North of Hope by Shannon Polson Page B

his face and his voice. And worse: I couldn’t stop thinking about the image of him and Kathy screaming in a tent being ripped down around them. I prayed to understand, and I prayed for help—what kind of understanding or what kind of help, I’m not sure I knew, or know even now. “Help me, God. Help me, God,” was all I could say. And then: “Come on, Dad. Can you show yourself, just for a minute? Come say hi? Come give me a hug?” Some small part of me thought maybe he was here. That he and Kathy would walk up with smiles on their faces and everything would be okay. The breeze carried my whispers off and away along the lines of the landscape.
    An hour after midnight, the sun swung behind the mountains, but did not set. It would not set at all this far north and this close to solstice. Its low angle bathed the tundra and the mountains on either side in lambent yellow light. Gray tendrils of rain washed detail from ridgelines. Golden light shimmering on water suspended in the air soaked the land in an ethereal luminance. The muted glow on the elegant outlines of mountains was that of an old fire on company gathered round, illumining the essence of things.
    Have you ever watched something so beautiful for so long that for just a minute you became a part of it? I watched until I was a part of that light, part of the land. A part of creation and creator. What shocked me was not my dissolution but the relief it brought. It was like a quiet rising of water. It was not erasure; it was inclusion, a connection so complete it mingled molecules. I was here, and I was part of the Arctic, and it was part of me.
    The wind died, and the night air lay balmy on my skin. And then south down the wide river valley a rainbow appeared against the mountain to the east, curving out over the valley. It brightened, extended its arc, and then disappeared. Then another appeared farther down the valley. Then another, claiming the valley and all that was in it. And then a double rainbow!
    The previous summer in Anchorage, during the week of the funeral, dark clouds built each afternoon, releasing furious torrents. Our priest told me after the funeral that he had seen eight rainbows that week. I had only noticed the storms.
    I could not restrain myself from laughing out loud, just laughing in the Arctic night. Just as quickly I felt foolish, and I knew definitively that I was not alone.

Requiem
   
Tuba Mirum
    The canticle [can be called] the “sword of the spirit,” because it provides a weapon for those who virtuously fight against the invisible spirits; for the word of God, taking possession of the spirit when sung or spoken, has power to drive away demons
.
    —Quaestiones et responsiones ad Orthodoxos
107 (PG 6.1354)
    I hear the voices around me. I am swallowed up in them. I close my eyes and sink into the sound slowly, like a sigh.
    Every Monday night beginning in September, two months after the funeral, I come to the rehearsal hall, sit in the hard folding chair. I bring water in a heavy red plastic bottle Dad and Kathy had with them on the river. It is scratched from use and still has sand around its rim from the river. I refuse to wash it. The first rehearsal, I sit next to Deb, who is only a few years older than me, with stylishly graying hair in long, thick curls. We had both gone to business school, both loved to sing. She doesn’t have a car, so I drive her home after rehearsals. We become fast choir friends.
    The ancient idea of
koinonia
, unity in diversity.
Propter chorum
, say the monks. For the sake of the choir. Surely each of us here has a grief for which they sing, whether or not theyknow it. I need this unity, a connection to others, something that tells me I am present. But I am singing selfishly, for myself, hoping for a way out of this pain.
    I want there to be a reason that I am here, a sign that proves this is good and right.
    The night of my audition, the rain had just stopped when I arrived home to my apartment in