haunches, feeling the raw animal power radiate up into my sacrum. Nervous sweat dampened my thighs as I struggled to mold myself around the beast’s flanks. I fought to rein in my terror as I ultimately called off this futile search for security. I resolutely looked up into a pair of piercing green eyes, and sighed…..

“I’m sure”

“You know you’re going to fall right?”

I laughed. I had already fallen. I had fallen for unkempt hair and a feral heart. I had fallen for an easy grin and alpine dreams. I had fallen in love with the only man who’d ever looked at me like I was magic. And his blind confidence had transformed me. The girl who was afraid of frogs and heights, thunder and bears had chased love into the extremes. I had rappelled off cliffs, traversed glaciers, and surfed the eye of a hurricane. And now he had goaded me to mount a 2000-lb bull with fury in his nostrils and bloodlust in his eyes…..Breathing in the musk of leather and fear, I pronounced shakily…..

“I’m know. I’m ready.”

He laughed and leaned over the gait. Cupping my face in his rough hands, he kissed me deeply, then said with a teasing grin,

“Fall hard Baby.”

It was 6 seconds of chaos. Of rippling sinew and shuddering bones. Of harsh breaths and guttural moans. Two animal hearts beating wildly through the frenetic embrace. Magnets repelling, sound waves bending. A maniacal dance between woman and beast. A searing pain as the braided rope bit a bloody tattoo into my palm. A desperate grip wrenched free by a violent spinal twist, and I was sliding down. Hooves kicked in a steely frenzy, inching closer to my face. The instinct to hold fast is profound, but at what point in that corybantic ride does a fibrous lifeline become an anchor? When does a tether become a ball and chain? Hold on and be dragged under by the rabid torrent, or let go and surrender to the back-breaking fall?

Fall hard Baby

And I let go. I yielded to gravity and fell hard. I relinquished my breath and submit to the earth. Chest heaving I began to laugh into the dirt. Nature’s domination is abject and eternal, but turns out there is joy in surrender. Turns out, there can be ecstasy in defeat.

…………………………

Less than a year later and I was again lying in the dirt, but this time there was no laughter. This time, my grip was tight around the cold, still form of my once-vital lover. Carotid, brachial, radial, femoral…..carotid, brachial, radial, femoral. I checked each pulse over and over, begging Fate to deliver just one more flicker, one more quiver of life. But his breath had been still for hours, and the last of my tears had long ago dried on his chest.

“You have to let go” the paramedic urged.

“I can’t.“

How do you let go of half of your heart? How do you let go of your reason for breathing? How do you surrender and fall, when the one person who had promised to catch you lies broken and still by the side of the road? But then a midnight breeze sighed through the pines and there came a ghost’s whispered command….

Fall hard Baby.

And I kissed his icy beautiful face one last time, let go of his steadying hand, and I fell. I fell into grief’s abyss. I fell apart. I fell away from sanity and into despair. I fell through the jagged debris of our shattered dreams and a hailstorm of frozen tears. I fell for what felt like years. But somewhere along the way I surrendered to the fall. And I began to fall through shafts of sunlight, clouds of new hope. My descent was slowed by vines of friendship proffered, by elastic nets woven of vibrant new memories. As I finally began to fall with faith, I fell back into joy. I fell into a new purpose. I even fell in love.

………………………

One of the last of the intrepid Tuskegee Airmen lay withered and frail on the hospital bed in front of me. His devoted wife sat tirelessly by his side and tenderly stroked his wizened hand. Despite my shift having ended hours earlier, I hadn’t been able to drag myself from the cramped ER room, so entranced was I by this living legend. Between wheezing breaths, this diminutive champion had been regaling us with tales of his exploits as one of the “Red-Taled Angels”. This was a man who knew everything about letting go. He had long ago let go of his anger at the systemic racism that plagues this military. He had let go of society’s judgements and his family’s expectations to become one of the most elite airmen in the United States military. As part of the 332nd Fighter Group, he and his squadron had had more successful pilot escorts then any other battalion in the nation’s history. But now this warrior’s heart was failing. Myofibrils unspooling, veins becoming plethoric, lungs filling with fluid. His lion’s heart beat an irregular staccato on the iridescent cardiac monitor. He was struggling to complete life’s last greatest mission. For a man who had fearlessly fallen out of the skies to dodge enemy missiles, he was locked in a violent internal skirmish, fighting with his survival instincts, to find the courage to let go and plummet one last time. But you could tell this hero’s heart still beat only for that statuesque beauty at his bedside. I leaned forward, wrapped my arm around her shoulders, and whispered in her ear,

“Tell him it’s ok to let go”

“I can’t,” she moaned. “I can’t do this life without him.”

“Then tell him you’ll see him in the next one,” I urged.

With a stoicism earned by those of the Greatest Generation, she leaned over her husband’s feeble frame, and whispered in his ear,

“I will love you forever. You can let go”.

A shuddering sigh and that valiant fighter pilot, who should have passed under a blanket of purple-hearts, let go and took a valorous final nosedive into glory’s abyss. His noble breath exhaled one last time as he passed from one epoch into the next……

“I’m falling,” she cried.

I gripped both her hands in mine and steadied her with my gaze…

“It’s ok, I’ll show you how.”

Fall hard Baby.