The title of this post is a direct quote from the poignant Stephen King short story entitled "The Reach", concerning an elderly woman who was born on an island near New England and had never been to the mainland in her life. As the story unfolds, she begins to see and hear her long-dead husband. Answering the question near story's end, saying "Oh yes I did, yes I do, yes I will", she takes her husband's hand and walks with him across the frozen "reach" to the mainland (and, one would assume, into paradise).
This entry is simply about courage. Especially today, many Americans (and many throughout the world) are stunned at the result of yesterday's Presidential election. Today, it took courage simply for me to get out of bed and begin writing. I'm sure it took courage for a lot of people today just to get up, to go to work, to go on. But go on we must, regardless of what life throws at us. Going on is the very definition of life in a sense...to stop is, in many ways, to die. I know. I was part of the real "walking dead" for so long it pains me...but today I can feel that pain, absorb those blows, and go on.
Do I love? Has it broken my heart? Does it frighten me? Yes, yes, and yes. But to push love aside or drift through it like a dream is not really living. I'd rather get my heart broken again than hide it away in an emotional lockbox where no one -- not even I -- knows where it is or whether it still even beats.
So if you should ask me, friends...do I love? Yes I did, yes I do, yes I will...for I believe, as Leonard Cohen has said in his song "The Future", that love really is "the only engine of survival". Push aside your fear and climb aboard. Who knows where we will end up, or what divides we may cross on the way?
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