A Token of Hope

I slide into the driver’s seat of my car as the CVS Pharmacy bag in my arms, piled high with medications, crunches loudly against the steering wheel. I hoist an overstuffed Target shopping bag from the crook of my arm, over the steering wheel and onto the passenger seat, as a package of ballpoint pens topples to the floor. I pause, let out a long sigh, and decidedly leave the pens to delicately position the bag of medications on the passenger seat. I can’t explain what made me purchase the pens, especially because a package of new pens seems to highlight the irony, and reality: I have nothing to say.

A thought recently confirmed in a therapy session, in which I heatedly declared, “You know what, no. I’m done writing gratitude lists, and I absolutely refuse to reframe my reality through words.” Which, as might be expected, led to my therapist guiding me through the centering practice of naming the emotions in the room, and eventually, to a lengthy conversation around the reoccurring and trending emotional theme in my personal life: hopelessness. A theme leaving me to feel quite unlike myself, because, as my therapist pointed out, my entire life, and my family’s life, is built on the virtue of hope.

I slam the door to my car and stare through the windshield at a large, glowing, Target entrance as shoppers, with medical cloth masks pulled tight across their faces, filter in and out of the sliding glass doors. I let out another long exhale and hug the steering wheel as I slowly unloop my own mask from my ears, and rest the side of my cheek against the top of my hand on the wheel to gaze at the pharmacy bag bursting with only a fraction of the tablets and liquids my daughter needs to stay healthy — whatever “healthy” means for a child with chronic illness and medical complexity.

I take a deep breath — a sharp inhale — before I sit up to start the car. And I hear the engine rumble to life, and my friend, Jacob Montague’s, instrumental music begins to play through my car speakers. I push my head against the back of my headrest and turn up the volume to a symphony of sound — the sound of a song that has always struck me with its depth, movement, light, and promise. A song that says so much, with no concrete words at all — a song I don’t actually know the name of. I glance down at the title on my phone and read the words, “Memories to Come.” I close my eyes, and, for perhaps the first time in a long time, listen.

As the song concludes, I open my eyes to a package of pens on the floor and I begin to wonder if hope, or at least tokens of hope, might actually resemble hopelessness.

I suppose it depends on how you frame it.

I wonder if a token of hope is so mysterious, and untamable, that it can ignite light and conviction through a symphony of sound and music notes. And perhaps in writing, to the weary soul, a token of hope looks something like the words “Memories to Come.” 

To listen to “Memories to Come,” by Jacob Montague, click here.