When the World Tilts

Once in awhile my world tilts; it usually happens when I have a serious WTF moment. Yesterday was like that when I opened up Facebook to find a message that simply said " We've lost Heather." When I read those words the world wobbled and shifted. She was gone from this mortal plane at the age of 36.  I tried to remember what I was doing at that age.

She was one of the original group I fell in with from CovenSpace. It seems so long ago now. They say time speeds up as you get older. It feels like those people have been in my life forever. We don't communicate as much as we used to, but we are still a part of the tapestry of each others lives. We still care. Occasionally we post comments on the vast time-suck that is Facebook to one another. It's good to be a part of something larger than yourself. It's good to know we have those silver threads to anchor us, even as Life has it's way.

Over the years Heather and I messaged back and forth over mundane and magickal things. Most of it bat-related as of late. She loved bats and so do I. She loved them for their relationship to Nightkind;
I love them for their part in Nature as pollinators. Besides, they're seriously furry and cute and their huge eyes make them irresistible. I am hooked on bats. Heather and I shared a love of vampires and the culture surrounding The Craft. We exchanged ideas for artsy-fartsy things. She was also a talented amateur  photographer and had a genuine eye for detail. Photography was something I dabbled in years ago; I still have my Nikon SLR camera tucked away in the back of a closet. I'd been thinking about digging it out at Heather's urging. Now I feel like I owe it to her to try.

Her half-crazed familiar Fury was one of her ( and my) favorite subjects.He's sleek and expressive. One of my favorite photos from Heather is Fury fast asleep on top of a door. Last week, right after Heather died her husband posted that Fury was sitting in the window waiting for her to come home.
I would have been disappointed to hear anything less.

Over this past week I put up a memorial (group) page for Heather on Facebook, and all of her friends-online and real time-pulled into a cohesive community. Everyone is still in shock at her bright light being extinguished so suddenly and we'd all like to have that one chance to tell her how much we cared. Instead, we're telling each other how much it hurts to have her missing in our lives. We make posts to her on the page, telling her how much we love her and what we will miss about having her in our lives. Sharing in this way helps to take the edge off the pain because we know we aren't alone in our confusion, anger and pain. We hurt as a whole and grieve deeply as individuals. We post memes we know she would squealed with delight at seeing and poetry/essays/songs she would have loved. And quietly, we sit behind our computer screens and shed a tear or smile and nod in agreement. Welcome to mourning in the digital age.

Those of us who share Heather's magickal and faith tradition know she's just across The Veil with the beloved dead and ancestors, and that she's begun an incredible journey of rebirth. So we continue to talk to her and look for little signs from her-white feathers,especially-and share a good cup of coffee.
We light candles to guide her and urge her to transcend to the next level of existence. We send flowers to her loved ones and words of comfort and encouragement. Other than that we are still broken-hearted and lost with too many questions. To be quite truthful, the answers might supply a momentarily satisfaction, but don't really matter in the larger picture. They never do, but it doesn't stop us from asking. There are no answers to some of Life's questions, like why Fate takes the turn it does sometimes.

Farewell and Godspeed, my little Witchling! Let love light your way to the stars!

Remembering Love

It's just a tiny ornament, one inch long and half an inch wide. Sandwiched between two small pieces of glass is a faded, brown little flower, with the word
"Love" etched below. It's held together by a bit of metal foil and hangs by a frayed red ribbon.

It means the world to me.

We were standing in front of a shop  window filled with etched glass ornaments and sun catchers in Baltimore's Inner Harbor in mid- September,having walked from Camden Yards where we'd spent a relaxing afternoon watching the O's. Frankly, I'm not much for baseball-I'm not a fan of any sports, really: Occasionally I watch the Olympics. On this particular day I'd made the 90 minute drive down I-95 to volunteer on the crew at a charitable event John was playing for the regional Cerebral  Palsy agency, and we would be attending the Orioles game prior to the concert. Some of us took a side trip through the Inner Harbor just to window shop and came upon this glass shop.

The rather plain rectangle was quietly put into my hand. It was wrapped in a piece of white tissue paper. There was a tiny pressed purple and white violet and the word "Love" etched into the glass. It would look cute on my Christmas tree and join in the eclectic riot of ornaments that I carefully packed away each year. There were no accompanying pronouncements of love, just a low-key, non-romantic "Here you go-from me."  John had brought me ornaments from all over the world for my collection, so we'd gone through this particular ritual for years; most of the time something would arrive in the mail followed a day later by a phone call. Occasionally, like this day, the babble in question would be handed to me in person.

Nothing appeared special about the little glass rectangle when it was pressed into my hand. Nothing at all.

Except it would be the last ornament John ever gave me. He was killed in a plane crash three weeks later. I was devastated not by his dying, but by the separation of death. I wanted him back. I still do.

I'd forgotten about the little glass rectangle until I found it still wrapped in the tissue paper tucked deep in the pocket of my purse one day in early December. It was just in time to put it on the tree with my other pretties and twinkling lights. John had been dead exactly two months to the very day I placed it on a high branch so the cats wouldn't disturb it. Back lit by the lights on the tree, the edges of the etched letters made tiny dancing stars.

Fifteen Christmases have passed since John died, yet he's still with me. This one particular little piece of sparkling glass is always hung at eye-level so I can pick it out easily it every time I  look at my holiday tree. Admittedly, it is not as pretty as it used to be since the flower faded. But I remember what it looked like when it was new, and that's what I see, a delicate purple and white violet. Violets, in the language of flowers, have many meanings: friendship, love, remembrance, resurrection, rebirth... an un-ending promise. The ancient Romans laid violets on the graves of loved ones to denote continued affection after death. This is what enters my subconscious every time the little ornament catches my eye. It tells me that our friendship has endured beyond the veil and is still present even today. It says that the relationship not only continues, but will bring us back together at another time and place.

Another wonder of this magickal season, where Mystery reminds us of the fragility of Life and Love.

15 Days of Thankfulness: Catching Up

One of the things I love about this project is that it challenges me to be mindful and present in the moment. I have to purposely think about what I am grateful for and then express my gratitude  in a tangible manner- in this case writing. Writing comes easily to me because I am a natural born writer: throughout my life I have written fictional stories for my own amusement,diagnostic and medical treatment reports, teaching plans, technical reports, synopsis for courses, entertainment reviews and magazine articles,dissertations, sermons and blogs...and I rarely suffer from writer's block. No kidding. Most of the time I know exactly what I'm going to write about and have several other ideas on the back burner as well. What I do suffer from is a lack of time-as many of us do who lead full, active lives. "There is not enough hours in the day" may be a bit  cliched, but nothing else describes it as well. It's not a lack of time management- it's a genuine lack of time.

So today's installment of 15 Days of Thankfulness is going to be a  two-for-one in order to catch up, get on track and bring this project home in a timely manner.

Day 11

The subject for today is to select 3 friends who inspire me. I'm going to call in my chips and say that I've already written about a lot more than 3 of these people. It's difficult to just pick 3 because so many people have contributed equally toward inspiring me, and the last thing I want to do is to diminish the contribution of some in favor of others- I would never purposely do that.

The real problem I'm having in choosing is that people inspire me in particular areas- the inspiration is compartmentalized. I have been more than  blessed with the friendship of dozens of people who shine in their own way. They illuminate the dark corners of my life in times when I need to see light, and several of them are always there in the background, ready to shine just as the sun comes up at dawn.

My relationship with Jean ( and later her husband, George) began through Scouting. Jean was one of my Scout leaders, so the potential for being someone to look up to was already in place. One would think differently, but the dynamic of our relationship didn't so much change as morph when I reached adulthood. What was there when I was younger became richer and the layers more deeply defined as I earned the right to equality at adulthood. Jean and I can talk about anything- and often do. Mostly I talk and she listens before imparting wisdom. We have the relationship my own mother and I never had and what should have been there but was lost when my grandmother's alcoholism took her elsewhere. The physical distance has not dampened our relationship because we talk long and often.

Melinda has been nothing short of a blessing in my life every since we met online shortly after JD's death. In the days after that fateful day, I made myself available to listen to John's fans who needed a sounding board or someone to help them sort out just why they were morning so deeply for someone they knew only through his music. Melinda was in several discussion threads and we began to communicate regularly several times a week. Except for brief periods, that has continued for the last fourteen years- and like conversations with Jean, no subject is safe from our examination. Melinda and I finally met face to face in Aspen, Co in the fall of 1998 during the first John Denver Memorial Weekend. We each had separate activities planned for the trip, but after picking her up at the airport, I wanted to do give her something I knew no one else could- I wanted to introduce her to the Aspen JD had shared with me, the place that had inspired him to write and sing-and the place he wanted to come home to from all over the world. We drove out to Windstar Ranch in Snowmass when there was no one else there and then up on the mountain so Melinda could see the same vista JD saw at sunset from his beloved backyard in Starwood.And then we had dinner at the Woody Creek Tavern, which (forgive me) is a local dive that JD and I simply adored...we walked the streets of Aspen late at night talking for hours, and by the time we left nearly a week later, we were friends for life.

I still have these two extraordinary women in my life...and for this I am thankful.

Day 12
I have had trouble exactly following the rules for this challenge because so often I don't select the prescribed number of  three Cordelia had in mine when she created this project. Some rules are made to be broken, and I am a rebel at heart. Not following the rules in this case is my way of making the project my own.

Nature often challenges and enlarges my consciousness. I began my spiritual path because I more keenly feel connected to the Sacred when I am outdoors more than any other place. There isn't a place where I have been out in Nature that I have truly disliked- except one particularly cold, wet camping trip near Hawk Mountain where I was soaked through multiple layers of clothing and several layers of skin until I was quite literally frozen when the temperature suddenly dropped after dusk. The lesson that came from that experience was to not be overly confident of my ability to be comfortable in the wild and take nothing for granted. Ever.  There have been many other lessons-Nature is the quintessential teacher.

Maybe it's because I am a Pisces, but I have always had an affinity for water. I will instinctively seek and find a source of water when I am hiking and usually end up on a river bank or the shore of a lake. I am not a touristy seashore person, but I love the ocean, even in the winter. When I lived about an hour from the ocean I loved walking on the beach in March, when the Atlantic was so cold it would burn your skin.

I am intrigued by sights and sounds of  waterfalls. Very often I'm not content to watch and listen- I want to be inside the falling water.  I am truly a fish! The rush of water soothes mind and spirit. Scientifically. moving water givens off negative ions which stabilize alpha rhythms in the brain- that's why we feels so good near a body of water. I will happily walk in the rain, but as I've gotten older I find I don't like the combination of rain and cold. I can take one or the other- not both.

I also love wind for many of the same reasons; I love the song of the wind and the accompanying tangle of dried leaves, clattering bare branches, and dancing of trees. I always feel clean after being in the wind.

For the gift of all of Nature, but especially water and winds, I am thankful.