Category Archives: Essential Journey

Covid 19 – I’m keeping my distance.

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Even after baking fresh bread. After making a big batch of mushroom soup and a beef stew. Even after packing up my paints and brushes, my papers and ephemera, I decided not to go.

I was going off to a week-long artist’s retreat in the foothills of the Rockies today.

Yesterday, I called and said I wasn’t coming.

My beloved has a cold. He also has a chronic medical condition. He’s in the high-risk group.

But that’s not really why I cancelled.

I cancelled because I did not want to worry. I did not want to fear inadvertently bringing disease into our home.

I cancelled because I love him.

I made the decision after I saw that Alberta’s number of cases had doubled yesterday. Yes, they are all travel-related but, one of the others at the retreat will be going back and forth to the airport a couple of times for work while I’m there. I do not want to lay the burden of my worry on my friend. And, if you look at the statistics from around the world, this virus exponentially increases on a daily basis. Travel is its gateway. Airports one of its conduits.

It wasn’t an easy decision. I love being at this retreat centre. Savour time spent in the foothills, surrounded by nature’s wild beauty. And I particularly like creating with these friends.

But I couldn’t do it.

To dive deep into my creative essence I need to let go of ‘worldly’ concerns, of worry, of anything but creative expression.

I couldn’t do that when no matter how deep I breathe into the moment, I know my beloved is sick and I am not doing everything I can to protect his health.

So, I decided to practice ‘social distancing’. I hadn’t heard the term before my eldest daughter sent me a link to an article in The Atlantic, Coronavirus: Cancel Everything. In it, the case for social distancing is clearly laid out. In the data, it’s also hard to argue with the fact that to stem Covid 19’s spread, we must change our behaviours.

Yesterday, I scrolled through many articles on Covid 19 and how to prepare for its inevitable presence in the community.

I was looking for reasons why it was okay for me to go.

There were many.

None of them out-weighed my responsibility to the one I love. My responsibility to do the right thing in these difficult and challenging times to create better for everyone. A week ago, I probably wouldn’t have given it a second thought. I would have gone.

In just one week, the sinister reality of Covid 19’s presence has darkened the globe and the lives of 14 people here in Alberta, 7 of whom were reported on yesterday. It’s impact cannot be ignored.

This isn’t because the media have created fear and paranoia. They are simply reporting the facts — Covid 19 is killing people and there are things we can do to mitigate against its impact. Media are also not the ones telling people to hoard toilet paper and hand sanitizer. Human nature’s doing that.

I’m doing what I can.

Sure, it’s possible that my response is over the top for the situation right now. It’s possible it is predicated upon the recent passing of my mother and death’s heavy cloak of sorrow clouding my vision.

That is all possible, but none of it outweighs the reality of Covid 19’s lethal capacity to take life.

If I can do anything to stop it from hurting the ones I love, I must.

It doesn’t mean I won’t be creating. I have a beautiful studio at home. It’s french doors open out to the trees lining the river which I can watch flow from where I sit at my work table. It has a fireplace and all the supplies I need to create. It also offers peace of mind. And when it comes to creating, peace of mind is the foundation of my expression.

So, for the next few days I shall be ‘pretending’ to be on an artist’s retreat. I’ll go for long walks (Beaumont will be very grateful as he is not allowed at the retreat centre). I’ll make lemon tea with honey. Share my fresh bread and mushroom soup and other meals with my beloved.

It will be a different experience than I had anticipated and I’m good with that. Different doesn’t make it ‘not as good as’. Different means it will include the one I love and share my life with. It means having the peace of mind of knowing I am expressing my love for him the best way I know how. By taking care.

I am grateful.

I Am Woman.

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No. 35 #ShePersisted Series
They said women are the weaker sex.
She kept giving birth to all humanity,
and with every child born unto man,
they witnessed the power of her strength.

I am woman.

I have borne the pains of birthing humankind so that we may all know life. I have forged my strength in the fires of the womb nurturing the unborn and tended to my compassion in the crucible of the pelvic bowl holding the sacred seeds of life.

I have climbed the manmade mountains designed to keep me in my place and risen above the fear of falling to my knees beneath the crushing weight of man’s desire to own me.

I have been forced to bow beneath the blows of patriarchy forcing me to kneel at its altars.

I have lived beneath the crushing death of believing I am not strong enough, good enough, do not do enough, and will never be enough because I am not a man. I am not his equal.

No more.

I have been forced to hide my feminine aspects and don the robes of conformity to not make those who feared my strength and my beauty feel ill at ease in my presence. I have been forced to witness the desecration of my sisterhood throughout the dark ages of our humanity where women’s voices were silenced and women’s work became the fodder for genocide, colonialization, subjugation and patriarchy.

No more.

I am woman.

I am the fertile womb conceiving life on this planet throughout time. I am the strength of all my grandmother’s grandmothers who bore life before me.

I am woman.

Midwife to the fires of creation, birthed from the womb of the Great Mother who bears us all, I have suckled at her breast and suckled others at mine.

I nurture life into being. I tend to the fires of our humanity.

I am woman.

I am a gatherer. I am a creator. I am the vessel through which all men are born. I am the milk that sustains us. The crucible that holds our humanity safe.

I wear my feminine aspects like a star-studded cloak shimmering in the light of a new moon rising.

I am woman.

I have risen. I am rising.

I shall always rise.

I am woman.

Is this grief?

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Mum throughout the decades

Thoughts collide with one another in my head. I want to write them out. I don’t know how. I don’t know what they are. I just don’t know.

Is this grief?

Is this what happens after the one who brought you into the world dies?

I wrote to someone this morning that the one thing I didn’t want to do while giving my mother’s eulogy was to cry in front of everyone. I wanted to honour her in ways I couldn’t in real life.

My mother’s relationship and mine was very complex. It wasn’t that we fought. It’s just we couldn’t agree on how to live life in peace.

I wanted to talk everything out. My mother wanted me to just ‘let things go’.

I can’t let go of what I do not understand, I’d tell her. I cannot let go of what is not named.

You just want to make trouble, she’d tell me. Let the past lie in silence.

Growing up I wanted her to be the mother of television shows. You know, the one who had fresh baked cookies waiting for you when you came home from school. The one who gave really good advice even when it related to boys — my mother’s advice tended to extend to practicalities like, ‘keep your legs crossed and definitely don’t let boys touch you…. there’, ‘always wear clean underwear in case you’re in an accident’ and ‘don’t sit on cold concrete. you’ll get hemorrhoids’.

I wanted a martini toting, laughing and giggling, outrageous, belle of the ball kind of mum.

She wanted an obedient, dutiful, listen to me kind of daughter.

I was none of those.

Years ago, when my daughters were about five and six, I knew I had to do something to heal my relationship with my mother. So, after much deliberation, I went to visit my parents to ask my mother to tell me her life story.

She was eager to do so. When we sat down, I turned on my dictaphone (remember those?) and she began to speak. “I was born in Pondicherry, India.” And she began to cry.

My father, not one for tears, kept walking into the room and telling her to stop crying.

I kept offering her kleenex.

She ignored us both and kept telling her story. For two and a half hours.

At the end, I understood better.

It wasn’t that she didn’t love me, or want me to be happy, or want a relationship with me, (which were some of the things I told myself, and my therapist, were the problems in our relationship.) It was just, she wanted the world to be for me like it was for her, or at least as she remembered it, when she was growing up in Pondicherry, India.

She called it her Shangri-la. She had God. Family. Friends and a beautiful way of life.

She wanted the same for me and my siblings. Being the rebel whose nickname growing up was, The Brat, I didn’t want what she had. Especially her faith, which I told her was a patriarchal construct designed to keep men in power and women subservient. (I know. It was the mean feminist in me. The one who didn’t understand way back then the power of words and the need for kindness.)

Without God as my ballast, my mother was terrified for me. Scared that I would get hurt in that great big scary world over which she had no control. Scared I would lose myself, and without surrendering to God’s will, my will would lead me into temptation, trials and tribulations.

It wasn’t until I was working on the powerpoint for her celebration of life and the eulogy that I realized that my mother and I weren’t that different. We might have used different words, but we both want/wanted the same thing. Peace. Love. and Harmony.

Once upon a time I wanted my mother to be the mother I wanted.

I am so grateful she was the mother she was. She taught me the value of kindness and helped me grow into the woman I am today.

My mother believed. Deeply. She believed that God would never forsake her. That God would lead the way.

Because of her deep faith, I always knew I was never alone in this Universe.

Because she never lost faith in God, I learned to never lose faith in myself. I learned that kindness is the ripple that creates a better world, act by act.

And above all, I learned that it’s not words that transform the past and relationships and the world. It’s Love.

 

 

 

 

 

Cheerio Kid

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It is Tuesday morning. The day of our mother’s celebration of life.

I am sitting at my desk, working on finishing touches to the powerpoint of her life. I had been struggling with the second song to go with the photos. My brother-in-law had asked that I ensure we use Edith Piaf’s Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien, which my sisters and I all agreed was perfect. I didn’t want to play it twice (the presentation was 4 and a half minutes long) but ‘the song’ hadn’t come to me.

Until 5 am that morning when I heard a voice whisper in my head, “What about Esther and Abi Ofarim’s version of In the Morning?”

Thanks mum!

I got up and began working on finding a version I could download and include.

Around 8, when my sister, Anne, got up, I played it for her.

Immediately, tears started to flow and she agreed. It was perfect. We had sung and danced to that song when living in Europe and later, whenever my daughters were with us at my eldest sister’s home for dinner, we would play it and we’d all dance and we’d tell stories of our ‘growing up years’.

We were not dancing this morning. But my sister and I were moved by the song and its capacity to transport us back through time.

And that’s when the magic happened.

As Anne is listening, eyes closed, tears streaming down her face, I looked out the window in front of my desk and saw him.

The Coyote.

I’m pretty sure he’s the same one I wrote about on January 30th, my youngest daughter’s birthday. This time, he doesn’t just glance up and move off, he stands at the fence that separates our yard from the riverbank and watches me closely.

It is as if he too is listening intently.

My sister and I watch. He watches back.  A long time.

And then, he turns and walks slowly away.

It’s then that we see her. She is waiting slightly upriver. Hidden in the trees. His companion. His partner. His soulmate.

My sister and I watch the two coyotes lope off through the trees together.

We are both crying.

In the big tin box I have of mum’s keepsakes, the box Anne and I have been going through for photos for the powerpoint, there is a stack of letters and poetry dad wrote to her during WWII after they were married. In his missives, he often called her ‘kid’ or signed off with, “Cheerio, kid.” He also promised that, no matter what, he would be coming back to India for her. And in 1945 after the war ended, he did. Come back for her.

I wonder now if that lone coyote was also a sign. Our mother was growing tired. The signs were there. She was becoming more and more weary of this life on the earthly plane. Dad was waiting for her.

During the war, our mother waited patiently to be reunited with her beloved Louis. He died almost 25 years before her and she believed with her heart of hearts that they would one day be united.

On Tuesday morning, two coyotes loped off through the forest that lines the river in front of our home. One stands hidden in the trees, waiting patiently. The other comes and stands outside my window. He is listening and watching. And, when he turns to go I hear a voice say,  “Cheerio kids. “I’ve got her. She’s safe.”

_

 

All Things Are Possible

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Iris as a little girl.

Lent leading up to Good Friday and Easter Sunday were very important and sacred times to our mother. To give up her earthly body on Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, was a testament to her faith and her belief of the forgiveness of sins through penitence and prayer. For our mother, there could be no holier time than this to ascend to be with her Father and those she loves.

As a child, I remember my sister Anne and I going to the church on Friday evenings and helping my mother change the flowers. She loved flowers and looked upon her duty of keeping the altar and church filled with beauty as a sacred trust.

Anne and I would rather have been out playing but mom insisted we attend to the needs of the church first, especially during Easter season.

Solemnly we’d kneel with her in front of the altar, pray a rosary and then, help remove the deadened flowers from each bouquet. My job was to place each dead flower on a sheet of paper, wrap them up carefully so that no stray leaves or petals fell out and carry them to the waste bin in the church offices. Older and bigger than me, Anne was allowed to carry the water-filled vases to the sink and empty them.

Then again, Anne’s being allowed to carry the glass vases may have had nothing to do with age and size and everything to do with the fact my mother knew she could trust Anne to take her job seriously. Me. Well… She probably feared I’d try to dance with the vase in my hands or even sprinkle the water on the floor of the sacristy like a priest sprinkling holy water on a penitent’s forehead.

I liked to play in the make-believe. My mother never quit praying that one day I’d learn to keep my feet on the ground.

She often felt I was too irreverent, too wild by nature, too free-spirited and strong-willed. I can still hear her cautioning me to ‘be careful’. To take heed. To watch my words, my steps, and even my dreams.

She wasn’t big on dreaming. Life was meant to be lived in the service of God. It was serious business, too weighty for dreams to take flight. Life, for my mother, was about living by God’s will. Walking humble. Staying true to her faith and being His servant here on earth.

She was ‘pure of heart’. She held no hypocrisy. No guile. No hidden motives. She dedicated her life to God and through extension, to her family and community.

She imbued the spirit of the Church she loved so much. She wore its traditions and rituals, its liturgy and songs like a beautiful velvet robe of grace and sacred service.

She told me once that most of the gold and silver jewellery she carried with her from India when she left to build a life with my father at the end of WWII was sold off in the early days of their marriage. Times were tough in those days and she had to do what needed to be done to take care of her family.

There was no regret in her voice for the loss of her jewels. Family always came first.

What never left her possession, however, was the rosary and wooden crucifix her father gave her as a child, and the statue of her beloved Saint Teresa of Avila. They had travelled the seas and continents with her, always finding a place at her bedside no matter where in the world she was.

Like Saint Teresa, my mother prayed for peace. Of heart. In her family. In the world.

She prayed for her Church. For her family and everyone she knew.

My mother prayed. Always.

It is one of the things I admire most about her and hold in awe.

No matter the challenges, no matter her losses, her sorrow, my mother never gave up her faith.

She also never gave up praying I would learn to keep my feet on the ground.

It’s something I never had to learn how to do, keep my feet on the ground. I am blessed. My life has been grounded in the constancy and faithfulness of my mother’s prayers.

This morning I sit at my desk, tears flow and my heart breaks open, filled with the beautiful gift of my mother’s prayers. I know,  deep within my being, my mother is looking down on me now, clicking her rosary beads in an endless circle of love, whispering her words of benediction and praying I keep dancing and laughing, living and loving with all my heart.

My mother is praying I have faith. In Love. In God. In her prayers.

She is praying I live my life in kindness, grace and Love.

It’s what she prays for all of us because she believes, like St Teresa of Avila, all things are possible.

 

A Song For My Mother

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In our home growing up, there were many icons of Mother Mary, Jesus, many Saints and the Hindu goddess/god Shiva. There were also carved elephants, always with their trunks turned up and tails linked and other lesser gods of the land where she was born.

Our mother was deep of faith, and very superstitious.

We used to tease her that she was covering her bases. She graciously let us tease her and continued to pray to her Lord, the Father and Mother Mary while Shiva sat in the corner watching.

She would never put shoes on a bed or table.  Never walk under a ladder. Never cross knives nor stir with one for as she used to say, “Stir with a knife, stir up strife.”

Our mother did not like strife. She did not yell. Cry out in anger, nor take the Lord’s name in vain. Though once, we did hear her say, “Oh eat it,” in response to some comment our brother had made that caused her to flinch.  We laughed when she said it. She had no idea what it meant.

My sister Anne and I used to try to get around our mother’s aversion to profanity. We’d say, “Oh hel…………p”, spitting out the ‘P’ like it was a stone caught in our throats. We’d laugh gleefully thinking we were putting one over on her.

I don’t think we did. I think she just preferred not to hear what did not please her ears.

She never liked loud noises nor angry words. She used to always tell us that, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.”

I didn’t often heed my mother’s words when I was young. I thought truth-telling meant only my truth mattered. That my truth gave me the right to speak my mind without regard for the feelings of those to whom I spoke.

At times, I flung my words at my mother like daggers to her soul. I cannot take those words back and long ago learned to forgive myself for my harsh ways.

Today, I take my mother’s words to heart and hold them near. In their nearness I find myself falling with grace into the space she always held with her belief that God would answer her prayers for each of us to know how much she loved us. She didn’t care if Shiva watched, or we teased her for her faith and superstitions. She was imbued with the spirit of knowing within the depths of her soul, that He loved her, cared for her and lead her in Love.

Thank you, mom, for the lessons in Love, for your steadfast faith in me. Thank you for loving me as I  was so that I could grow with grace into gratitude for all that I am and all the Love that fills my world with such wonder and beauty, today and always.

We played this song for my mother as she lay sleeping. Alexis, my eldest daughter, who like mum, has the voice of an angel. She recorded an acapella version of it. It brought great comfort and ease to my mother while she slept and listened to the voice of one of her granddaughters.

The Celebration of our mother’s life will be held at 2pm, Tuesday, March 3rd at McInnis & Holloway,14441 Bannister RD. S.E. Calgary.

My Mother’s Hands

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My Mother’s Hands

These hands
that have been worn through time
their knuckles swollen and distorted
by years of living and caring and praying.

These hands
that have feasted on joy
and been consumed by sorrow
that have collected tears
and rainwater in their cupped palms
and washed clothes and floors
and sprinkled flour on a counter
to make pie crusts roll out
in round circles of perfection.

These hands
have never fallen idle
in the passing of years.
They have carried me
soothed me
fed me.
They have pulled back my hair
when I was sick
and stroked my back
while I lay sleeping.

These hands have woven stories in the air
with their dancing insistence, they can speak
without words
they have given benediction and disapproval
without sound
always silently carrying
the burdens
of a past hurt, a long-ago pain.
In their silence
they have grown tired and weary.

They are resting now
these hands
that do not need to knock
at the door of eternity
for these wise and loving hands
know God is waiting
at the open door of the eternal beyond.

These hands are resting now.
They lie silently on the heart of my mother
who rests at this sacred threshold
as if to catch her breath in the here and now
before crossing over
into the forever after.

These hands are resting now.
Soon, they will be at peace forevermore.

Beau: The Doga of Yoda (An SWB post)

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Beaumont: Louise. You know Nana’s going to be okay. Right?

Me: How do you know?

Beau: She’s walking to her Rainbow Bridge. That’s a cause for celebration. She’s had a good life.

Me: Yes Beau. It is. (pause) Ummm… How did you know?

Beau:  About Nana? Oh ye’ of little faith. How could I not? I am a dawg. My seventh sense is strong.

Me:  Seventh sense? What’s that?

Beau:  To see into the heart and soul of humans.

Beau shares his Doga/Yoda style wisdom and comfort on his blog — click HERE to read the rest.  Thank you.

To Love No Matter What. It is her way.

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Four generations – This photo was taken April 19, 2018, when she met her, then two-month-old, great-grandson for the first time.

When she awakens she cries out to God asking him to please take her. She is ready.

It is in her cries I feel my heart. Breaking. Open.

It is in her cries I feel my tears. Falling. Falling, into the cracks. And with each tear, the cracks are filled by their healing touch washing away the helplessness I feel in these moments of despair.

And then, she asks me to pray with her. And so, in the quiet that blankets the night before the dawn, we pray the prayer she taught each of us as a child when every Friday night she would gather us four children and together, we knelt in front of the statue of the Virgin Mary that graced our living room and prayed the Rosary, “Hail Mary full of Grace the Lord is with Thee. Blessed art though amongst women and blessed is the fruit of Thy womb Jesus….”

Her lips move ever so slightly. Her voice whispers in the dark as soft as a feather falling.

We repeat it, again and again. And softly as a feather falling, her eyes close and she is asleep once again.

I sit in the silence watching her folded hands upon her chest rise and fall. Gently.

Her body weakens every day, yet continues to be strong. Her faith is stronger. God will come for her soon. She prays.

It is in her faith, I find comfort. In her faith that never wavers no matter how dim the spark that is her life becomes in my world, the light of Love becomes brighter.

My mother is traveling her path towards the transcendent light of eternity. Her way.

Sometimes, in her awakened moments, she apologizes for taking so long. For keeping us waiting at her bedside.

It has always been her way. To be more concerned of the welfare of others than her own. To not want to be a bother. To not want to inconvenience anyone.

There is no where else we’d rather be, we tell her.

It is the truth. There is nowhere to be than here, at her bedside, breathing with her. Loving on her.

And with each breath, my mother bestows upon us a gift born of the Love that brought us each into this world. This love she holds so fiercely. This love she has carried throughout her lifetime carries each of us now in her final days.

It is the Love of family. The Love of God. The Love of her enduring faith.

It is her way.

To love no matter how dim the light.

To believe in God no matter how dark the night.

To have Faith no matter what.

In all things, Love is her way and God is her light.

Namaste.

 

 

 

And So We Danced

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The Dartnell Siblings

And so the sun faded on another day and my sisters and daughters and I continued to sit with my mother as she breathed slowly, drifting in and out of wakefulness and sleep.

At a particularly awakened moment, she told us about her five brothers who loved to dance. I told her that the four who are no longer with us would be waiting for her on the other side, dancing with two of her sisters, telling jokes and drinking wine and smoking Gitanes. “They’ll throw such a party for you mom.”

And she smiled and I scrolled through my ITunes and found a Charles Aznavour song she knew and as it played, the five of us danced to his voice crooning and my mother lay propped up in her bed smiling. For a moment her eyes sparkled with joy and when we stopped turning around and around and swaying our arms, she laughed and clapped her hands and whispered, “Oh my dancing girls.”

And then, she fell back to sleep.

She has been mostly sleeping since that moment of joy last night. My eldest daughter, Alexis, remained throughout the night at her bedside, curled up on the easy chair in the corner, keeping watch. And my breath catches in my chest when I think of what a gift she has given my mother, and what a gift this special time we are all sharing in is for both my daughters. For all of us.

By this morning mom had fallen into a deep sleep, stirring only briefly when the nurse comes in.

Waking her is difficult now. And still, if she does open her eyes, she says, as if disappointed, “I’m still here?”

And we smile and touch her crippled hands and tell her it’s okay to go, whenever she’s ready.

We do not know when the time will come and so, we continue to sit with her in the numinous light of what Angeles Arrien calls ‘The Gold Gate’ in her book, “The Second Half of Life. Opening the Eight Gates of Wisdom.” We all come in through the Silver Gate and we all go out through the Gold Gate, she writes. There are many gates in between…

This is the gate of surrender, faith and acceptance. It invites us to befriend the death of our physical form and accept that holding on to attachments is not necessary.

I am learning to befriend the death of my mother’s physical form. To accept its journey here on earth is nearing its end. To surrender to her will and faith and to not begrudge this time of her departure.

I am learning to live in the grace of this waiting time, this vigil, this holding space for her to cross over with our arms full of love gently holding her up. To accept that this death is part of my life because her gift is this life I breathe into every day.

I do not know how many breaths my mother has left to take. In the grace of watching her take each breath, I am learning to embrace the ephemeral and ethereal nature of all life. It is a slow walk home to what lays beyond what I can see and know and feel. In its mystery and its majesty, I breathe deeply into the mystical moments we get to share in my mother’s final journey and say a prayer of gratitude.

Namaste.

________________

In the photo above my mother is about sixteen years old. She is the girl sitting in the front, on the left, with the shorter hair.