Penelope's Song

I am in the grueling process of getting my next book, "Beloved," a novel about a young woman who discovers what family, war, country and swordfighting mean to her (I'm still working on my "elevator quote.") ready for publication. I was correcting the manuscript the other night while listening to Loreena McKennit's new album, and "Penelope's Song" came on.That's when I heard the lines:Now that the time has comeSoon gone is the dayThere upon some distant shoreYou’ll hear me sayLong as the day in the summer timeDeep as the wine dark seaI’ll keep your heart with mine.Till you come to me.I was very sad when I heard that McKennitt's fiancee, Richard Rees, drowned in a boating accident in 1998. I was working as a music critic at the time. She had just finished and was touring for "The Book of Secrets," and I did a Q&A with for the SF Chronicle. Later, I'd gone to see her perform in San Francisco and met her backstage, so I felt particularly tied to her music at the time. When Rees died, she pretty much went into seclusion, and I wondered if his death would be the death of her music. I wondered if she could create beautiful songs again from the depth of her mourning. While on vacation a couple of weeks ago I read Margaret Atwood's "Penelopiad," which was fantastic -- a completely different take on what Penelope went through during the 20 years Odysseus was gone, first helping with the Trojan War and later being lost at sea. Atwood totally deconstructs the traditional image of Penelope as a devoted wife waiting patiently, grieving, hoping one day to see her husband home again.So I'm here at my desk, working, editing a section in which my narrator has been separated from her brothers and is longing to see them again, and I'm listening to McKennitt sing about the traditional Penelope, thinking of the day she will see Odysseus again -- and then it hits me that McKennitt must have found a lot of resonance and healing in the myth of Penelope after Rees was lost at sea, never to return. The triple grief washed over me and tears immediately sprang to my eyes as I thought about all that longing, all that separation, all that waiting, all those unknowns. McKennitt knows that Rees isn't coming back, but that doesn't change the poignancy of those lines: "There upon some distant shore you’ll hear me say, 'Long as the day in the summer time, deep as the wine dark sea, I’ll keep your heart with mine till you come to me.'"It just won't be a shore on this side of the known world. "The grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a fair green country under a swift sunrise." (JRR Tolkien, "Lord of the Rings")