Peaceful, calm, soft and restful. Those were the feelings I had sitting with them at a window table in the Sylvia, looking out at the bay. The sky, a soft greyness, slow ripples in the water, a soft peaceful shower placing a glistening sheen on the cars, the trees.
But they didn’t fit in the scene. They were still back there, hours away, their minds still experiencing the struggle, the excitement, the fears, of their adventure. I could see it in their eyes, their faces. Eyes bigger and wider than usual, faces stressed and hardened. But open, open feelings, open wounds.
I turned to Bonnie. I thought about what to ask her, what to ask to find out what was underneath these feelings, what was drawing her back to their adventure, why it wasn’t over yet.
“What was your most intense emotional experience, and what were you doing?” I asked this question as I looked into her eyes, eyes still raw, desperate and alive from her month in the Mayan ruins and in the Galapagos. I wanted to know where those feelings came from, those desperate feelings now pouring out of her face and aura.
“It was the babies,” she said, her voice strained and emotional. “They were frantic, not knowing how to nurse. The babies were separated from their mothers and were going to die. One baby was in the water, trying to get to his mother. But the mother was on the shore, separated. The babies were just left to die.
“There were more newborn babies on the path. There were babies everywhere. I couldn’t stand it. They were going to die.”
Her tears came welling up. Her voice trembled and caught as her feelings of terror overwhelmed her. I touched her arm, her shoulder, to let her sense caring, safety. “It was too much. I haven’t had time to recover. It’s been four years, and I’ve been working all the time. I haven’t had time to recover, to deal with his death. The sea lion babies just brought it all back.”
His death.
I understood now what she was feeling. Her son, trapped in a burning cockpit, his last flight back to Vancouver before Christmas, never coming home again, separated from his mother for the last time. His body – too burned and black to even be seen, to want to see.
The babies!
The babies!
Her baby!
