Rain Dance

 

 

“She loves to walk out in the rain

Can’t tell the raindrops from the paindrops

She loves to walk out in the rain…”

-Jeff Desjarlais- Song for Carol

 

I have always loved soft, warm, Spring rain.  I, typically, get out in it.  Sometimes, at night, in a canvas teepee, listening to the beautiful drumming of night rain.  But, there is more to this.

Rain is cathartic for me.  One day, after a dramatic, chaotic night spent trying to find and sober up someone, I could do no more than weep, but I have always seen weeping as weakness.  The only time and place I could/can freely weep, for myself, is when I walk out in the rain.  I walked for hours, no umbrella, out into the forest and wept.  Later on, that evening, when I returned to the house, there were words to a song for me left on for me to read.  Some time later, he sung it.  I had let go of the night before and stepped into the sunshine of the next day, emotionally wrung out.  I told the person he had to leave.  After he left, there was a cassette tape with all his songs, left on the kitchen table, and he had added “Song For Carol”.  I was never around him again, in the last 27 years.  He never gained his sobriety nor freedom from other addictions.  He was both tender and a terror.  Lately, he passed away and now I am his widow.  I needed to walk out in the rain one more time.  Rain is my baptism, of sorts.

*****I do not have a copy of that song any more, but this one, is another he wrote during better times before he left.  It also, is, in part, about our relationship and the drama of living with an addicted person.