MY ONE-ARMED FAIRY by Peggy Knorr

I had purchased a little fairy figurine just a few days before Joe, my husband, became ill. I had bought her even though one of her arms was broken off because she was so especially beautiful, and I had planned to place her on a shelf in a way so the missing arm would not be noticed. As the time went by during my tending to Joe, I began to realize how she was symbolic of that which he and I were going through at that time.

Poised in dance-like abandon on my dining room table, she was my comfort and guiding light when I would sit down for a needed break, while Joe, lying in the hospital bed in the living room, was slowly and gradually slipping away each day.

My fairy would give me of her delicate strength that assured me that this situation was in divine order, totally in God's control and playing out in the way it was supposed to be doing. This little soul had suffered the loss of her arm and yet was intrepidly giving forth of her beautiful spirit in ecstasy and rapture. Her severed limb spoke of the coming loss which I was about to go through, the separation of a vital part of me, my right arm, that which Joe was to me, even during the time his torn mind had hidden itself into obscurity. But my fairy reminded me that at his death I could continue in elegance and faith, still looking upwards to my highest good, soaring with Joe's spirit into acceptance of what was yet to come.

I will continue to dance, despite my loss, like my inspired little fairy, a fractured but triumphant spirit, who was still poised and able to hold her head high in acceptance of God's wondrous ways. My companion and husband, my right arm.... gone.... torn asunder by the reality of the order of life; but because of the fortitude of this luminous little being my exultant spirit is joining with him in higher realms of faith and hope and courage.

photo by Mary Ramirez