Alive Things You Love

When you're on the edge of this world, your heart will speak of kith and kin, and sing of the alive things you love. All the things you love. Parents, spouses, siblings, lovers, friends, children, pets... Yes, these things.

When you're on the edge of this world, you will learn you love the wild creatures that roam the forests and giants that swim the seas. The peppery scent of the marigolds and the day-long cycle of the morning glories, the creaking grok of the grackles and the warning bark of the seals, the gentle sway of the birch trees, the ferns unfurling in the front yard. You will dream of the healing caves beneath the weeping willows. You will fall in love with the sky above and the stone below, and you will count their children on your fingers, like sheep, as you burn.

At the edge of decay, my natural world became built of white walls and bleating machines, of yellow gowns and the smell of absence. I counted down to the end of the things I loved, pulling their energy into the room with me, a balm against isolation after the last frog was named...

The end never came.

At the finish of my list, gratitude and love expanded. There was more beyond the skin I had drawn and I pushed at the edge. Any heart that can feel infinite grief can also feel infinite joy. 

I fell in love with the way my finger bones curled into the muscle and tendon as I struggled to make a fist and release it again. I fell in love with the tiny atoms knitting themselves together to become cells in my body, to multiply, to spread out and become skin. 

Somewhere, in my solitude on the rehab floor, I fell in love with my new body, as it was, scars and all... and somewhere along the way, I finally fell in love with me.

When you're on the edge of this world, your heart will speak of kith and kin, of the alive things you love. When you return from the edge, you will walk with light, and the things that you love and touch will not remain unaltered.

For Donna

I.

In the highlands,

where blue and smoky mountain peaks meet

along a streambed of mimosa and wild thyme,

a great white owl shared space with me.

A slip of wind with unblinking dandelion-colored eyes,

feathers brilliant against the dense and fragrant greenery.

She appeared as clouds crept the silent streets at twilight,

far removed from the crumbling factory town,

the small home along the canal offering little to children

waiting for day trips to the field of golden-yellow blossoms,

grasshoppers, and crickets across from grandma’s house.

II.

In the split-ranch with Arizona white walls

greeted by a braided macramé owl,

perched on a stick of stripped wood.

Owls filled her home,

where I had chicken pox.

Her nurse’s hands soothed me,

the smell of baking soda in water.

Donna was birthdays, Christmas, Easter, Sunday dinners,

card games and warm summer days.

She was tilled earth, petunias, tomatoes and cucumber plants-

My second mother.

III.

I never knew she was not blood,

the only of three grandmothers who laughed with us,

passed time with us,

who stole kisses, holding squirming and giggling grandchildren

against her soft skin.

IV.

“You would not have wanted to see her this way,” mom says

“sick and fading. I told her how much you loved her.”

It is my heart she is thinking of,
but I am lost, trying to remember
if I ever really told her myself.

V.

Her skin is bleach cold in the funeral parlor. Cold 

like plastered owl bookends made by thirteen year-old hands.

I can smell the powder she wore but cannot see her beneath the lacquer mask

Donna of southwest fire and sunshine would never wear.

I want to scrape the pink rouge from her cheeks,

to scrub the Broadway gloss from her lips.

I want to scream at her defacement,

So that I may pretend she is only waiting,

playing at death, until I arrive-

But I am here. And she is not.

I cannot touch her, cannot bend to her,

because the kiss I want to give will not wake her,

will not raise her lids,

will not show me her glittering, witty eyes.

I cannot pretend I am dreaming.

VI.

In a future place,

my heart begs to bend

to plant itself in warmed earth,

to grow and open and burst into life,

where she might be waiting,

barefoot and darkened beneath the sun,

where her hands might wrap around me,

arms pulling me from the earth,

where we would be laughing together again.

VII.

I am pulled back into the bright green grass

and thin air of the North Carolina peak.

The white owl blinks-

gone in a silent gust, the ghost soars above me

disappearing into the mountain sky

as the clouds roll away.

For Donna McDonald, my beloved grandmother who died on Mother's Day 2001. I wrote this after her funeral to process through the grief and hold onto the love. Today is her birthday. Not a day goes by where I don't hear her laughter in my head. She loved owls and Elvis Presley- and I loved her. Happy Birthday, Grandma.

A Samhain Prayer (and samhain links)

Blessings to those who have gone before.

Blessings to those who have gone before.

I call to the ancestors who lived and died before I took breath,

to all the mothers and fathers who created life,

who created life,

who created me.

Walk with me tonight.

I call to the ancestors who lived and died in my lifetime,

my beloved dead, my family, my friends.

Those who made me laugh and shared in my tears,

who shared this journey with me,

who shared their journey with me.

Visit with me again.

My breath is your breath.

My bones are your bones.

We are all relations.

I drink water for you.

I take in food for you.

Together we light the beacon…

Together we stand in the doorway…

We call to the recently dead.

We offer your names to the air.

We offer your names in prayer.

            Paul Slomba… William Luke Dalone…

All of my ancestors,

all of our relations,

wait to greet you.

Safest passage to each of you.

You are loved,

you are remembered.

Be at peace.

(Sarah Lyn, 2014)

Links to Previous Posts about Samhain:

2010

Simple Sweeping Lines, my first post about altars.

My Ancestral Dead My Beloved Dead, why I differentiate between them.

Honoring the Recent Dead, thoughts at Samhain time.

Setting a Place for the Dead, my first post about the Dumb Supper.

2011

Ritual for an Unnoticed Passing, when you find out long after a death has occurred.

The Rite of Passage in Trick-or-Treating, a bit of history and nostalgia.

Songs from Samhain Night, what are your holiday traditions?

2012

Into the Labyrinth, using it as a tool to contact your deep ancestors.

Calling the Dead on All Hallows Eve, how to commune with the spirits you call in.

The Dumb Supper, a more elaborate look at the 'whys'.

2013

All the Ancestral Roads, a meditation to open yourself to spirit world.

To Honor the Recent Dead, a ritual you can use to honor those recently gone.

2014

Leave the Recent Dead to Rest, more theory on why we do not call for spirits recently crossed.

A Basic Ancestor Altar, last week's post about constructing sacred space.

A Gift from Mother Crane

Part of my ancestor work involves being present in the world now. I honor and remember my ancestors. Someday I will be a part of that ancestral energy. I know this. I think about how I want those who come after will think about how we left the world for them. And I try to spread joy and peace and kindness. I try to make that who I am in the world today.

We spend our lives trying to find ourselves, trying to find our place, trying to find a way to be of use. Or we spend our lives just trying to survive. We are each a strand on the larger web, and there are crossroads where our paths converge. It is when we open ourselves to these moments that we build layers to the web. We become the web. We see our interconnectedness. We see and we are seen.

This past weekend I attended the New York Faerie Festival in Ouaquaga, NY, a place of play where Renaissance Faire meets Fae and other world beings like goblins, dryads, mermaids, trolls, fauns, elves, unicorns, dragons, and fairies- both local and visiting- are interspersed with human travelers. All meet in a sprawling wood along a creek. It’s a place thick with magic, whatever that means to you.

One of my favorite encounters over the weekend was with Mother Crane, her arms laden with brightly-colored papers as she walked around, engaging passersby. I found her reading a poem for another guest and waited my turn. When it came, she looked at me a moment, then down to her papers. With a quick nod of her head she plucked one out.

It was perfect. It encapsulated the sweetness of what summer means to me. Taking a breath in, Mother Crane looked me in the eye and began to read the words of Wendell Berry:

The cherries turn ripe, ripe,

and the birds come: red-headed

and red-bellied woodpeckers,

blue jays, cedar waxwings,

robins—beautiful, hungry, wild

in our domestic tree. I pick

with the birds, gathering the red

cherries alight among the dark

leaves, my hands so sticky

with juice the fruit will hardly

drop from them into the pail.

The birds pick as I pick, all

of us delighted in the weighty heights

--the fruit red ripe, the green leaves,

the blue sky and white clouds,

all tending to flight—making

the most of this sweetness against

the time when there will be none.

Enjoy the summer. Enjoy the sun. Take in the brightness. Remember the light in the darkness. Become the light. Be a beacon of light during darker times. May that light birth joy. May the world be a brighter place because you were part of it. May we all walk towards peace and togetherness.

To Love What is Mortal

Bella the Bearcat  April 1, 2002 – June 11, 2013

 I’m not sure what it is about the first anniversary of a death that weighs so heavy. One year. It’s not like I stare at the calendar and count the days down. It’s more like the day comes around, and life has carried on, but there is a niggling reminder in my brain that the date is important. Only I am not sure why. Then, when I remember, it’s always different, and yet always the same…

Suddenly I remember exactly where I was, how the room smelled, how my heart felt. I remember sitting on the floor of my office with Bella, willing her to lift her head and watching her try to roll her eyes to meet mine instead, holding my partner’s hand. We both remember the moment we knew what was being asked of us. One year ago, today.

Bella wasn’t ready. We weren’t ready. But death and time didn’t much care. It was the right thing that we did, because we loved her.

Yesterday I found a bit that I wrote before we made the phone call last year: For the last two days I have seen small flashes of light flitting about my field of vision. I didn’t think anything of them until this morning. Last week, when my father had unexpected surgery, I prayed hard to our ancestors to see him through it all right. I threw a door open to Spirit. When I saw my cat this morning, my baby, I saw those flashes of light surrounding her and I knew deep down in my gut that something was wrong. As I type this, she is dying. You can see it in the absence of her gaze and the listless limpness of her lounging. She is not in pain. She is not in distress but her light in this world is dying none the less. And we are watching, sitting death side with her. We put on her favorite cello music and brushed her with her favorite soft bristle brush for as long as she wanted. We tempted her with soft food, and she ate some, but not all… which is telling.

And then I couldn’t write anymore. All of the words that wanted to come out were a shadow of what I was experiencing. Again.

For every pic in focus, I have 20 blurry ones.

I remember how she felt beneath my hand. How she was bristley, not soft. When she was a kitten, she slept across my throat at night, her tiny breath dancing against my chin and neck. I raised her, taught her, watched her grow. The thudding slap of her feet against the floor as she stomped around the house always echoed. She did not see well and was easily startled into straight-up-in-the-air armadillo mode. It hurt her feelings when we laughed, which we did, and she’d cry/whine at us in response before hiding from whatever scared her in my lap. I was her wooby. I can recall with perfect clarity the sound of her voice. I used to tease her, calling her cranking cries “dulcet tones”. She understood sarcasm. She wasn’t terribly bright or brave, but she was the sweetest friend. And I know that she will always live in my heart. I know because I hold Luna there, too, who died three years before Bella.

I still call out for her. I look up when I see her ghost out of the corner of my eye and for a moment, I forget she is not corporeal. I live for the nights she visits my dreams and I can smell and feel her again. I think of us as a four cat household, even though two are gone. So, I guess, in reality, death has not removed them from my family. Death did not remove her from my heart.

We are a four cat family. Love adds. Love multiplied my family into something greater than it was. It is that awareness Bella gifted us with in her death. More than the sorrow and the loss and the tears I shed while writing this, wishing I could hold her one more time… more than the sadness, today I feel that love.

What I remember about that day now is the strength I found to step outside of my selfish human heart and let her go. To answer the vet when they asked the question of why we were putting her to sleep. I remember the strength I found to hold her head and her gaze as she died, so the last thing she saw was the love on my face for her. The last words she heard were us telling her what a good girl she was and how much we loved her.

I remember how strong my arms were when I picked her dead body up afterwards. She was still warm and yet the feel of her was gone. We stood at the window and watched the murder of crows in the field, the ones who came to shepherd her transition. I remember how hard it was to just lay her body down and walk away from it, knowing I would never hold her again, my hand hesitating on the door before I closed it shut behind me.

Love multiplies. At night now, I tell Mara stories about the sisters she didn’t get to know. I tell her how much it meant to us that she picked us, how heart-lifting her appearance in our lives was. And I think I understand now, what it means to know that neither Zami or Mara will be with us forever. There are no guarantees.

I could feel angry at the losses of Luna and Bella at such young ages and barricade my heart against such sadness again. I could. I could do that. But I can’t.

I think I’d rather be grateful for the time our lost friends gave me. I’d rather carry that gratitude into continuing to be grateful for the time our living friends give me. I am grateful for all the little lives I have woven into my own, each one so very different from the next. I will love them all until they leave me, and then I will love them still. Surely the best way we can honor those we lose is to continue to share our love. To take that love and share it with the living who need it.

excerpt from In Blackwater Woods by Mary Oliver (28-36):

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.

How We Honor the Dead

We stood in the woods at the edge of the water, in a space we use every year. Years of gatherings lay upon each other like the bones of the dead beneath us, like the ruins of civilizations buried beneath cities the living walk every day. Even at the edge of a busy beach, stillness invaded the Ancestor Shrine, save for the sounds of birdsong and the wind in the trees. The magic was tangible.

Together, we called in the ancestors with a prayer I have been voicing for a decade, pouring water as an offering to the dead, to both the ancestral dead we did not know and the beloved dead of our blood and heart who were lost to us in our lifetime. To Those Who Have Gone Before…

We anchored our bodies to the earth. We anchored our spirits to the sky and we opened a Way within ourselves. We stood at the edges between them, so that we might stand with them, unafraid. You are the place where earth and sky meet. You are the doorway to the Ancestors…

We journeyed inward, down the path of ancestral rivers emptying into our veins. We remember our parents and grandparents, our great-grandparents, and their great-grandparents. We walk with them, travelling backwards through time with each step forward we take. We are that they were. We breathe in the echo of Those Who Took Breath Before. We honor them with our presence in the world…

We hung ribbons for our dead, speaking aloud their names and calling them into the circle with us. We opened the way. We hung ribbons for those we have lost within the last year. We shared their names with stories and tears, and heavy hearts. We added names to the list every day. May they be at peace. May the Ancestors welcome them home. May the Ancestors watch over the living left behind in their grief. May it be so…

We sang of circles within circles. We opened our hearts and voices to the air around us. We shifted the space to send our prayers for peace out into the ether. We shared work and magic in the morning mountain time, hanging colorful ribbons to mark stories of gratitude in memory of the dead. We remembered something they gave us, something we learned from them. We honored them in words and laughter and added the breath of the living to the web we built. We remembered our bodies and how our ancestors were our way into them. Every day we walk and breathe we honor those we have lost…

We read poems in the thicket along the water’s edge, remembered words for ears that no longer need them to hear. We lifted our voices in petition and prayer in that space. We remembered that we can still speak to those we miss, that the winds will carry our words to the places we cannot follow. And we left birdseed behind, in pockets of earth in gratitude for their songs filtering into the Shrine. The best way we can honor our ancestors is to love and care for the living.

What is remembered, lives. Whether we know the names of our ancestors or not, we simply have to connect into the energy thread of them that lives within our bloodstream. When we do this, we can feel them walking with us. And when we can do this, we know that we never truly walk alone. We are that they were. We live. We are that others will come after us.

May we remember the interconnected web. May we greet each other with kindness in both life and death. May it be so.

Ancestors in the Woods

As the internet posts this blog, I will be far from electricity that could handle more than one hairdryer plugged into an outlet at a time. I will be in the mountains of Massachusetts, celebrating Rites of Spring with the EarthSpirit community for my eleventh year. I don’t have to be psychic to say that I am having a good time right now.

I will be tending the Ancestor Shrine for the gathering, down in a thicket of woods along the beach. The space is open as a natural spot where the living and the dead can commune together, alongside the living creatures of the physical place. It’s a way of using the magic of the natural world as a tool to peer into Spirit. We will hang the names of our ancestors in the trees, and ask them to watch over those we have lost in this last year. And we shall feel our feet on the earth and we shall have gratitude for the breath in our lungs. We are living because They Were.

While I am off teaching in the woods, I wanted to share my favorite poem with you. If you are someone who likes poetry and likes nature, and you haven’t checked this poet out already, I highly recommend Mary Oliver’s work. It’s hard to choose a favorite, really, but this one resonated most authentically with me. It’s how I feel when I spend time in nature.

Sleeping In the Forest

by Mary Oliver

I thought the earth remembered me, she

took me back so tenderly, arranging

her dark skirts, her pockets

full of lichens and seeds. I slept

as never before, a stone

on the riverbed, nothing

between me and the white fire of the stars

but my thoughts, and they floated

light as moths among the branches

of the perfect trees. All night

I heard the small kingdoms breathing

around me, the insects, and the birds

who do their work in the darkness. All night

I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling

with a luminous doom. By morning

I had vanished at least a dozen times

into something better.

(Tune in next week for my 200^th blog post!)

A Prayer for the Passing of a Difficult Relationship

Sometimes when people pass, we find ourselves at a loss for what to say, suffering from conflicting emotions. What happens when we are not saddened by the loss of the person, but saddened by the loss of the chance to change the unsatisfying relationship? Can we find it within ourselves to honor the end of their life despite our ambivalent hearts? For me, the answer has become yes.

I Hope You Knew Peace (Sarah Lyn, 2014)

Wherever you were, whatever you were doing

in that last moment, I hope you knew peace.

Things left unsaid will find their way into the world

as whispers on the winds.

Things left undone were not meant to be done.

Or perhaps they were. Let other hands take up their toil,

let them fade into ether.

The end of this journey is the end of this story.

Now it’s time to start a new one.

May your heart be lighter it’s next turn.

There is no need to hold onto the bones of the earth.

There is no need to hold onto the bones of your flesh.

Those you left behind will follow you.

Those who passed before will be waiting.

Let the living unravel the tangle of your loss.

At the end, it weighs no heavier.

May what is leftover fall to the earth

as you become one with the starry sky.

You are free from pain now.

Be free. I collect letters from language,

rolling them in my hands, forming words…

My hands pray your name. I honor who you were to me.

I speak your name into the waters. I honor that you were.

I speak your name to the earth. I witness what remains for those left behind.

I speak your name to the air. I take in the last breath you released.

I hold the gate as you walk towards ancestral fire.

May you be at peace.

May those who remain find peace.

May it be so.

It is for my own heart that I release residual anger. It is for my own self that I understand that we make choices from places of joy or fear and some people cannot help but choose fear and it is not meant to be personal. It is for my peace of mind that I wish things could have been different but accept them for what they were, for what they are.

I believe everyone deserves a moment of kindness at the end of all things. So I wish them peace, all of those who died alone, all of those who passed with things left unfinished. I wish them peace and a continuing journey. May their spirits cross over, and leave this earthly plane. Ase.

This week I honor the passing of Paul L. Slomba (Oct 4, 1939 – April 2, 2014), the last of my grandfathers, after battling a difficult cancer. 

Reading Poetry to the Dead

In the pagan world, Beltane, also known as May Day, is the balance point to October’s Samhain evening, when the veil between the worlds is thin and spirits may come and go. The veil between the worlds, between the living plane and the ones coexisting around and overtop of us, is also thin at Beltane. It’s not so much a time for ancestral spirits to wander the earth, but for me it’s the time when the land spirits reawaken and, those that wander through winter, return.

Spirit is very strong at this time of year and we can see it in the blossoming flowers and unfurling leaves. The snakes waken and return to the surface to warm in the lengthening sun. Humans emerge from their homes and tend their gardens. Children play outdoors. Life emerges. In the spirit of springtime, I am moved to share that life with my ancestors, to share that energy with those no longer among us.

It was just after the first of spring when we buried my Grandfather years ago, and the life in bloom around me, the soft birdsong in the cemetery, was enough to ease my grief. I return that gratitude by reading aloud to the ancestors and the other spirits that share this earth. I read to the trees and the flowers and the birds in the air. Words are a language the dead can no longer use and as I release my voice into the air, I make an offering of my favorite poems and stories to Those Who Have Gone Before.

When you share poetry with your Ancestors, it should be something that moves you emotionally. It should be something you feel an innate connection with, so that the emotion might cross planes of existence to reach them. I offer one more today, this May Day, to my Ancestors, to the earthen spirits, and to you.

Messenger

by Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world.

Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—

equal seekers of sweetness.

Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.

Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?

Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me

keep my mind on what matters,

which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be

astonished.

The phoebe, the delphinium.

The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.

Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart

and these body-clothes,

a mouth with which to give shouts of joy

to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,

telling them all, over and over, how it is

that we live forever.

Experiencing Death VI: Alone with the Dead

This is the sixth installment in a monthly thread, where I am looking back at the early experiences I had with death and reflecting on how those moments shaped my views and fears of it. In order to change my relationship with the concept of death, I have to understand what shaped it to begin with. Our ideas and philosophies are meant to evolve and change, to grow as our own experiences do.

My Grandma Donna died on Mother’s Day of 2001. I was getting ready to leave for my hometown to see her when my dad called, even though he knew we were on our way. He wanted to make sure we were leaving soon. He didn’t think there was much time left. My Grandma took a sharp turn suddenly, after her battle with cancer. I had fooled myself into believing she would be all right. I was in denial. We all were. We were all sure that my Grandma, made of laughter and strength and no-bullshit, would survive. But death is seldom fair.

            In the car, I could feel a thread in the air, pulling at my chest, connected to that hospital room miles away. I was breathing into that thread, willing the hope to remain tangible. The moment I couldn’t feel it anymore was like a tethered kite string snapping. In the car I started to cry.

When I got home my dad was standing in the driveway, waiting for me, and I knew I was too late. My Grandma’s death was my first experience with telling family a loved one we both cared about was dead. It was my first experience going to the funeral home, of watching the people whose mundane day involves the practical ins and outs of death while we filled out the obituary. It was my first time picking out a casket and learning about the vault we also had to buy to seal the casket in; we chose oak for Donna.

All the while, I felt cold inside. One moment my Grandma was alive and the next she was gone. It didn’t make sense in my brain and my grief was muddier. Part of me understood that people die. She’d been sick for a long time. Cancer kills. And now she was gone and our lives carry on. Everyone dies some time. But… I wasn’t ready. I didn’t get to say goodbye. I could still remember the last time I hugged her. If I closed my eyes I could hear her laughter, her infectious, deep, giggling laughter. How can a thing so emotionally tangible be gone?

I was filled with a need to see her body. To touch the dead flesh and know, truly know in my heart, that she was gone. It seemed strange and irrational. I mean, she was gone. That was a fact. But it wasn’t real yet, and I could think of no other salve for my grief. So I went to the funeral home between viewings, when the room was closed. I told them I was family and that I didn’t get to say goodbye. They left me alone in the chilled room with her body, saying if there was anything they could do…

It took me minutes to approach the thing that looked like her but did not feel like her. A part of me was sure it was simply a poor wax figure of Donna. That wasn’t her. It couldn’t be. It felt like one of my senses had been cut off and I couldn’t translate what I was seeing into a proper context. Whatever spirit it was that infused her limbs while alive, in death it was absent, at rest elsewhere. Still, before me was the body I knew, the arms that had held me all my life. The body is the temple and deserves the respect we show our churches, whatever that means to us.

When I touched her, for the first time I understood the dimensions of the difference between the words skin and flesh. I touched her flesh. Skin is a thing alive and yet when I touched her it was nothing but timber and molecules that built a structure. There was nothing of her there for me. She was wearing a suit the likes of which I had never seen her in and makeup that would never have crossed her face. The body before me was a respectful attempt at the Grandma I knew, transcribed by a stranger. I let the intention of sincere respect present in the display hold weight in my heart.

I still ache for the goodness of the person she was, for the times I would see her eyes narrow and knew she could see something about the room with the wisdom her years gave her that I couldn’t see yet. I ache for the time lost to us we could have had with her. I don’t think that’s unusual and it won’t be the last time I hold that feeling. She was a cornerstone of my childhood and a firm foundation in my life. The loss of her won’t be forgotten, but I have learned that the ache will lessen over time, as it already has, until there is nothing left but the smiles prompted by remembering time we shared together.

For Donna, 2001

I

In the highlands where blue and smoky mountain peaks meet,

a great white owl shared space with me

along a streambed of wild thyme and mimosa.

A rush of wind with unblinking dandelion-colored eyes,

she appeared as clouds crept the silent streets at twilight.

I held my breath against the fragrant green surrounding me,

far removed from the crumbling factory town of my childhood,

a small house along the Erie Canal offering little to children,

waiting for day trips to the field of golden-yellow blossoms

across from my grandma’s house.

II

Can spirits visit

before

they die?

III

In the split-ranch with Arizona white walls

a braided macramé owl,

orange bead beak,

met us at the door,

perched on a stick of stripped wood,

guarding the home

where chicken pox found me

in her bathtub, heavy

with the scent of baking soda,

her hands spooning cool water over my skin.

It didn’t matter she was not blood,

the only of three grandmothers to laugh with us,

pass time with us.

She stole kisses, holding

squirming and giggling grandchildren

against soft summer skin.

IV

“you would not have wanted to see her

this way,” mom says, “sick and fading,” she says

to ease a wounded heart,

“i told her how much you loved her.”

but when

did i last

say those words?

we always think

there will be more

time.

V

Her skin.

Bleached in the parlor-

driftwood too long in the light,

remnant of a living thing-

Cold like plaster-

plastered owl bookends

crafted by thirteen year-old hands

stood guardian on the mantle,

white spirits.

White skin.

The powder she wore lingers

above the colorful lacquer mask

my grandmother

of southwest fire and sunshine

would never wear.

I want to scrape rouge from her cheeks,

scrub gloss from her lips,

I want to scream

at her defacement

so I can pretend she

is only waiting,

suppressing an impish giggle.

That she is only playing at death,

until I arrive.

VII

I am pulled back to the grass,

the thin air of that north Carolina peak where

the white owl stares, cold.

She blinks, gone in a great gust,

white ghost soaring above my face,

dissipating into ether while

 mountain clouds turn grey

and my heart softens in the magic.

Relevant Posts:

Experiencing Death: The Unborn Baby (published May 16, 2012)

Experiencing Death II: My Father’s Father (published June 13, 2012)

Experiencing Death III: Squirrel in the Road (published July 11, 2012)

Experiencing Death IV: The Body at Daggett Lake (published August 15, 2012)

Experiencing Death V: Suicide (published September 9, 2012)

Daughter of Margaret, Revisited

I am Sarah.

daughter of Margaret,

daughter of Patricia,

daughter of Margaret,

daughter of Eliza,

daughter of Mary, of Ireland.

That is what I know of the line of my mothers’ mothers. Five generations, three names who have passed. The line of my fathers’ fathers stretches for twenty-five generations, and further yet unverified, like so much of our history. But in a world where an unbroken line of fathers is given power, what of the mysterious unknown line of mothers? It was important for me to pay homage to the silent women of history, to the broken lines of voices that seemed unimportant to the passing of time. Blood matters. It was important for me to find the unbroken branches of mothers birthing daughters.

If you think about water as life, there is all of this energy pouring down into me, from mother pushing daughter out of her uterus to mother pushing daughter out… What will I do with that energy? That gift? This life? How will I use it? How will I honor the mothers who came before me?

It’s the crux of this journey I’m on. At the moment, it’s with my voice, it’s with this blog. The strength of those who came before me trickles down through me and as I share my discoveries of and journey into the spirit world, it filters out into the larger world. I do it for all of my nieces and my nephew, for my great-nephew, for the children whose lives I have become part of. I do this so those who come after me might find their way more easily.

I am Sarah,

the first daughter born of Margaret,

the only daughter born of Patricia,

the third daughter born of Margaret,

the third daughter born of Eliza,

the fourth daughter born of Mary Dowd,

Mary, born of an unknown mother in Ireland.

My mother taught me independence, taught me to listen to my voice as best she could in a society that once tried to silence women. My mother made it possible for me to be open to this path I am on. My mother is the gateway to all my mothers. But we can follow the path of mothers, all of us, back to the earth, back to the primal mother, back to where all of our energy originates.

I tend to her in the summer, coaxing food from her soil to nourish myself with. I grow flowers to feed the squirrels, birds and bees we share the land with. I clean the garbage from her flesh as I stumble across it. As much as possible I reuse what I have used and I allow her areas of wild to stay wild and untainted.

I make altars with her bones to mark the earth, in parks and woods. I do it in the name of my mothers, in the names of those unknown, in honor of those I have loved. I know even as I do it, that someone else will happen upon them. That someone will find them and see them with new eyes, and what I created will be reborn with new meaning and new purpose as part of someone else’s journey.

Sleeping In the Forest

by Mary Oliver

I thought the earth remembered me, she

took me back so tenderly, arranging

her dark skirts, her pockets

full of lichens and seeds. I slept

as never before, a stone

on the riverbed, nothing

between me and the white fire of the stars

but my thoughts, and they floated

light as moths among the branches

of the perfect trees. All night

I heard the small kingdoms breathing

around me, the insects, and the birds

who do their work in the darkness. All night

I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling

with a luminous doom. By morning

I had vanished at least a dozen times

into something better.