Deborah Hansen Hollenberg shared an amazing story with us via email. I have pieced it together to fit this format. I hope you take the time to read it through - it is truly a beautiful story.
I had found a poem by Robert Frost, “The Master Speed” in the quiet of the Covid shutdown, slipped behind a note I had written years ago, about my late husband’s father who had passed. The note had touched my husband deeply, but I did not know he had saved it, nor that he had kept this poem about our great love, with it. I had found the note I wrote in his office, but did not see the poem he had tucked behind it. I had brought it home the year before and left it upstairs with his office things. In the quiet of the shutdown, I found it and when I picked it up, I saw the poem tucked behind it.
Master Speed by Robert Frost
No speed of wind or water rushing by
But you have speed far greater. You can climb
Back up a stream of radiance to the sky,
And back through history up the stream of time.
And you were given this swiftness, not for haste
Nor chiefly that you may go where you will,
But in the rush of everything to waste,
That you may have the power of standing still—
Off any still or moving thing you say.
Two such as you with such a master speed
Cannot be parted nor be swept away
From one another once you are agreed
That life is only life forevermore
Together wing to wing and oar to oar.
The poem talks about how love may quicken the life of a couple into a vitality that far exceeds what each partner might attain alone. Frost also plays on the meaning of “speed” or it’s Latin root, spec, meaning ‘hope’, to point to the possibility of rest within motion, permanence within change, the eternal within the perishable.”
I was deeply moved by the poem. When I looked up the meaning, I found a page where there was a beautiful “letterpress” version of the poem printed in relief on block paper. So I emailed back to that site, about finding this poem, relating about the loss of my dear husband and our great love, not knowing I would ever get a reply.
One day I received an email from the young man, Richard Small, who had letter pressed this. He was from London but spending the summer in Wales during this isolation with his family and new child, Otto. He told me that he was touched by my email and would send me a copy of his letter press of “The Master Speed” when he got to London. I told him that one night I had expressed to my husband how upset I was at the thought of “being without him”. He turned to me and said, “Each of us is a side, there will always be two of us”. It was so beautiful. I knew I would hold that in my heart forever.
This week, a package arrived from England. It had three prints of “The Master Speed” but Richard had also made a print of “Each of us is a side there will always be two of us”. I cried when I saw it. It was so beautiful and so kind.
I placed the prints on a tray in our TV room. Later that day, I participated in zoom a service with Temple Israel at 4:00 P.M. It was moving and made me sad, wishing Norm was here with me.
I walked into the TV room after, and looked down at the print of “Each of us is a side", yearning for Norm. All of a sudden, a ray of light passed across the print. I could not see it’s source, and was not sure what I was seeing. Then it happened again and stayed longer. I looked to see the source, for it was not coming across the floor from outside. But then I saw the setting sun, way in back, behind some evergreens, peaking through those trees. It’s light was coming across that print of my husband’s words, but ONLY on that print. Not across the floor, not on the table. I was amazed. I knew it was my husband, telling me he was here, with me, with all of those he loved,
thanking Richard for this gift, and reminding me that “Each of us is a side, there will always be two of us”. I just kept staring and took photos of the light for as long as it stayed.
I soon went to my computer to email the photo of the light and the experience to Richard. When I looked at the photo on my computer, I saw that there was another beam of light, but smaller, at the lower corner of the print. So there were two beams of light cast. Once again Norm was reminding me with his light that “Each of us is a side, there will always be two of us”. Norm always said he “wanted to be the sunshine”, not just “in the sunshine." He was there.
In the midst of this sad time we are all in, I received a most sensitive and kind gift from a man I did not know but who was moved by Norm’s words. Just that small gesture brought so much love and light to me “from across the pond” at such a sad time for me and for our world. We are all one. We need love and light.
