February 2013
The impossible has happened, my Mom is dead, dead……how can that be? She was just there; telling me I made the best soup, handing me pictures for the kids, smiling, laughing, watching the weather from her 14th floor “treehouse.”
How can she not be there in her window? How can her phone be “dead?” How can all physical manifestations of this powerful woman have been dismantled, discontinued, and buried? How can this be true in this world or any other? She and I talked about other worlds, other planes, infinite unknowable possibilities so much. It was as common a subject as, “It’s going to snow…again!” and “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to eat- just a little bit of this?”
“Have the Angels been here today?”
Where are the others, we would wonder? Where are her Mom and Dad smiling out from their frames on the bookshelf? Where is her brother? Where is the first love of her life, my Father, who shattered her heart so many years ago? He died one year ago. Where is the fun of her life, the man she married and traveled with, and suffered with, he died 2 years ago.
How intimately did she know that space? That existence, that huge expanse of “whatever it is”- all that is not here? I think there were parts of her that knew it well. Her Angels, she would say, “Have been here again.” They came in the night, into her dream space. In past months, visits began to bleed into the dim early morning and early dusks of winter in upstate New York when the daylight is short. They came she said, showing her the beautiful colors, allowing a sense of safety and love so complete, so compelling, that she said that sometimes she could step out of her top-floor windows and join them on the clouds.
The manifestations of this ecstasy were ours to discover. On scraps of paper left by her bed, on magazine covers, or fallen over the arm of the small couch she would write,
“I am so peaceful! I am so happy! I love you all so much! I am ready, please can I go now?”
We started finding these notes months ago; on the edges of the Sunday comics left under her pillow, and on the backs of notes written to remember great-grandchildren’s birthdays. In these visitations of the future, the sense of joy was so available to her mind and body. It became available to my mind and body in her company. She would tear up, and her voice would shake, as she remembered the experience. After she was gone, finding one of these notes was to experience emotional whiplash. Happy for her joy, delivered with a sudden jolting recognition that each missive scribbled. had been thought to be her last.
The days that followed the joy were sad days, sometimes tinged with carefully concealed fearfulness about dying. How much of the control in her life, how much autonomy, how much of her fiercely guarded independence would she have to give up before she died? Dead was fine, Dying was an unknown. Dying hearts give warning, but they don’t give up easily.
I’m not sure when I began to realize that there was the presence of another. Was it an aspect of her soul, her spirit? Or was it an intercessor she had called upon? I first felt the presence when I saw her hide the details of the most recent heart pains in the small statement, “It was a bad night.”
The other presence gently, almost imperceptibly dropped the very thinnest of veils dividing Mom and I, this world and the next. I was allowed in, if only for a moment. I sensed her reaching for the hand that was offered and she held on tight. She seemed to linger in the space between for a moment, her skin so translucent it seemed I could see through her. There was no time, no fear. She left and came back suddenly, as if afraid I might follow. She was protecting her exit doorway as fiercely as she protected her child from entering there, unbidden.
She returned that day with glowing clarity. The next day she had enough stamina to call friends, sit forever in a warm shower, and get her haircut from the shop downstairs. She glowed from her wheelchair throne, greeting her apartment neighbors with smiles and eyes so brilliant, they stood still and silent as she passed.
She looked for the shy nearly mute gentleman who always sat alone in a chair by the mailboxes, at the edge of the lobby. He looked up at her face, and then down at his hands. What he saw there, I hadn’t guessed yet. She motioned me to push her closer. My Mother reached and held his hand, comforting him with her smile, and the glow of infinite love. He stifled a dry sob and didn’t look at her again. He was heartbroken and she was his angel. The ways of these elders are mysterious.
In the short hours of the next day, she made the journey many times. Always coming back, checking in on us gathered around. Always smiling, crying with emotions I can’t begin to fathom. This, the happiest day of her life, was followed by the saddest day of mine.
I wrote this raw missive, eleven years ago. It is one of my most Conscious moments in this life. It was written by me, for me. I was freed of self-conscious, self-containment habits by the expectation that this passage of my life would lie quietly and unshared in a contemplative corner of my computer. On this predawn morning, I was compelled to rise up to read pages stashed in interior folders marked “personal writing.” It is a mystery to me why it will be shared today. If it touches you, that will be the reason.
“Have the Angels been here today?”
Yes, I believe they have. Much love, we will see you all after a while. November 21, 2024
I haven’t written very much this year. Today I am challenging myself on this point. Writing is contemplative, painting is contemplative. I have so few creative products to remember this year. Have I lived an “unexamined year??”
ents were married, there was an assault on our country in New York City and Washington. Assault means: a sudden attack. This assault that most people call “9/11” now, was the most terrible thing that I had ever experienced. It felt very threatening because our family was involved, and it was “close to home.
If you ever wondered why we stand in the long lines at the airport called “Security,” it is because of what was learned from this event. Putting all our things in a scanner, taking off shoes, emptying our pockets is what you have always done to fly on a plane. When I was a kid, we had no seat belts in cars and babies rode on someone’s lap! Sounds crazy! We learned the hard way to keep children safe in cars. Airlines and governments all over the world learned how to keep passengers safe in planes after the 9/11 attack.
I have a theory about travel to an unfamiliar place. Dropping unprepared into another culture is therapeutic.
The Devas hold the schedule, I hold the hose.
Indo-European, 
te picking endlessly at the arm of a single recliner in that darkened room? When I look at the blank face of that picture window, I wonder what looks back at me.
or whack us up the back of the knees while screeching “WAKE UP!” directly into our hearts. She had appeared at our doorstep, having trekked down a half block on slippered feet to deliver a bulk rate package gone amiss.
a long time, my back hurts too much.”
Minerva On The Road 