21
SCATTERING
They surrounded me like a peasant militia trying to defend a village from an imperialist army. But no matter how valiantly my loved ones fought to protect me against the violence of my loss, they could not shield me from the inevitable. What I needed, in fact, was a moment alone so that I could begin to take it in and integrate with what had happened.
A few days after Jenny’s death, I convinced everyone that I would be fine on my own for a little while, and I finally had an hour to myself. I lay down on the floor and took up the work of grieving. I watched as a wall of pain rose above me, and I understood that I was powerless to get out of its path. So I surrendered and allowed it to wash over me like a tidal wave. I was willing to be obliterated. I had nothing to lose.
Even as I rocked on my knees, howling, I detected soft breathing behind the roaring. I leaned in, listened. It was the murmuring of ten million mothers, backward and forward in time and right now, who had also lost children. They were lifting me, holding me. They had woven a net of their broken hearts, and they were keeping me safe there. I realized that one day I would take my rightful place as a link in this web, and I would hold my sister-mothers when their children died. For now my only task was to grieve and be cradled in their love.
Jenny’s ashes came back to me in a box of handmade paper, dyed blue-green, studded with flower seeds. An eco-friendly urn! Designed to be buried, where it would melt back into the earth and give rise to new life. Whatever. I wasn’t letting that container out of my sight. I didn’t want anyone else to touch it, either, except family members and maybe a close friend if I was in the mood. Jenny’s remains were all that remained. That and her toothbrush, which sat in its ceramic cup in the downstairs bathroom like the white flag of surrender.
My pain was my connection to my child, and no one was going to get away with spouting platitudes in my presence: “Time heals all wounds.” Or, “Now she is an angel.” Or, “She is no longer suffering.” And this one: “You must get on with your life.” If soothing the fire of grief meant I would no longer be able to feel my baby girl, then let me burn. Plus, I wasn’t interested in parenting an angel. Also, Jenny had not been suffering; she was having a human experience. And what was this life I was supposed to be getting on with? I had died with my daughter. My old life was over, and I had no interest in cultivating a new one.
Nothing pleased me; no one could say the right thing. I tried to be polite. I could feel the awkwardness of acquaintances as they tried to express their condolences, and I did my best to rescue them, thanking them for their sympathy. But my tolerance for anything less than searing authenticity was about zero. On the other hand, when people didn’t say anything at all, I was outraged. There were old friends and colleagues who never sent a note or picked up the phone, and I couldn’t believe it. Cowards, I concluded. They did not have the guts to step into the shattered landscape of a mother’s heart.
And then there were all the other moments—moments when my judgments and cravings fell away—and I simply sat with my loss and allowed myself to become acquainted with my desolation. “It’s just unbearable anguish” became my mantra, which I uttered silently and with an ironic smile whenever the pain came at me like a freight train. Then I lay down in its tracks and investigated what it felt like to be run over.
As I learned to abide in the wreckage, a realization began to grow in me: You are shattered, yes, said my inner voice. Do not be in a rush to put the pieces back together. Go ahead and be nobody for as long as you can.
And so I did.
The day of the memorial service was uncommonly balmy. Early November in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains is supposed to be cold and gray. It should have been snowing by now, but the sky was so blue it was almost violet, and flocks of birds shot across the sky and landed among the dried gardens of the Hanuman temple, where the service was to take place. I wore Jenny’s blue velvet dress, which was two sizes too big for me. How had my gangly little girl blossomed into a voluptuous young woman? A young woman now made of ash in a box on an altar in this strange sunshine.
In honor of Jenny’s love of the color blue, almost everyone turned up in various shades of blue clothing. Natalie, who had never had a pedicure in her life, accompanied me to the nail salon the day before, and we both emerged with blue toes. Ashram cooks sprinkled blue food coloring into the rice, the cake, the chai. Blue balloons were tied to every tree, and the tables outside were draped in blue silk.
Vishu sang chaleesas, and Nancy played her Native flute. Elaine was the emcee, and Amy was the first to speak, sharing recollections of her niece as the imp she could be, confessing to serving Jenny bowls of Lucky Charms cereal whenever she slept over, since Auntie Amy knew she would never get such forbidden fruits at my house. I miraculously made it through reading the eulogy I had miraculously managed to compose the day before.
“And now,” Elaine said, “if there is anyone who feels moved to share a prayer or memories of Jenny, we invite you to come up.”
That’s when I discovered that an open mic situation at a funeral is not a great idea—unless you are willing to sit for a very long time. Adult after adult came forward and told long stories about my child’s childhood and sang every verse of “Amazing Grace.” I looked around for Kali and Jessie, but not one of Jenny’s closest friends was sitting with us. None of them stepped up to the mic and spoke about the impact this person had on their life, or revealed how her death had ruptured the most tender membrane of their heart, or allowed us to bear witness to their wondering how the hell they were supposed to finish growing up without her. Instead, the teenagers milled around the ashram grounds like phantoms, casting sideways glances toward the ceremony—almost accusatory, as if we were doing it all wrong—and refused to participate.
The late autumn sun seared my face as I took in the testimonies of the people Jenny touched. Teachers from preschool through high school spoke about whichever unique developmental phase unfolded under their watch. Satsang members confessed that, although they were certain she was with Maharaj-ji now, they would prefer to have her with us. Then someone recited a Rumi poem. And then someone else offered cornmeal and tobacco to the seven directions. Others tried to speak, but could only weep and sat back down. This tragedy had shredded the fabric of our community, and everything spilled from the open seams.
Finally, we sang a Hanuman Chaleesa, did aarti, offering the light to the pictures of Jenny and Maharaj-ji that flanked her ashes, and it was over. Then came the long line of well-wishers. I sat in my little folding chair and received each one—the hugs, the clasped hand, the offers of massage and tapping therapy and retreats on remote islands in the South Pacific. There were old friends I hardly recognized through the smoke from my grief fire. I smiled and thanked them and hoped no one would feel dissed by my daze.
The day after the memorial service—eleven days after Jenny was found dead by a road crew at the bottom of an embankment off Highway 518—Jeff and I flew to Hawaii. The hotel in Kauai where Jeff had been working when Jenny died had saved his job for him to finish up once he had attended to his family crisis. And there were three more installations waiting behind that one. As a sympathy offering, his company paid for me to accompany him back to Hawaii. It made sense for me to go. I couldn’t pay homage to the sacred mystery unfolding amid the familiar furniture of my forever-transfigured old life.
I carried some of Jenny’s ashes in a ziplock bag inside a Guatemalan purse, which I wore around my neck. When the guard at the Albuquerque airport tried to take it from me in the security line, my voice instantly escalated in pitch and caliber. “This is what’s left of my daughter,” I declared. “She’s staying with me.”
He did not relent.
I had anticipated this possibility, and I was prepared. “I have her death certificate right here.” I reached into the woven bag and pulled out the document.
The guard ignored me and signaled for reinforcements, who unceremoniously lifted the purse from
my body and placed it on the conveyer belt. I burst into tears, rushed through the screening, and grabbed my bag of ashes before it had the chance to be touched by another officious person who did not give a shit about me or Jenny or the sacred bits of ash and bone that were all that remained of the most alive person I had ever known.
Unlike during my first trip to Hawaii a little more than two weeks earlier, this time the beauty of the islands was like a brittle film over my eyes. It kept dissolving beneath my gaze. I would stare at the contours of the surf, and I could not focus. We would hike up into the volcanic mountains, and even as I sat amid a hedge of pink and yellow wildflowers and looked down on miles of verdant hills unrolling to the coast, I could not see what I was seeing. This is beautiful, I would inform myself. But beautiful was just a word.
We drove for hours up a winding dirt road to a remote Shiva temple, where we asked the pujari there to make an offering for our deceased daughter. And then we returned to the hotel and got to work. I strapped on my lock-installer’s-assistant tool belt, stuck my cordless drill in the loop, arranged the bits in the drill-bit pockets, and did my job, unscrewing and removing lock after lock down the long corridor of a tropical resort. At first I tried to offer a prayer for Jenny’s journey with each fresh door. But then I surrendered to the numbing monotony of the job and gave thanks for the sanctuary it offered.
At the end of the day, my feet were so tired I could hardly walk, my forearm vibrated from pressing against all those door jambs with my heavy drill, and I was hungry for the first time since Jenny died. For food. For Mai Tais. For sex. And for a perilous adventure.
We took a week off to visit Ben and Martha, Jeff’s brother and sister-in-law, who were caretakers for a small timeshare complex on the beach in Maui. They invited us to stay in one of the second-story units that overlooked the fountain and gardens Ben had crafted and cultivated during his decade as the groundskeeper. Martha filled our apartment with baskets of pineapple and mango, roasted macadamia nuts and sprays of plumeria blossoms. Ben offered to take us to a secret spot along the road to Hana, where we could leap into a series of volcanic pools that spilled from one to the other down a succession of thirty- and forty-foot bluffs.
I did not give it a second thought. I would be leaping.
This was unlike me, but I was no longer the person who trembled at heights and panicked in deep water. And besides, the last shred of self-preservation had been torn from me when Jenny died. Daniela was a mother herself and no longer needed me. I had no need to keep myself safe. The worst that would happen is that I would split my head open on the rocks as I plummeted downward. Oh well.
We stood on the first ledge, and I stared down into the black pool far below. “How do we get back up?” I casually inquired.
“There’s a trail at the bottom,” Ben said. “But once you jump into the first pool, you’re committed. The only way out is to swim across and jump off the next one until you reach the last one. I’ll meet you guys at the end.”
I gazed out across the acres of rainforest, gauging how far I would have to swim until my feet found solid purchase on the other shore of the first pool. Far.
“You don’t have to do this,” Ben said.
“She can do it,” Jeff said. “Right, Mirabai?”
I jumped.
Without any special prayers or preparations, I bent my knees and propelled myself as far away from the edge of the cliff as I could. I flew through the air, the cliff sides streaming past my shoulders, and I bellowed.
“This is for you, Jen!”
I hit the water, shot deep below the surface, and then swam upward. Just as I broke through, Jeff dove in beside me, and there we were in the belly of the jungle, held in her womb, sputtering and laughing. The dark canyon walls surged around us, passionflower vines spilling down their long face. I swam to the other side and jumped again. And again. Four times.
Jenny would have been proud of me. Jenny would have been amazed.
Between electronic lock installations on Maui and Kauai, we offered Jenny’s ashes in the temple of nature. At La Perouse we navigated a field of sharp volcanic rock, and I tossed the first handful of my cremated child into the surf and waited. This was a dolphin habitat, and Jenny loved dolphins. I was certain they would come to greet us and carry my little girl out to the sea. Fifteen minutes went by. Half an hour.
Nothing.
Feeling personally abandoned by the marine mammal community, I walked slowly behind Jeff as we headed back to the car.
“Mirabai, look!” Jeff turned and pointed to the shore break. There they were—a pod of dolphins—leaping and arcing through the waves.
“Thanks, guys,” I whispered.
At the end of the long dock in Hanalei Bay, Jeff knelt, stretching out his arms to toss Jenny’s cremains into the ocean, when suddenly a wave rose and crashed against the pilings and washed the ashes out of his hands. It was as if the Pacific had said, “I’ll take that, thank you.” He laughed and let go.
Sometimes while Jeff was working, I would wander away from the job site and down to the beach. I sat and stared at the horizon, or curled up in fetal position and nestled into the sand. Sometimes I dozed off. I was amazed by how much energy it took to grieve. I was exhausted all the time, as if I were bleeding internally and growing anemic, but there were no outward signs to justify my complete lack of energy.
On one such afternoon, as I lay in the warm sand and started to let myself slip into the comfort of oblivion, I suddenly had a thought that caused me to bolt upright: this was the longest Jenny and I had ever been apart. My heart welled with unspent parenting, like a nursing mother whose overfull breasts ache when she is separated from her baby. It felt like one of those dreams where you accidentally leave your kid at the gas station and don’t realize it until the next day, and then when you go back to look for her, she is gone.
This was followed by another excruciating epiphany: when I get home to Taos, I will be the mother of the dead girl.
A cascade of panicky notions unfurled from that one: Wherever I go, people will look at me sorrowfully, strain to say the right thing, or avoid me at the post office as if they might catch the dead-child disease if they met my eyes. They will wonder if Jenny and I had fought before her accident. If it was my fault. They will speculate that she was drinking, using drugs, out of control. They will feel sorry for me. I will hate that most of all: the overly sweetened tincture of their pity.
I couldn’t face my community. I didn’t want to go home. What kind of home did I have to go to? I had been in the middle of being Jenny’s mother, and suddenly I was finished. How could I go grocery shopping when Jenny’s special items—Thai noodles, turkey jerky, Nutella—were not on the list?
I realized that I had been completely codependent in my relationship with Jenny. That I needed her like a plant needs light for photosynthesis. That although a parent is supposed to be the source of support for the child, Jenny had, in fact, been the ground upon which I had built my life. With her death, the foundation was shattered. I had nothing to stand on. My existence was in free fall. Jenny had been my safety net; now all safety was gone.
This realization staggered me. I took it in. I sat there on the beach, and I took that knowledge all the way in.
When we returned to Taos, I hid in my house. I had an excuse. I was observing a year of ritual mourning in the Jewish tradition, which specifies that the people closest to the deceased refrain from engaging in anything that is not absolutely necessary for twelve months following the death of their loved one. This meant leaving home only to go to work and preferably getting others to handle your basic errands. It meant not socializing—no parties or dinners out, no weddings or birthday celebrations. This gives the bereaved an opportunity to be fully present with what happened and to honor their beloved dead with undivided attention.
Friends took over my classes at the university to finish the semester, and my work as a translator did not require that I travel any farther than from
my bed to my desk. Although I was committed to showing up for the process of grief, there were times when I needed a break, an escape.
One night, when I was feeling stir-crazy, Jeff said, “Let’s go to a movie.”
“I don’t want to see anybody,” I said. “I don’t want to be seen.”
“Wear dark glasses.”
“Ha ha.” But a movie was exactly what I wanted. I could slide down low in my seat and melt into those giant faces, those bright landscapes, those fictitious people’s pain. “Okay. Let’s go.”
I don’t recall what the movie was—some kind of indie film, with a dark adolescent having an existential crisis. I didn’t care. I just wanted to forget for a moment. It was working, until the scene in which the protagonist had a vision of his grandfather appearing at the foot of his bed in the middle of the night and telling him he loved him. In the morning, the movie boy found out that his grandpa had died in the night. He had come to his grandson to bid him farewell!
As we drove home, I started to rant.
“I hate that shit,” I yelled. “Dead people coming to tell their loved ones goodbye.” I tried to snort with contempt, but instead I burst into tears. “Why didn’t Jenny come to me?” I sobbed. “Why do the spirits of dead people come to everyone else? What’s wrong with me?” I was pounding the door with the side of my fist. Jeff drove in broken-hearted consternation.
As we unlocked the house, walked inside, and turned on the lights, I suddenly remembered the night that Jenny died—only I hadn’t known that yet—when I had fallen asleep waiting for her and then was suddenly awakened by that wave of peace.
That was her goodbye! Enfolding me in the wings of a deeper peace than I had ever known. No concepts, no images—simply a profound silence, an unshakable stillness, complete equanimity.
Caravan of No Despair Page 17