Watching the wraith-like essence of my beautiful mama Barbara spiral out the top of her head around midnight of January 31 there in our front living room, I was confronted by the mystery of the union of the infinite and the finite; that fusion of spirit with the material of the physical body. How ever that happens, the hook-up is both tenuous and tough.
Mom was an avid recycler. I like to think her spirit is being recycled into some marvelous new configuration of a daring, dashing, darling human.
She had a breathing crisis on January 27 and spent a couple of days in the hospital where she was diagnosed with pneumonia. It became clear that she was choosing this window to fly through toward her next adventure. She came home from Kaiser Sunday afternoon. My husband Mark, Mom’s caregiver Ellen and I took shifts sitting up with Barbara all night while she was engaged in the process of leaving her body. She had oxygen and morphine and seemed quite at peace.
On Sunday night, during my shift of mom-watch, I washed and massaged her all over with warm coconut oil, thanking her body for bearing me and my brothers and appreciating it for being the vehicle for her life essence. As a student of Rosalyn Bruyere at the Healing Light Center Church, I learned how to make Holy Water. This I did for mom and I anointed her feet that she could walk across the threshold with ease and grace. I anointed her heart that she could feel the love on both sides of the veil. I anointed her hands that she could reach out to those on the other side who were there to welcome her; her third eye so she could see the clear white light of pure spirit, and her crown that she could slip out the top of her head.
The hospice folks came Monday and spent nearly four hours with us and helped us to understand the technical aspects of the process. As it happened, we, her three children, our spouses, various friends and grandchildren, mom's brother Larry, nieces Lynn and Deborah, and mom's beloved Ellen surrounded her with love for the few days of her hospice experience and we said our good byes. There was laughter, story-telling... and MUSIC - thanks to Niko and Alex, two of her younger grandsons, and their cousins, Andrew, Brenden and Albert. Mom was never left alone for a moment. We took three hour shifts during the wee hours Sunday and Monday night. Tuesday, the house was very busy and very full of love, laughter and, of course, food.
Daughter Mosa brought the blessings of her sister Megan and swooped in from Oakland that Monday to cater her grand mother's goodbye party by cooking up a storm of comfort food. Brother Steve and Vicky brought delectable dishes from their favorite Thai Take-Out. Brother Mel was there all day Tuesday until late into the night. Kayce came and went over the two last days - lending support to all with her presence. Ellen's son Ryan and grandson Jachin and her friends Val, Melachore and Soling came to sing to Barbara and to comfort Ellen.
Mosa had brought with her a drawing her two and a half year old daughter had made for Bubelah Barbara - her great grandmother. It was a two-sided drawing, so it couldn't just be taped to the wall. Mark and Mosa hung it from the light fixture directly over Mom's bed so it danced in the drafts - first showing the red side and then the blue side. There were also a couple of purple lines along with the blue. I thought to myself, "I have one very tuned-in grand daughter." To me the red represents the Good Red Road of walking this earth plane and the other side of my grand daughter’s drawing represents the Blue Road of Pure Spirit. Purple, in addition to being Barbara's favorite color, represents metamorphosis; the shedding of the cocoon and soaring free as a transformed being of great beauty. Dev’s drawing was part of the choreography of Barbara's parting dance. It mostly remained showing both sides (parallel to the midline of mom’s body) during her transition.
Tuesday evening, we talked amongst ourselves and to Barbara and Tuesday evening turned into late Tuesday night. Knowing that the sense of hearing is the last to to stop sensing, we sang and shared our love. At some point, my beloved Mark, who was sitting at her feet, noted a distinct change in Barbara's face - an almost waxen quality. At the same time, I was tracking that opalescent spiral coming out the top of mom's head. Ellen was near mom's right shoulder; Vicky, Steve, Niko and Alex were sitting at her right side; Mosa and I were on her left. Mark began a sing-song guidance instructing mom to look for the Light, to feel the Love surrounding her and simply to Let go. We’d been doing this for days - giving her total permission to die. But this time the attention of all of us in the room was riveted on Barbara's breathing.
Mark's guidance paused and I began to sing a song that popped into my head. We usually sing it at Winter Solstice - the darkest time of the year - that marks the return of the light. David Pomerantz wrote it.
It's in everyone of us to be wise
Find your heart open up both your eyes
We can all know everything without ever knowing why
It’s in everyone of us by and by…
and then we all began singing, "Barbara Goodnight…" (to the tune of Goodnight, Irene.”)
And she stopped breathing!
At that point we were all crying… laughing and crying in amazement with the power that the Great Mystery was so close at hand… that privilege of witnessing someone we love so much skipping across the threshold between this plane and the incredible, infinite vastness of the Light of Spirit.
Ellen was reassuring Barbara that she was safe in the hands of the Lord. Each of us had our private and collective reaction to the miracle of death. Each of us was gob-smacked; awe struck. Mom's choreography was impeccable. She died as she lived - musically; always in touch with the subtle rhythms of life… and with a good dose of humor…. because she surprised us by taking two more breaths!
We had to register her official passing just past midnight of the 31st… which meant she held on past January and into February… Good to the last drop. Was that the Maxwell House aspect of her coming to the fore?
Her parting gift to all of us was to allow us to participate in and to celebrate her lift-off. That which made Bubelah Barbara alive to us simply separated from the outer shell of the body which housed her spirit for over 92 years. Her soul's house suffered irreparable damage in 2003 caused by an electrical storm in her left brain. The poet lost her words, but the woman gained the ability to express emotions previously unavailable to her with facial movements, funny faces and gestures with her good left arm and hand… and she could be very expressive, sometimes using her middle finger to conduct us if we sang off-key.
Mark and I were privileged to have Barbara and Ellen, the magical and beloved constant in Mom's life for over eight years, come to live with us for the last year. Mom had been living with her boyfriend Ritchie for over fifteen years - the last seven of which he generously allowed her hospital bed to remain in his living room while Ellen and her family cared for Barbara.
We marveled at the plasticity of mom's brain to learn new songs, new rhythms and new ways to express herself. We witnessed with great gratitude the bond shared by Barbara and Ellen in the intimate details of daily care for that stroke-ravaged body... bathing, exercising, feeding - all done in bed. We appreciated every day we had with her. We know fully that we were lucky to have her with us for as long as we did and that it would not have been possible - were it not for Ellen's competent, compassionate and loving care.
We are forever grateful to Ellen for her constancy, her sacrifice, her gentleness and humor. In the later months, she would rush home from church on Sundays because she knew Barbara would not eat lunch when anyone else tried to feed her. ONLY Ellen would do.
Life offers us choices. Barbara was very clear in making hers.
Death offers us an opportunity to honor our beloveds with gestures of support for the greater good of our fellow humans. The invitation is given us to let the memory of Barbara create ripples of good… to smile at a friend or at a complete stranger and to think of Barbara's spirit freed from its cage. That is honoring her. That is enough.
When I was a child, many days, I'd slide into home from playing in those hills of Echo Park, with skinned knees in need of mercurochrome. Mom would sit me on her lap and after the stinging red stuff and the bandaids were applied and the sobbing had subsided into hiccups, she'd wrap me in her arms and just sing and rock and love me up 'til my rhythm came back and 'til I came back to myself. That ability just to be with what ever was going on was one of the most valuable gifts my mom gave me. I use what she modeled when I sit with young ones (and older ones too) who are having a tough time. For all of us, the rough patches - even the ones that seem to stretch on forever - have an end. Nothing lasts forever.
Thank you, beautiful mama Barbara for sharing your guidance, your deep understanding and love. Thank you for your life… thank you for my life and thank you for all the lives you touched.
I love you.
