April 2002

This is a strange month.

My sister calls from the Netherlands. Last time I talked to her she was still in California. She stayed in LA a few days visiting friends and then drove back down to San Diego to pick up some of Mom's ashes. While she was pouring the ashes into her bottle a snap fell out. She was a little freaked because she realized the only place it could have come from was Mom's hospital gown. Now she is calling to tell me that when she got back home to the Netherlands she found the same type of snap laying on the front steps of her house.

A few days later I am walking home form the Post Office with a package that my brother sent me. It holds our mother's ashes and as I walk I am very conscious of this fact. When I get home I open the package and pull out a round metal candy box and slowly open it. Inside is a carefully sealed gallon size plastic storage bag containing my mother's ashes. When I see this I loose it and sit down sobbing. My husband comes in the room and after seeing the ashes walks over and hugs me. After I stop crying I get up and transfer some of the ashes into the Bencharong bowl I bought and my husband puts some silicone gel around the edge of the lid and we seal the bowl. I will take the ashes left in the candy box to Denver for my youngest sister.

I finally decide the time is right to do the aura cleansing ritual LL has given me. I no longer can live feeling like I have been ripped in two. I lay the crystals I bought in a circle on my living room carpet and then pick a CD to listen to while I am lying down. LL said to choose something that makes me happy so I pick Snoopy's Jazz Classiks On Toys, a collection of songs played on toy musical instruments. After I start the CD player I step into the crystal circle and lie down. The instant my head touches the floor I am over come with a feeling of deep sadness and start crying. I am crying so hard that my tears are running down the sides of my face in two tiny streams. I am crying tears of sadness, tears of grief, tears of loneliness, tears of loss. I sob and sob. I am so deep into this that I no longer hear the CD playing.

After a while my tears ease and I come back to my surroundings. I can hear the CD playing and I start laughing in delight when I realize the song playing is Put On A Happy Face.

Gray skies are going to clear up, put on a happy face.
Brush off the clouds and cheer up, put on a happy face.
And spread sunshine all over the place, just put on a happy face.

As I lie there listening to the song I feel totally relaxed. I am supposed to stay in the circle for at least a half hour but after 20 minutes it starts getting harder and harder for me to lie still. I sneak a look at the clock after what I think is five minutes but the clock hand has only counted off 30 seconds. I fight the urge to stand up and step out of the circle. I decide to sit up, close my eyes, and concentrate on my breathing in the hope that this will calm me and make staying in the circle bearable.

I breath slowly and deeply until the floor under me softens and I sink down into it like it was a cushion. As I drop down I am aware of the sun warming my face. Part of me knows this is not possible because I am not sitting where sunlight can reach me but still, l I tilt my head back to bask in its warmth. I know I am standing on a mountain top and can feel a slight wind pushing against me. I'm sure if I open my eyes I will see that I am standing on the mountain in the Pyrenees where the statute of the Virgin Mary is. I keep breathing deeply, enjoying the almost quiet that surrounds me. The only sound is the wind as it passes by my ears. Then, I can see the mountains around me, the bright blue sky above, and the road winding it's way up the mountain toward me.

I realize I am not standing next to the statue; I am the statue. No, the statue and I are one. As I think this I no longer feel ripped apart but whole, like a double exposure that has merged into one solid image. Slowly what I see fades into the darkness behind my eyes and I come back into the room where I sit. I open my eyes and look at the clock; it has been exactly 30 minutes since I stepped into the circle.

Later in the month I am working at the town library. It is a Saturday, one hour before closing, and I am the only person in the building. I am sitting behind the counter reading when I hear a soft "womp" sound behind me. I turn to the sound but see nothing so I get up and walk around the counter. There in the middle of the floor is a book. I reach down, pick it up, and see that it is a copy of Bill Bryson's book, Notes From A Small Island; his book about his travels around England. This copy is the one my mother, who was an Anglophile, gave to the library.

Since I had walked across the spot where the book was laying about 15 minutes before I can't understand how it got there. Maybe it fell off the top of a bookcase. I stand the book up on one of the bookcases and tip it over so that it lands on the floor. Not even close to where it was laying. I repeat the experiment on all the bookcases and each time the book lands nowhere near where I found it.

Is this my mother's doing? First my sister finds that snap on her doorstep and now a book that my mother gave to the library drops out of the air and lands in a spot where it should not be. Mom, are you trying to tell us you are still here?