With gratitude to James Takahara
In February of 2015, a few days after my father died, just a couple of weeks after his 93rd birthday, I went for a walk on Fort Ord. Other than at my house, it’s where I feel most at home, not that I’ve ever had a meal there nor spent a single night. Rather, a sense of mystical reverence mixed with ease is what I experience when out walking on that land. To walk alone in a wide open, expansive place gives room for grief to loosen its grip on the body, mind and heart, and back then, oh, did my grief need loosening.
On that almost-first fatherless morning, not far from the parking area at Giggling and 8th, where a road heads east, cutting between two large swaths of land, I began to yell very loudly at my dad. Sometimes sorrow needs to be loud, to be freed from the body; sometimes it needs to be shouted, maybe, especially if you are Italian or maybe, just if you’re Nick’s elder daughter. I don’t know if he could hear me wherever he was at that moment, if he was anywhere. But it does kind of seem as though he did.
A couple of years before my father took his final departure, I asked him to paint me a bee because I love bees. All kinds of bees have my affection. This affection didn’t begin with the animal itself but with a poem by the Spanish Civil War poet, Antonio Machado, who was one of many poets, directly or indirectly, murdered by dictator Franco’s henchmen during that war. But long before his death, Machado wrote these lines, “Last night, while I was sleeping, I dreamed, marvelous error, that I had a beehive in my heart.” And with those words, many years ago, I fell in love with bees. Haven’t you?
My dad was an artist who for most of his life was blocked; there wasn’t anything he wanted more than to paint what he saw in his head-heart, but he couldn’t. For some reason, when I asked for a bee, he pushed through what stopped him, and painted me not one but two. One of them is only 3 inches wide. My dad’s eyesight wasn’t great by then, but the bee is completely detailed and lovely in its bee-body.
On my first walk after his death, after I’d stopped yelling, suddenly there were bees flying just ahead of me. First one and then more, buzzing their buzz, leading me on my way. Little bees and bumble bees —those big black and yellow ones with the sonorous buzz. I couldn’t explain this, and nor did I wish to. Sometimes what the heart knows is best trusted and left in peace. I knew my pop was guiding me — his love had sent me bees. They were there every walk I took that February. Come March, no more bees. None flew ahead of me during any other months, either.
Every February since then the bees have been on the trail ahead of me, leading the way. They encircle my head with their flight, making me feel as though I were wearing a crown of bees, the best crown I can imagine. And then I couldn’t walk for some years because of my foot that has had its troubles. I don’t know what happened to the bees for those years. Maybe they led somebody else; I hope so. I figured the bee chapter of my life had ended, that I’d be bee-less forever, and there was nothing to do about it.
Slow-forward to February of 2025, this very month. I’m able to walk longer distances again, have gotten up to 4.5 miles! There is nothing in the world as freeing and intoxicating as walking out past where cars, trucks and buses own the roads, out past most people and into the wide, welcoming arms of nature where the wind comes fast and the grasses bend with ease and the sky is a wide, dazzling blue and white dome above and the birds sing and the hills climb and the dirt is soft sand of the warmest light brown color and my feet take me and my heart and lungs are strong.
This ability to walk is not coincidental. It’s not the result of time and luck. There is one, and only one, person to whom my ultimate thanks belong and it’s not my father. To find the person who can help us to be able to do the thing we most want to do can take time. In my case, it took way longer than I wished, but finally, I reached out to a highly regarded, local physical therapist and secured an appointment. For all that is spiritual and sublime about taking long walks, the reality is that first and foremost, the body is required. Before coming under the care of James Takahara of Cypress Coast Physical Therapy, my body was unable to walk very far at all. Sure, I could do the grocery shopping and casually walk from here to there, but that was about it.
James has the skills few do, and certainly no one I’d worked with before. And my gratitude for his knowledge, kind, consistent care is boundless.
It’s February. I’m back on the trail. And, yes, there are bees leading my way. So many bees!
Del Rey Oaks writer and poet Patrice Vecchione is the author of several books including “My Shouting, Shattered, Whispering Voice: A Guide to Writing Poetry & Speaking Your Truth” and “Step into Nature: Nurturing Imagination and Spirit in Everyday Life.” Her titles are available wherever books are sold. More at patricevecchione.com
