I exit the two-bedroom Cape house on a quiet cul-de-sac an hour after dawn. Dirty snow mounds cling to sidewalk edges. A nearby pond, just a brief walk down a knoll, shows signs of melt, yet stubborn ice patches scar its surface in places. The water, however, finds a way to flow over its solid cousin, an angel gliding low on vernal wings, exalted by the sun’s strengthening rays.
A lone American Robin raises her head and sings to the light, eulogizing winter and welcoming spring. Her solo is a string of ten whistles assembled from repeated cheerful syllables, a steady rhythm of crescendos and decrescendos. Her joy gently reverberates like a pellucid bell deep within my core and unfurls a shroud, woven from memories of the past few days.
My patient, in the midst of a lively, lucid moment, discussing spirituality and nature with the visiting priest.
The highs and lows of a lived life shared during conversation with her family and friends at the heirloom oak kitchen table.
And finally, at last breath, her powerful journey across the threshold.
This 4’9” woman — I will call her Lucy to protect her identity and honor her relatives’ wishes of anonymity — passed with such resilient grace. And I, her death doula, had simply held space for this crossing, which did not come without obstacles.
Though raised Catholic, she saw and encountered God in Mother Earth but kept her various espials to herself out of fear; something she briefly hinted to me while, at the same time, emphasizing her love of John Muir, a famous naturalist, author, and advocate of forest conservation (example: Yosemite, in California).
In an 1873 letter to his sister, Muir wrote, “The mountains are calling, and I must go.” The preceding words sang her soul into another form of consciousness, meant for a dimension that is perhaps superimposed over this world. After all, according to physics, energy can neither be created or destroyed; rather, it can only be transformed from one form to another. Thus, she is the mountain; the mountain, her.
On October 21st, 2015, I served a similar role for my mother, Charlotte, when she passed in her sleep from cancer, notwithstanding a four-to-eight-week prognosis of life and hospice arrangements. Pain is usually an early indicator of something amiss; still, due to years of relapsing-remitting Multiple Sclerosis (MS) frying her nociceptors, she simply concluded aloud that, “I am just getting old.” Be that as it may, I sensed she knew more than she communicated to doctors; nurses; hospital staff; and even my father, brother, and me.
I remember leaning over her bed and whispering in her ear, “It is okay to let go. You can go home now.” A few hours later, she was free, no longer chained to a body riddled head to toe with tumors; to a body that continuously attacked its own central nervous system (CNS), replacing white matter with scar tissue. She was a bald eagle, riding mountain thermals.
At its core, death is an unlearning.
A twisting, messy journey.
A pearled metamorphosis within the black gunk at chrysalis center into someone — something?!? — else.
“The Universe buries strange jewels deep within us all,”
highlights on page 8 of Big Magic, “and then stands back to see if we can find them.”In late February, a few weeks after my 45th birthday, one of them cracked open within the cocoon of my subconscious.
Since June 6, 2022, I have been working 60-plus hours per week at a holistic chiropractic office and doing part-time homecare. Witnessing and holding space for people are facets of this calling. In the same breath, because I have been relegating it to the back burner, my creativity, my spiritual lifeblood, has slowly been waning. I did not consciously accept this truth until something shifted within me, when, as if watching two films simultaneously playing side by side, Lucy and my mother bravely embraced the unknown.
It was then I first allowed an intense contraction of longing to envelope my entire being. My writing and photography are not merely “weekend hobbies”; they feed and nurture my wildness, my freedom, my connection with something greater, releasing the various perceptions, projections, and expectations attempting to tame me. Heck, even I need to get out of my own way!
To become the mountain, like Muir and Lucy.
To ride the thermals, light as a feather, free from chains, like my mother.
To be one with the warp and weft of All-That-Is.
As the sun paints the eastern welkin in gauzy oranges and yellows, I maneuver my tired body into the front seat and manage to start my car. The radio crackles to life. Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Freebird” blares through the speakers. I literally feel “Won't you fly high, free bird, yeah” and the subsequent electric guitar riff carry me home, a guardian soaring with me into mystery.
Here's to following your blessed calling. Be Well.