I don't normally post two blogs so closely in time, but due to the overwhelming response to Declan's words, I agreed to write again...
Thanks again for all of your questions and responses.
John is simply lovely to do this, isn't he?
Well after some thought I offer you a little bit more in the way of Declan's frame of mind...
Enjoy...
(Declan)
"I remark often that I am of the brave. I say so because I live my life in the forward, never really dwelling in the past.
That statement is in direct contradiction to what I've told you prior, yes?
I swirl the warm, soothing whiskey in my glass, place it up to my lips to self medicate.
I was, afterall my wifes life mate- her protector.
It was my honor, my sacred duty to keep her safe, to usher in out later years with the utmost of care and respect- yet I did no such thing. Instead, I immersed myself with rather grand ventures and achievements....
Hell, truth be told I was exceptional at it and all that it entailed.
Ahh but I find myself becoming repetitve...
Forgive?
Her death taught me many things; one of which not to take anything for granted- in particular love.
Now pay attention because here is where the bravery within me resides...
It took everything, and I do mean everything for me to fall to my knees, broken really.
Though I'm religious both publicly and privately, I had never before set myself so humbly at the Almighty's feet.
It hadn't meant as much to me up to that point.
However, to be alive in truth I had to fall, begging for either the ultimate redemption or cry out for deaths demise...
Without divine intervention I'd no' realize faiths fruition. This certainty was as plain as the drink residing in my weary hands, yes?
So I took to it mightily, never for one second thinking that she too had fallen before the grace of light.
But she had.
After everything that had befallen her so to did she bow her head in prayer.
Though she'd subsequently fight me and argue endlessly about the procurement Sawyer indeed relented.
I'd laugh openly at her firm belief that were she to deny my will lightning would strike her in the outdoors.
This deriving from the girl who bore scars from violence...
I could not quite fully comprehend how she had the gumption to choose life over death. Mind you, I never offered her the pity one would commonly afford.
I understood the complexities that led her down such a darkened path, the complicity that Sawyer herself had to own in the cycle of domestic violence.
All the while I privately wished to "fix" her heart.
No one person should ever shoulder such vast pain.
Funny that she'd knowingly look into my eyes and see with immediate recognition the very same in my soul.
I never once saw myself in this light.
Sawyers uncanny ability to cause my emotional walls built over the years to crumble floored me.
Words that I could not readily articulate she easily held pen to paper...
Stripping me of all personal armor. It was her, who she had always been, simply never allowed to 'be'.
I would've chosen death by drink were it not for her tender soul and gentle touch...
I recall following the Saint on one of her 'hikes'...
She'd take the time to touch and realize the texture of stones that had been cast aside, hug the trees and non chalantly jump into the nearby creek bed.
Life was worth living she'd pose...
I couldn't imagine that this was the same individual who had had a gun held to her forehead in threat.
Who was I to than grovel in agony over the loss of my wife?
It all seemed so distant presently, a foot note to this blessing laughing at me stumbling just to keep up...
Sawyer ignited my soul.
My Theresa was beauty beyond captured words...
Yet this?
This was beauty in its most pristine form.
Free, willing...
Well when she wasn't disputing the politics of life with me...
Perhaps you could deny fate- but I had learned, in the hardest of ways that blessings in any form were not meant to be squandered.
I held the Saint, stroked her hair while singing to soothe...
Sawyers amber eyes bore through me.
She understood me.
Each night, in the beginning, I'd leave her, not entirely pleased to know such distance, yet feeling that if I pressed further we'd resort to a far more dominant stance.
Truth?
She'd desired just that.
But to do that would place me in the fully accountable postion, not quite certain if that would be appropriate for our well being in the long run.
I'll be honest, her past angered me a great deal.
I wanted to erase any residue feelings or regret that she might be harboring, inparticularly when that 'lost' look would begin to cloud those soulful eyes of hers...
I'm often asked about her writing, the subsequent novels.
Well, I'd remark that it seemingly provided her with a voice that she hadn't known prior.
There was a latin prose written directly to me long before she knew of my exsistance, allow me to share, if you haven't already read it for yourself:
"Haec ego multis (scribo) sed tibi sat is enin magnum alter alteri theatrum sumus"
I write this not to the many, but to you only
for you only
for you and I are surely enough of an audience for each other.
So you see? She already knew what I did not.
With that said, let me leave you in peace.
While she and I may not appear to be the perfect pairing, it is within our imperfections that we have become a cohesive, unique couple.
We follow no mans path; we forge our own.
Stand aside if you'd wish us ill;
for we are of the brave.
In this, we have found our truest love, in one another."
Declan McDaniels
Well you requested more, and so I provided!
I'm hopeful that now you will have a better understanding of Declan and his mindset.
Declan comes from a place of ultimate grace, redemption.
You may ask if this is real, well I would counter that question with your own dreams, the path that they set you on in your own daily life.
Perhaps we could all utilize a little of Declans passion and depth in our own day to day.
Are we not all derived of the brave?
Who then stands in the wake of realization?
Thank you John, again!
And to Chris, Mac, Marshall, and Ian: it will get better...trust in yourselves...
From my hand to yours,
Sawyer
Saint Andrews
