Spring Equinox Cleaning

Equinox is the mid-point between the longest night of the year and the longest day. We already feel the effects of the lengthening days but we can finally bask in the warmth of the light. We’re itching to throw the doors and windows open and air out our living spaces. We’re ready to shake out the cobwebs and clear out the dust.

In our lives we are constantly shedding skins and starting over. Shedding skins and reinventing ourselves. Shedding skins and letting go of what is no longer needed. I’ve been living that through my recovery.

I’ve found it extremely helpful to take stock of the layers of things I surround myself with, to see what I no longer need. Every spring equinox I tackle a room or two, going through my possessions and furnishings, culling what has gone unused or forgotten. It invariably parallels as a spring cleaning of my emotional house as I evaluate my attachments to the items I consider letting go of.

Two years ago, it was my office, my nest. Included in that room was the dreaded storage closet of doom. It was full of boxes that hadn’t seen the light of day in over a decade. I re-organized. I put hands on everything. I stopped to read through old letters and cards from specific places of my life, which revived memories I had previously left to whisper and rest.

I am at a crossroad, roughly halfway through the years I expect to live. Sorting through that closet, my life unfolded behind me, mementos of everywhere I have been and everyone I have loved. And I felt the firmament of those choices beneath me.

I smiled joyfully through most of it, as the memories rippled through me. What a treasure it was to remember, in my body, the friendship and love of such innocent times. It helped buoy the box of painful things that had been tucked away. But those memories didn’t sting so badly this time. Even that box held lessons for wiser eyes, ways to not repeat those mistakes. I read and I culled, and as I culled, I re-organized.

I found the hole the mice were using to get in and sealed it. I found the alien spider’s secret corner of egg sacks. I found a box of crafts and stories I thought had been lost. And I found the last card my Grandpa gave me before he died. Which made me pause again… He’s been gone 13 years and I find it hard to believe so much of my life has been lived without him, when he is such a firm part of my identity as a grown-up.

I still have so much life left to come. I will never stop missing him. It wasn’t just spring cleaning and de-cluttering. It was time travelling. I walked through who I was and the choices I have made, making more decisions about what to hold onto and what to let go.

This year I have been sorting through my clothes. I have a drawer full of fun and kooky socks I can’t wear because the elastic cuts into my scar tissue pretty bad still. I’m packing up my favorites for a couple of years, in case I can wear them again. I’m going through and taking out the clothes made of synthetic fibers that irritate my new skin. I’m getting rid of the shorts I am unlikely to wear for at least five years. I am accepting the limitations of this new body. I am grateful for this new body.

Shedding skins is a journey of healing.

I don’t regret the path I took to get here. I like who I am. I don’t regret the obstacles I have pushed through, climbed over, or swam under to get to today. I like where I am.

[Updated from “Spring Equinox Cleaning” originally published March 19, 2014.]

The Mothers That Bore Me

Whitcher sisters Ellen, Harriet, Emma*, & Frances.

Across the country today, women are standing up and stepping forward and being seen. In my heart I am thinking of the women who paved the way for me to be here, walking this earth and living in this beautiful world, fighting to be seen as a person wearing female skin. My thoughts are with the generations that came before me. My heart lives in the daughters and son of my sister and brother, who will inherit this world after me.

The First Generation above me is my mother, still living. She sacrificed a lot to give us a childhood free of worry, no matter what circumstances we found ourselves in. She’s the reason I believe in Santa Claus still. She always encouraged me to dream big. She is a deep well of conversations and dreaming, and she inspires me constantly in the ways she manifests her own dreams into action and gives them life. She instilled in me that the worst thing that can happen is you fail and have to try again, but if you never try, you’ll never win. She’s one of my closest friends and our summer time visits sustain me.

My mother’s mother is still living and my father’s stepmother is still living. Both women have had long, often difficult lives, and have courageously battled cancer. I have seen such bravery and quiet strength in the women I have known, especially my Great-Grandma Elsie. She was a guiding force for me as a child and she continues to be one for me through my dreams. I have to believe that spirit is embodied in some way in the women I never met. This is how I honor them.

Those Who Have Gone Before Me

Second Generation

maternal father’s line

Donna MacDonald (1938-2001) age 62

paternal mother’s line

Ruth Emma Ruston (1916-1959) age 42

Third Generation

maternal mother’s line

Margaret Loretta Burke (1899-1938) age 35

maternal father’s line

Elsie Elizabeth Durant (1904-1994) age 89

paternal mother’s line

Minnie Estelle Wicker (1890-1964) age 73

paternal father’s line

Hattie Eva Smith (1882-1969) age 86

Fourth Generation

maternal mother’s line

Eliza Conners (b.1866)

Katherine S. Pils (1871-1946) age 74

maternal father’s line

Emma Louise Burnah (1869-1939) age 69

Frances Gillette (1877-1963) age 85

paternal mother’s line

Emma Angeline Whitcher (1845-1929) age 83 [*photo above]

Ruth Ireland (1861-1940) age 78

paternal father’s line

Hattie Eva Dutcher (1857-1882) age 24 in childbirth

Theresa Cordelia Tenney (1850-1930) age 79

Fifth Generation

maternal mother’s line

Ellen unknown (b.1836)

Mary Dowd (b.1834)

Mary Burzee

Katherine Maria Schmeelk (d.1901) –or- Ana Catherine Blume (1833-1901) age 68

maternal father’s line

Jane Berry (1841-1901) age 59

Rosella LaValley (1843-1921) age 77

Sarah Clickner (1830-1876) age 45

paternal mother’s line

Ordelia De Lozier (1810-1888) age 77

Cynthia Lusk (1819-1888) age 68

Phoebe Lenton (1826-1887) age 60

Anna Richardson (b.1822)

paternal father’s line

Eliza Marsh Bird (1837-1926) age 88

Sophia Sears (1829-1909) age 79

Malvina H. Targee (1829-1852) age 23

Hannah Ann Treadwell (1817-1884) age 66

Sixth Generation

maternal mother’s line

Wilhemenia Wernersbach (b.1798 GER-US)

Ann unknown

Betsey unknown

maternal father’s line

Esther LaLonde (1811 PQ-1894 US) age 83

Rosella LaRoche (1805-1871) age 65

Elizabeth Ann Hill (1825-1899) age 73

Mary Ann Boots (1825-1899) age 73

Mary Ann Hayner (b.1793)

Abigail Chaffee (d.1829)

paternal mother’s line

Lucy Raymond (1789-1874) age 84 [**photo below]

Dorcas Kittredge (1774-1828) age 53

Rebecca unknown

Chloe Morgan (1792-1850) age 58

Mary Wilson (b.1785)

Jane Brooks (b.1794)

paternal father’s line

Irene Pond Marsh (b.1803)

Cynthia Ann Feagles (1814-1890) age 75

Clarissa DeBois (1806-1873) age 67

Betsey unknown

Ellen S. unknown

Esther unknown

Fermicy ‘Fanny’ Peters (1798-1875) age 77

Lucy Gould (1777-1840) age 62

Seventh Generation

maternal father’s line

Marie Amable Langevin (1795-1840) age 44

Gertrude Dixon (1783-1855) age 71

Harriet Gower (1806-1886) age 80

Abigail Hannah (b.1780)

Elizabeth Weager (d.1844)

Engle ‘Angelica’ Coonradt (1746-1833) age 87

Deborah unknown

Mary/Polly Thomas (b.1760)

paternal mother’s line

Lucy Richmond (1755-1841) age 86

Eleanor Erkells (1767-1789) age 22

Mary ‘Molly’ Bailey (1730-1815) age 85

Elizabeth Dow (1735-1776) age 41

Mary A. ‘Polly’ unknown (1795-1895) age 100

Susannah Parker (1750-1825) age 75

Elizabeth Wright (b.1748)

paternal father’s line

Mary ‘Polly’ Coleman

Jane “Jennie” Palmer (1762-1815) age 52

Abigail Andrews (b.1776)

Abigail Darby (1765-1837) age 72

Delilah unknown

Anne Arnold (1752-1833) age 81

Hepsibah Skiff (1733-1800) age 66

Eighth Generation

maternal father’s line

Amable DuClos (1766-1795) age 29

Marie Agathe Charland (1751-1800) age 48

Nancy Machet (1767-1844) age 76

Margaret Anthony (1773-1819) age 46

Mary Glyde (1760-1812) age 52

Mary Calhoun (1732-1798) age 65

Julianna Merchant

Rhoda Cady (1739-1799) age 60

Rebekah Moulton (b.1742)

paternal mother’s line

Hannah Caswell (1729-1756) age 27

Elizabeth Blackmer (1716-1765) age 49

Fytje Sophia Zabriski (b.1707)

Sarah Fowle (1696-1739) age 43

Martha Hanniford (b.1721)

Jemima Davis (1706-1753) age 47

Jane Pearson (1724-1811) age 87

Abiah Washburn (1726-1812) age 86

Elizabeth unknown

Elizabeth Porter (b.1715)

paternal father’s line

Silence/Celenia Lyon (1755-1821) age 65

Jemima VanDeusen (1744-1831) age 87

Helena “Lina” Eleanor Van Deusen (1713-1769) age 55

Susannah Townsend (1740-1782) age 42

Lucretia Cleveland (1736-1824) age 88

Mary Bingham (1734-1821) age 87

Tabitha Luther (d.1746)

Elizabeth Brooks (1731-1815) age 84

Elizabeth Hatch (1697-1743) age 46

Elizabeth Parker (1700-1739) age 38

Ninth Generation

maternal father’s line

Marie Agathe Bourgault (b.1745)

Marie Madeleine Coulon (1732-1799) age 66

Katherine Coe (1700-1732) age 31

Margaret unknown

Mercy Smith (1720-1793) age 72

Abigail Lee (1703-1782) age 79

Jemima Chadwick (1686-1759) age 73

Rebekah Walker (1717-1802) age 84

paternal mother’s line

Elizabeth Barney (1691-1757) age 66

Mehitable Deane (1697-1745) age 48

Mary Mercy Brickett (1698-1725) age 27

Deborah Balch (1693-1717) age 24

Antje Terhune (1681-1758) age 77

Tryntie Catherine Slote (1671-1708) age 36

Susanna Blaney (1673-1711) age 38

Hannah French (1664-1755) age 91

Jemima Eastman (1677-1760) age 83

Mary Hoyt (1664-1723) age 59

Jane P. Noyes (1704-1773) age 69

Sarah Lillie (1702-1775) age 73

Hannah Johnson (1694-1780) age 86

Rebekah unknown

Sarah unknown

paternal father’s line

Lydia Perry (1729-1763) age 33

Lena Vosburgh (b.1714)

Rachel Fowler (1702-1780) age 78

Jacomyntje VanSchoonhoven (1678-1777) age 79

Jannetje Hendrickse Bondt (1677-1721) age 44

Huldah Hopkins (d.1731)

Desire Tobey (1707-1781) age 74

Dorothy/Deborah Hyde (1702-1769) age 67

Elizabeth Spaulding (1698-1770) age 72

Ruth Post (1711-1796) age 85

Abigail Wood (1700-1776) age 76

Ann Coggeshall (1699-1726) age 25

Mary Bateman (1696-1726) age 22

Priscilla Bateman (1687-1730) age 43

Amy Allen (1663-1709) age 46

Hepsibah Codman (1658-1696) age 38

Thankful Hemingway (1668-1736) age 68

Lydia Gay (1679-1748) age 68

I am that they were.

**Lucy Richmond, married DeLozier, my 4x great-grandma and one of the oldest generational photos we have.

Remembering Luna

This is a post I first published March 2, 2011, about the grief I felt over the loss of our middle cat Luna. Her death was the impetus for me to star my ancestor blog. She was my spiritual companion on the physical world and she guides me in the spirit one still.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I almost died last year and what that means to me. I’ve been thinking about it while I’ve been working on my book over the experience of it. I found my thoughts drifting to grief, and as Luna’s anniversary is near, she came into my heart. I wanted to update my thoughts on the grief of her loss. Here’s the quick of it.

I didn’t realize it had been seven years. In two years, we will have lived without her as long as we lived with her. And that hurt. It stung me. It was a dagger in my chest. It hasn’t been that long. It’s impossible. But it’s true.

Our fourth cat Mara never knew her. Bella, the baby, was still our under-the-bed monster. Bella didn’t bloom and come into herself until after Luna died. And now Bella is gone. So it must be that long.

It still hurts.

What I said in 2011:

A Year Ago

Two days from now will mark a year to the day that we took our nine year-old cat to the emergency vet. She was listless, having difficulty breathing and hadn’t been eating or drinking. In three days she had lost enough weight to appear suddenly skeletal. At the vet she perched like a rabbit on the floor between us while we waited for test results, so normal that we thought we worried for nothing. Two hours and a drive across town later, she came back from an x-ray in serious distress. I stared at the abstract art they were calling the x-ray film, her body obscured by a black mass where intestine and stomach should have been. I marveled at the sheer size of the darkness that swam towards the boundaries of her tiny body.

I wish, in retrospect, that I could have carved time out of bedrock and stilled her pain for a few moments more so we could have said a proper goodbye. She was audibly gasping and her tongue was lolling out. The earth mother in me who is wiser than my heart knew what we had to do and my partner and I were in agreement. It took a moment. I held her head and her gaze in between my hands. I told her she was the best girl ever and that we loved her so very much with as much stability as I could muster. My partner cradled her body. In less than three seconds she was gone. It was the hardest moment of my life. But it was the most decisive. It wasn’t about me. It wasn’t about us.

We gifted Luna death. The separation of the spirit from the body is one of the hardest Mysteries for humans to work through and the way our society distances us from death leaves us little tools to help with the working of it.

Luna was the first Household Loss I have ever experienced- the kind of loss that affected and threw hiccups into my day-to-day routine. I didn’t realize until after she passed how much she spent my whole day moving through the house with me, talking to me, sleeping on me, so much so that my skin holds memories of her the way my heart does. There were hundreds of new firsts I was unprepared for, like the first time we didn’t fill her food bowl, the first time Luna didn’t come running for treats, the first holiday without her, the first of every night she has not slept curled against or on me… The first time we called her name out because we forgot she was dead.

We allowed ourselves to grieve when we were sad and to cry when we felt like we would break from the loss of her. By giving into those moments and not trying to repress them because maybe it wasn’t a good moment or might make someone else uncomfortable, they passed quickly and offered us moments of reprieve. We took turns helping the other two cats through their own grieving, walking with the baby while she wandered the house checking all of the places where Luna used to sleep. My animal grief spoke the same language as their animal grief and we were bonded in the loss, stronger than before.

I’ve had dreams of holding her and feeling her weight against me and being able to recall perfectly the sound of her purr and the way she used to wrap her paw around my index finger like a baby- and not let go of it. And then I wake to morning, reaching for her, and then I remember all over again.

I have seen her running in the house when the other cats were sleeping beside me. I have felt her crawl into my lap and settle down only there is no cat there. I cannot say if it is her spirit or if it is the energy current and echo of a pattern she had established within our home, or both. Spirit visitations can be cruel when they remind you that you can never touch them again. Not the way you used to, skin against skin. And yet, the gifts she gave us in her life have not been diminished in the grieving.

We are all animals. She was our family. Luna was my first experience in the joy, love and fear of being responsible for a defenseless living being. I discovered much of myself in raising her and accepting the bits of behavior that were her way of exploring the world, and not mine to control.

Missing Luna

We go on the best we can. We move forward and keep our hearts open. I will set her ashes out and light the ancestor shrine on her death day. I will set her food bowl out on the altar with her favorite treats and toys inside it. I will write down all the stories I remember about her in the journal I have been keeping throughout the year. I will take a moment to reflect on the changes in our lives since she died, without judgment or preference, and I will acknowledge the gratitude(s) this year has brought me. I will cry if I feel like crying and I will laugh because she gave me such great joy.

She worked us from the start, this shy, scared, trembling kitten who popped out of the cardboard carrier like a demon seed. As a kitten, she was a bloody hellion who dug up the chicks and hens from Sicily every day. She chewed on all the electrical cords and liked to hold her catnip mice under in the water bowl. 
I found her curled up sleeping in my closet one day, totally cute, just before realizing she had chewed all of the buttons she could reach off of all of my shirts. One time, she somehow drained a tall skinny glass of milk dry without knocking it over, disturbing the table around it or spilling a drop. And yet, she always ran through a doorway at the same moment I was and I stepped on her tail a bajillion times. Her totem animal was a Jackalope.

She was the first of the cats to catch a mouse and she could leap off the back of the chair and catch moths in mid-air. Apparently, moth-wing dust was a special delicacy. She liked to bathe in the winter mornings in the fishbowl of warm water we kept on the grate for moisture. She slept curled in a ball behind my knees under the covers. If I said no to something she wanted she would sass at me with this staccato back-talk and I loved her for it. Her favorite two toys were this little gingham fabric mouse and a pink bouncy ball with a rainbow around the middle.

She ate through my plastic bag of valerian before I understood it was like heroin to some cats. I found her rolling in it in my office, her eyes glazed over. Luna always helped me sew by holding down the pattern pieces for me. She hated the wood floors and dreamt of a house lined with wall-to-wall sleeping bags. She always knew when I needed a break from work and would come tell me so. She sat with me through all my meditations and often appeared walking beside me in them. She was afraid of ants and plastic bags. In the winter time, she liked to sleep behind the bathroom door, where the v-shape trapped the heat in. When she was really mad at me she’d cuff me along the jaw with her cupped paw, no claws, and then run away out of reach- boy did she have a mean hook.

We have little prisms hanging in the windows and Luna used to run back and forth over the bed chasing the little rainbows. When I think of her now, even though there is still sadness at the loss of her physical presence, I see her chasing flashing prisms across the quilt and I know she loved us as much as we loved her and that she was happy, and the pain of loss is well worth the price of the time we shared together.

Back to the present:

It hurts to read that again. We have lost two fur babies, two members of our familial pack. But they live on in the memories of this house. I wonder if we will carry them with us when we eventually move. Will it be hard to leave those memories behind? Will I find the strength to let them go? Will I always feel them with me?