At 7:25 A.M. the first light touches the leaves of the sycamore tree outside the window. This is the most dazzling time of year.
The Riehls’ Japanese maple tree is almost too beautiful to bear. The sugar in the leaves has turned them into brilliantly colored scraps of silk. One should be made to pay admission to see it.
This journal has been lost for a week. During that time I did little else other than think about my new book (writing to friends, sending e-mails) and my writer’s cottage. Slowly, the inside is being finished up, like the last details of a child in the womb.
Last night, Mother unburdened herself of her frustration with me. Lying on the floor in front of the fire, she spoke of how every project she has is dependent upon my finishing it. It hurt to hear her quietly list the many requests I have repeatedly ignored: finding the Jennings appliance bill, addressing the envelope to Jennifer with the tapes, and so on. “I wonder if you can imagine not being able to use your fingers, for even a few hours,” she said. “I look more competent than I really am.” But most of all she said, “My creativity dies inside me.”
The booklet of neighborhood resources that she has compiled is dependent upon me. Listening quietly, as she lay before the fire and talked, I was filled with remorse.
After she went to bed, I stayed up all night finishing the booklet so it could be taken to the printers and spiral-bound the next day.
Taking Mother to Peggy Siegel’s office yesterday for an energy session was like taking a starving person to a meal. She was restored by it. She could talk to Peggy about her healing practices and exchange knowledge on a deeper level.
I first met Peggy when she came to one of my writing workshops in Ashland. A quiet, sensitive person who had not yet realized that she had special gifts, she wound up pursuing the profession of energy healer, studying under some of the country’s most respected practitioners.
Later, Peggy told me that at the beginning of their session my mother had told her that she was really ready to cross over and did she think she was near to the time. Peggy said she didn’t know, that she seemed really strong and healthy. What she didn’t tell her was that my mother’s energy was on such a high, fine vibration that Peggy kept getting dizzy. Then, toward the end of the session, Peggy saw an even more intense light fill up my mother’s energy field. “Do you see it?” she had asked her. Mother said that yes, she did, and wondered what it meant. “You have an angel really close in, right with you,” Peggy said. But neither of them knew how significant this was.
My long phone conversation with Robert Ellsberg and then reading aloud to Mother from his manuscript [The Saints’ Guide to Happiness] last night was the gift of the day for me. We spoke of his life, his book, prayer (he used to do it effectively in the shower), and being distracted. The “mind at rest” is almost an oxymoron in this culture. Jonathan Franzen’s book of essays on reading and the necessity of solitude for it is on the point we discussed.
Yesterday I was more aware of doing one thing at a time: eating without reading, walking without listening to a portable radio, doing my bills without having the television on, talking on the telephone without doodling. The day was more focused, I was more refreshed.
A way of looking at the importance of being educated: Every human being is born into the middle of a larger story. If we don’t learn about the past, we won’t know what happened before we got here and we will have greater difficulty making sense of what is happening now. It is like starting a book in the middle. It puts us at a disadvantage.
My session with Peggy Siegel: She asked me if I pray and to whom. I said that I had lost the impulse, that I was aware of being grateful, but not of directing it. When she opened her energy work by holding out her hands over me, she said she encountered a very crowded energy field, that there were many guides or spirits around me. She suggested that I ask them more specifically for guidance and help. The intention I asked for was to open my heart more. When she held her hand above my heart, it was as if tiny filaments were being brushed by the palm of her moving hand. She said there was a lot of energy coursing through my right arm.
This morning, on my way from Chestertown to New Jersey, I called Mom to see how everything was and my brother Tony answered the phone. “Phyllie, Mom’s gone,” he said. Just like that, the loving center of my life was no more—and I am writing this in a world where she will no longer be waiting downstairs every morning, bright-eyed and smiling, looking at me from behind her ravaged, all-seeing eyes. All I could think to ask Tony, beg him, was to not let anybody touch her until I got home.
I returned a few hours later and she was still sitting up in bed, where Tony had found her. I kissed her hands and cheeks and head—and cried my love to her, as this tiny pale face with the not-quite-closed eyes and slightly open mouth gazed unseeing upon the book with her teacher’s picture on it that Tony had placed in her hands. She was wearing her down robe with Justin’s cashmere shawl around her. From all appearances she was meditating and had simply, painlessly, slipped away.
I cannot define the feelings inside me at the present. When first I heard, I felt a tidal wave of tears; then a releasing of energy, too much to harness; then tears of love and gratitude, feelings of fear and freedom—all these things—but primarily gratitude, that she had been with me for so long.
When someone dies in a small southern town, the grief-stricken don’t have to do anything but be bereaved. Mother’s friend Reber dug the hole for a maple tree to be planted in her honor at the memorial service in the yard. My minister, who had not been asked to officiate, nevertheless showed up in a truck and quietly unloaded folding chairs on the lawn. Somebody went out and got a guest book. Flowers were arranged on windowsills and tables.
“I don’t know how we’re going to feed everyone,” I said to my friend Pat.
“Don’t worry,” she said, “the food is in holding zones all over town.” Sure enough, a half hour before the service began, the women of Ashland came through the kitchen door, lugging pots of soup, casserole dishes, heaps of ham biscuits, and fruit bowls. By eleven o’clock, the lawn was full of people.
The tributes were the service. No two were even vaguely similar. But the one I remember best came from a friend, Carolyn Key, who had recently visited with my mother on our back porch.
“I asked how she was,” Carolyn described.
“Never one for small talk, she paused, taking the time first to listen, then to think. In a moment she replied, ‘I’m free.’
“What do you mean, ‘you’re free’? I asked.
“‘I’m free of any religious, philosophic, or political ideology, or anything else that ties me to this world.’
“On Sunday, when I heard of your mother’s passing, I smiled—I don’t think I’ve ever smiled before upon hearing of someone’s death—because I remembered her words and knew that she was, indeed, free.”
The service began with some Russian choral music and ended with Paul Simon’s “Loves Me like a Rock.”
The first morning after the funeral service, after Thanksgiving, after our visiting in Washington with my friend Elizabeth, Cynthia and I returned and tried to strip the living room and kitchen of the tonnage of flowers, mail, and food that had poured into the house since Mom died.
It feels as if the world, in all its bill-paying, saber-rattling, celebrity-attending selves, has drawn back. It is only the voices of my family and friends who can be heard.
As mildly shocking as it is to know that she is gone, she has left me free to make new choices that were not possible when she was here. Some of these choices are of the heart: to be more attentive to her friends and to my sister, Cynthia. Others are logistical. Do I want to move or stay in Ashland? I do not want this house to be underused or underoccupied.
But in these first days since the tide has pulled back from the shore, I want to be attentive to what I am seeing that had been hidden beneath my mother’s life when she was here, the many, many people she touched, the bits and pieces of t
he mosaic that I was too close to, to see clearly at the time.
Yesterday, Cynthia and I worked on emptying Mom’s room: her clothes and books and medicines, the large number of tapes. It was difficult work. Cynthia wept over her tiny tennis shoes. I felt sick, faintly, at the sight of her socks, underwear, and fuzzy orange sweater. Her range of interests hit me as I took her books off the shelf: everything from Khalil Gibran to The Energy of Money.
It keeps coming to me how I was unknowingly being prepared to play my part as the days grew closer to her final one. A week before I had paid all my bills, including December’s mortgage, so I would not be encumbered by these necessities. Several days before her death, I had cleaned the dining room chandelier, replacing bulbs and adding shades so that the dining room sparkled for her service. I invited Peggy Siegel to the house, which meant that a day or two before Mom died she had a healing session with Peggy. And on a deeper level I had asked Peggy to open my heart. All around me are broken hearts. If I could ask for anything, it would be to have the love of truth that Mom possessed.
Cynthia and I marvel at the fact that the last warm day of autumn was the day of her service. From that day on it has been winter weather, the leaves racing in wind-driven packs across the yard. My little cottage comforts me.
This has been a week of radiance, of such great love pouring in the door. Last night the town turned out in force for my book party. It was the second time in six days that I had stood in front of so many dear, open faces, all of them shining with affection, and spoken to them of the love I have for this town. What an amazing fourteen years.
At the party, little Erika Dunkel took the coats, Sandy Shirey said she wants to make me a Christmas wreath (to show me, she said, “that the circle is unbroken”), Bobby Parker put his arm around me to say he was sorry about Mom, Sue Watson and Deering Gaddy made a contribution to the memorial fund, and someone I don’t know hung an angel wind chime in Mom’s tree. Patty Miller said the foot that Mom used to massage every Sunday doesn’t hurt anymore. It could be, now that Mom is gone, that the healing she began on earth will intensify.
I am acutely aware of how the larger dynamic shifts when a person who played such a large role in one’s life is gone. My mother had always been the primary relationship in my sister’s life. Now, for my relationship to my sister to grow I must change, and it will be a challenge. Already I’m trying to change her in ways to suit me! And I can be so mean it takes me aback.
Pat is a rock, miraculous in itself. Cynthia, too, is surprising herself. She has been preparing for this day for a long time and compares herself to a tree, losing all its leaves but finding beneath them that she is intact, with a strong trunk and branches. This is a beautiful metaphor for the grief she feels.
The first night of being home by myself was softened by Dorothy’s nieces, Sandra and Sarah, who always came for a foot rub by Mom on Wednesday night. They arrived with dinner, which we gobbled with glee. Later, after they had left, Pat arrived, and we sat by the fire talking about how we felt about Mom not being here. “I miss her,” said Pat, “but there’s not that longing I’ve felt when other people have died.”
There is snow in Ashland, lovely snow, and I am surrounded by loving neighbors on every side. What I feel about this community and my life here is that the level of realness and beauty is very high.
Last night was the first time I began to feel the loneliness of Mom’s absence. There is no one to cook for, have a drink by the fire with, or to tell funny stories about Norma, who sent the following condolence card to me today:
I know you will miss your mom. This time of year is even worst. My mom is still here but her mind isn’t. It’s not the same. Since my sister died a year ago, I just don’t enjoy things anymore. You are a dear friend and I wanted to wish you a wonderful Christmas and lots of luck on your writing.
There is a sweetness about Norma that is deeper than her gloom—but barely.
Conversation with my friends is deeper since Mother died. Carol came with lunch yesterday and a book of spiritual readings, one of which she read as a blessing before we ate. Last night, by the fire, Reber, Pat, and I talked about how Mom was a person who shone light into other people’s lives. Reber told a story from a Robert Fulghum book about a man who used to ask people what they thought the purpose of life was. He was always laughed at until one time he was in Greece and he asked the question of an Orthodox priest after his sermon. The priest said, “I’m glad you asked. For me the answer is found in an experience I had as a young shepherd. One of my sheep had gotten lost, and I searched all over until I came to a cave. I couldn’t see into it but I had a bit of metal and I angled it to reflect the sun and the rays lit up the interior, where I saw the lamb in the back of the cave. Since then I have thought that this is what I want to do—shine light into other people’s lives.”
We agreed that this is what Mom did.
The phrase “alone in the world” gathers force as you age. Last night, I lay in bed upstairs, aware that the bottom floor was empty and it felt like a cold slab on my back. I am not being warmly supported from below. Searching my mind for other sources of support, I think of my closest friends who are like flower bulbs, growing at different rates and in different parts of my life. We do not do well apart from community, but we need to take our real nourishment from within.
Talking with my brother Tony last night, I compared the feeling I have to that of graduating from one school and entering another. There is a feeling of newness and anxiety and excitement. As for missing Mom, I cannot miss what I feel I have, and I continue to be glad that she didn’t have to wait any longer to get out of “school” when she had completed her work.
Last night, I was filled with a kind of loving pity for my mother. She was so small and unprotected and innocent, and for all her strengths she was still such a young and tender soul when she died. I was swept away by the thought of her largely unattended life. Yet her death has made me acutely attentive. The whole town seems to have been startled into a wakefulness that is new. Reber said last night that an enlightened person raises the level of consciousness of the entire community. I think this has happened.
In Washington, walking down Connecticut Avenue, I watched a flock of birds rise up into the sky like a dark quilt that moved swiftly through the air as if it were being shaken. Then they drifted up against the side of a building and perched like metal icebreakers on the roofline. What kind of intelligence connects them?
It occurs to me, as I think of Peggy Siegel, that the most deeply lived lives are also the most interesting—and dramatic. Yesterday, Peggy offered me three healing sessions in honor of my mother and then, when I was lying on the table, said almost casually that she could be in touch with her while we were together. She felt Mom in the room when I entered and said she was in and out—a stronger or weaker presence—throughout the session. At one moment, while listening for her, Peggy giggled. “What’s so funny?” I asked. “I don’t know if this can be her,” she said. She listened some more and giggled again. “She says she really digs bilocation.” I was oddly unmoved—unaffected—by this and, while not disbelieving, I was not believing either.
Peggy advised me to “notice” my body more, that it was the route to my spirit, or words to that effect. I said I felt well. “You are!” she said. But I continue to be unable to feel the sensation, or see the colors or images that some people feel in their sessions with her. Only warmth at the point of contact, or a feeling, faint but pleasant, of being replenished, or filled. “She left you full” is how Peggy spoke of Mom when I told her that I always felt that way about Mom when she wasn’t around.
A lightheadedness yesterday. I called my friend Debbie, and the warmth and reassurance I associated with Mother came pouring through the phone. Later I called Justin. He said he would be coming down to be with me for Christmas. I wept when I spoke to him.
From Mother’s journal/book:
What keeps you from being fully alive is what you are most af
raid to go through.
—Lawrence McCafferty
Without discrimination and renunciation, the energy of your prayer or ecstasy will be momentary, like a sizzling drop of water on a redhot iron pan, all sound and no substance.
—Ramakrishna
Under every moment of anger is an enormity of sadness, and under that a sea of compassion.
—Stephen Levine
You have a duty to perform.
Do anything else, do any number
Of things, occupy your time fully.
And yet if you do not do this task,
All your time will have been wasted.
—Rumi
A wonderful visit from my friend Katie Roeper last night. She talked about how, when her own mother was dying, she had asked Katie if she wanted her to come to her after she was gone. And Katie, then in her teens, had reacted negatively, at which her mom had backed off and said, “Okay, I’d never do anything that would scare you.” But Katie feels it’s just a question of being open to it, letting oneself be present to the possibility.
A call from Julie Beck, who felt Mom’s presence so strongly in Giovanni’s Light. She wanted to call me after her death. Then she read the book and had to call.
It came to me yesterday that our life does not fully flower until it is over. Its final meaning can’t be known until after we are gone. Written down, this makes it sound as if the worth of a life is weighed by the number of people who remember us. But I mean something more, which is connected to the new life my mother is leading now. Her power has intensified, rather the way a saint’s efficacy is spread.
A dream last night about Mother. She was sitting across a table, telling me about her death. “My death wasn’t ugly or traumatic, so Hollywood doesn’t want it,” she said. In my dream I picked up a pencil and wrote this down.
AT SAINT STEPHEN’S CHURCH IN RICHMOND WITH THE BLANCHARDS FOR CHRISTMAS LESSONS AND CAROLS
The Journal Keeper Page 13