I was Ordained in ULC in the spring of 2009. Although I had often considered becoming a Minister… I was never comfortable claiming any particular faith or denomination. I thought maybe if I was ordained… I would become more serious in my path. Although officiating a wedding was a novel idea… it wasn’t my main interest. I wanted to better understand… and feel confident… bringing peace to the Hospice patients that I worked with. But recently… I came to realize… that I have been on the most amazing spiritual journey… it just hasn’t looked like what one would expect.
Hospice is my passion. I have extended experience… and so many stories to tell. And here I plan to tell them. Maybe in doing so… I will figure out where I am to go next in my journey… or maybe I will help someone… if anyone reads these… find some peace… some joy… some possible way… to help themselves… or someone else… through their journey of dying.
To start my blog series… I should go to the beginning. Seems fair… My journey began almost 20 years ago… well before that actually… but for this purpose… 20 years is far enough back.
I was invited to attend a Samhain Ritual. Now I was raised Catholic… I was a Christian Sunday School Teacher for a number of years… but I never felt that I fit. So when one friend loaned me a book by Raymond Buckland… and newly acquired friend invited me to the ritual… my interest was stirred.
I had no idea what I was getting into… there was a labyrinth… dancing… chanting… guided meditation… I was overwhelmed. But it was during the guided meditation… that my journey began.
I was apparently supposed to bring something that represented someone who had died… someone that I was close to in life. The problem was… I did not know this… and came unprepared… besides… even if I had known… I really did not have anyone that I felt that close to that had died. The only person I sort of knew… was my father’s mother… but she had died 10 years before.
As I was being guided through the meditation… I was surprised at my ability to recall my grandmother’s face… her smell… her voice. My only real relationship with her was when I was a small child. But I could see her face very clearly before me.
And I could hear her voice… “Just trust and you will be alright” she said. Then her face began to fade… I thought at first I was just losing her image… but then the face of my mother appeared before me. I was so startled, that I opened my eyes… snapping myself of whatever trance I may have been in. I was certain that I had screwed up somewhere during the meditation. But I was also very shaken… and could not get the whole of the scene out of my head.
I had not spoken to my mother in two years. We had had a falling out… and even living in a small New England town… we managed to avoid each other. It was sad… but there seemed no way to repair what had taken place. The very next evening, however… my mother called. She was rather cold… and very blunt. “I have terminal cancer… I thought you should hear it from me before word got out on the street.” That was all she said…
After a few minutes of shock… I recalled the meditation… my grandmother’s words… and the flash of my mother’s face. What was I to do now… my mother was dying… and she wouldn’t even speak to me. And what was this strange thing that I experienced… was I going crazy… had it been real. And how the hell was I going to be alright… if my mother was about to die ???
