Forever hold your penguin dear
“Death ends a
life, not a relationship.” – Jack Lemmon
“I
can’t take anything else,” we would say, watching the mama penguin being eaten
by a shark. And yet more came. And more. The fathers came back, the mothers
left for their 70-mile march toward food, the mothers returned to find their
partners and their children—except for some, those whose babies had died. Young
ones froze on the ice; the fathers’ cries guttural and deep, echoing; a mother
so in grief she tried to take another’s young. It was human in its complexity
and in its utter simplicity and depth of emotion.
On September 14, 2006, a young 20-year-old woman
named Meta died in a car accident at 10:36pm.
I didn’t know Meta; I had never met her. But I
knew someone who knew her well, and the circle of support that lifted Meta up afterwards also encircles me, and so I have
shared in this extraordinary story, even if at a distance. I am writing not
from that kind of personal loss that comes with losing someone close to you,
but from a place of deep and profound thankfulness for the lessons that her death
has brought me. It was too high a price to pay, but it has been paid and my
only way to honor her is this—listening to, heeding the lessons.
An outsider to this story, I have struggled to write about its impact on me since the weekend she died, since that day I received an email from my friend, Catherine, who was there in the room when Meta was born and there in the room for the precious hours and days after her death. Close friends with Meta’s parents, Catherine was one of four women (though I'm sure there were more I don't know about)—Catherine,
Sheila, Walker, and Caroline—who lifted up that family when they needed lifting, and in a
way that eased Meta’s transition from this earth, in a way that taught us all
how much death is a part of life to be embraced and held dear, in a way that
taught us all how not to run from death as we often do.
Meta had done her share of
partying in her teenaged years, a wild child of sorts. Acknowledging those growing
up years, her mother had given her a “Get out of Jail Free” card from a Monopoly
game, just in case. It was found in her wallet after her death, a talisman for
her in those years, a reminder of the love that shored her up, that always
stood behind her. The little angel wings on the man getting out of jail were
not lost on those who discovered it among her belongings after she died.
We laid her in the cabin on Mary Anne and Deb’s land, and slowly over
the next three days created an amazing sanctuary – flowers, candles, prayers,
meditation, tears, smiles, photos, whatever was brought by the many people who
came. The love is strong, and tangible. We kept a constant vigil – all day and
all night—for those three days. On Saturday – Day 2 - there was a circle of
over 100 people out in the meadow.
I am writing this early in
the morning of the day (Monday) when the funeral director will come back and we
will take the body with him to be cremated.”
It is a small cabin in a beautiful place, where the
body of Meta rested for three days, in front of which a celebration of her life was held a week later.
Deep in the mountains
of North Carolina, I believe the cabin was original to the property on which it
stand, an old space for human living, and all that comes with human living—the
joys of love, childbirth, breakfasts as a family, fights, sickness, dying, and
death, no doubt. Four walls can tell so
much; they are witness to our living. And in this cabin, generations have lived
and died, no doubt.
Wouldn’t your impulse be to run to her, hold her,
lift up your baby, catch her when she was falling? Can any of us know this
story without placing ourselves in it? And that is what her family did. They
brought her home, to catch her, to take care of her, to hold their baby.
The sacred places that our bodies move past and through, themselves sacred. And
yet, when people die, we move so quickly in the opposite direction, to have those
bodies picked up and cleaned and sanitized. Pema Chodron has written that “Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer
to the truth.” To look away, not at; to dispose of quickly. Dead bodies are
fearful things. We have lost sight, perhaps, of where we really are. When I
try to locate myself in space and in place, why am I always confined to this
space, this place? Am I my body, or is it merely a container for me? Why should
I run at its disease, its death?
Death is mystery. It is awful and transformational
and freeing and heartbreaking—it is also Truth and therefore fearful for many
of us, for me. But this young woman has changed that—what a gift I have
received from someone I never met, will never meet.
Before Entering
Meta’s Sacred Sanctuary:
Thank you for
being here.
Because no artificial embalming
techniques were involved, please be attentive to the following requests:
2) If you touch, please be very gentle to respect the integrity of
the physical body - so as to not disturb the tissues. We thank the body of Meta for housing her spirit.
Meta loves you all.
What we do in these moments defines us, somehow. I
have to face the facts that my urge is to run, as I wanted to run from Tycho,
and as I have run from other deaths.
What I found in this story was a group of people who so loved this young woman
that they walked solidly toward their fear and their not knowing. They had
never done this before; it was not a reflex of habit, but of sheer, pure love.
The body of beautiful Meta arrived in a body bag,
just as it had arrived at the hospital after the accident, not cleaned, not
sanitized, not made nice.
“The hardest part for me,” Walker said, “was being there when they took her
body out of the body bag. We had no idea what to expect.” Walker and a Buddhist
Sangha named Caroline were
the only two there then; they asked the people from the funeral home to help
cut her clothes off. “It was hard until I saw her,” Walker remembered.
“The soul is still nearby,” Walker said, "so we knew we wanted to hold a loving space and help the soul to leave."
“The first day, it was just a few of us,” she remembered. Her daughter, one of Meta’s best friends, was there. “We washed Meta and dressed her and my daughter helped put makeup on her. It was a real gift and privilege to be there, and my daughter really saw that."
"It felt so natural and
so right.”
As Walker put it, "hundreds of people all over the world were sending up prayers that her soul would be opened more and more to the light and love. On that Saturday night, we held community prayers in the cabin, praying for her soul. Most of my time was spent with Meta," she continued. "It felt like a gift."
“We put flower petals on her, she had a garland
of flowers for her head, she was beautiful,” Catherine recalled. “We played
music and sang ‘I’ll fly away.’ Her dad, tears streaming down his face, clapped
and kept time to the music. ‘Keep playing,’ he said, ‘keep playing.’” They sang
as they put the cardboard box into the furnace.
"We thanked the body for housing Meta,” Catherine
said, “and as we walked out of the building, we looked up and saw the smoke.”
It is a story so beautiful and so raw and so very
intensely real that it breaks my heart and heals it all at the same time. And
there is more. Just as the penguin story kept coming, there is more.
As it turns out, one of the women who was instrumental in this story, Walker, is the owner of the gorgeous retreat
center where we held our first 37days
retreat several weeks ago; it
felt circular to know that, to realize that after the fact, as if there was
something drawing us there to that spot. Another of the women, Catherine, was
one of the participants in that first retreat. Don’t try telling me that life
isn’t circular in some significant ways. We are tying bows around significances every day, I think. We just don’t
know it, or not yet.
In this world, we often have things fill in for
other things, often because the other things are too big, like an eclipse that
is too bright to watch directly—we need a deflection, a parallelism, of sorts,
to make them manageable: a rock for a burden, a sun for a yearning, the ocean
for wishes, a dove for a spirit.
Even the “get out of jail free” man from
the Monopoly game has wings, after all. That dove is imbued with much meaning,
as are all the things of our days. Sometimes, the sun shines just right on them
and we can acknowledge and own and see that meaning, sometimes not.
We are singularly unprepared for the death of someone so young—no matter their
age. It calls into question meaning and fairness and truth. What we can only
hope to do, I think, is move toward them with a heart so open to love that we
can embrace the whole of them, body and spirit, and help that spirit to fly
away from us so it can envelope us, so we can continue that relationship in a
different, deeper, more intangible and yet more powerful way.
In each day that her family lives, I imagine that Meta will be a pentimento in
those hours and weeks and months and years, just as my father
is in mine, turning and turning in their mouths and hearts and limbs like a dorodango
is turned, the silt of that dust of our ongoing days creating a precious, fine
shine in which we can see ourselves, and them.
Forever hold your penguin
dear, as Meta holds her mom, Mary Anne, in this photo. They
need not freeze on cold, hard ice as long as you are holding them, if not in
your arms, then in your heart, your mind, your own soul. Hold each other with the same grace in life as these beautiful people
have shown Meta in death.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Technorati Tags: death, dying, alternative funerals, Meta Bowers-Racine, March of the Penguins, imaginal cell, spirit, funeral, life celebration
Beautiful. I am crying. Thank you so much for sharing the story of this woman's, of Meta's (because I feel like she has blessed my life now), life.
You will never know how much I needed this.
I'll be donating something, I don't know how much I can yet, but SOMETHING to her dream.
Thank you.
Posted by: Mardougrrl | 27 November 2006 at 15:42
This is, simply, beautiful.
Posted by: John | 27 November 2006 at 15:43
at the beginning of this entry i was enjoying a cozy fondness for the close family you live in with children and parenting partner
...by the end of the entry the feeling of cozy fondness expanded and grew as the spiral process of life and death and rebirth does.
your writing inspires, teaches, humbles and comforts all at once.
Posted by: grace, Thomai Meta Hara | 27 November 2006 at 16:10
"We are tying bows around significances every day..."
Mr. Twain would call that "lightning".
Posted by: Michael Wagner | 27 November 2006 at 16:21
Wow. I am altered by your words.
When my parents died in a terrible crash, I wanted more than anything to hold their hands, to caress them once more, to say good-bye to the bodies that had held me through my life... But nobody would let me because the bodies were so disfigured. I never got to see them. I've never gotten over that.
My uncle just died a couple of weeks ago, and my Grandma, while so grateful to be able to be at his memorial service, couldn't get past the fact that they had cremated his body before she got there. She yearned to hold his body once more, to say good-bye.
I see it so clearly now... There is a deep universal need to walk towards the fear we feel in death, to hold the bodies, to embrace them, to say good-bye. This is the closure we need in order to turn our hearts to the new relationship we have with the beloved's spirit...
I am SO touched by this post. Thank you for sharing this story... from the bottom of my heart...
Posted by: m-s | 27 November 2006 at 16:33
Closure elsewhere (in another community). ...or at least a start.
Thank you, Patti.
Posted by: dan | 27 November 2006 at 19:26
This has touched me. I couldn't finish reading - my loss is still too new. We bathed and lotioned my sister and dressed her in a summer dress she would have loved. It felt like we participated in an ancient ritual. Even though it's been a year I'm still a little shaky, the grief comes in waves, but I know we honored my sister well.
Posted by: deirdre | 27 November 2006 at 20:32
We, too, were late to watch "March of the Penguins" and as I read the first part of this post, I thought, "Hmmm...that's funny...I only remember the beautiful parts of that film..." I'd completely forgotten how much tragedy was in the story, having been overtaken by the beauty that was carried in those penguin spirits. Patti, this is a remarkable post, and a deeply honoring one. I thought of my 17-year-old stepbrother who died as the result of a car accident...and how it was clear to me when he was in a coma as I watched the respirator move his body up and down that his spirit had already left its temporary temple (and was probably watching us, watch 'him.') Thank you for, once again, touching us in that deepest place...the place of truth. (I can't send much money, but please know that my small check will be sent with much love.)
Posted by: Marilyn | 28 November 2006 at 05:33
humbled...thank you...
Posted by: michelle | 28 November 2006 at 05:46
Just here to nod my head in agreement to what you and Ren have said about the grieving process - it IS a life-long thing. When I was fifteen I watched helplessly as my five-year-old brother was hit by a car. He died instantly. I often think of how his death has changed my life and altered my perspective on so many things. I sometimes write to him on his birthday - a letter or a poem - to remind myself of how much his short life mattered, and to mourn for the man that he never had the chance to become.
He would have turned 40 in October, and I turned 50 earlier this month. I will no doubt carry this heartache to my grave.
Posted by: Kim | 28 November 2006 at 09:00
thank you for sharing your thoughts and dreams with those around you. as a nonbeliever of many things, it is hard for me to believe that we all have spirits and souls, but reading your words make me doubt that. maybe i should open myself more, even if it is painful to bear the truth of life. the way you have described Meta's passing is absolutely beautiful. i feel like i was there, a part of the grief and love. the little time i spent at catherine and john's, on the same land as the ceremony, i could feel the deepness and soulfulness of the place. it is a special place that remembers.
again, thank you for the humbling moments in which it took me to read your passage. this will change my day and have insight into the future of those who read it.
Posted by: Dawn | 28 November 2006 at 10:33
As I sit with tears in my eyes, once again, from the beauty and depth of your post, my two and a half year old comes to the door of my office to say good-bye before a walk with his Nanny. Of course I hug him too hard, I pull him too close, I sniffle as he kisses me, and then gives me eskimo kisses, and then a hand shake, and a deep look into my eyes while touching foreheads - the whole little ritual he has of saying good-bye. And I can't bear the thought of that ever being final, and yet, somehow I hope that if it had to be, I would treasure each step, and honor each loving memory, and walk towards him as deeply loving as Meta's family did. Thank you - what a treasure you have become to me, your writing breaks me every time, and then gently puts me back together again, better than I was before.
Posted by: Liesl | 28 November 2006 at 10:34
What a stunning story and message. I so appreciate the statement, "Death ends a life, not a relationship." The story of Meta in life and death is so powerful - thank you for writing this. Much peace, JP
Posted by: JanePoe (aka Deborah) | 28 November 2006 at 10:59
Hi Patti,
That was profound. Meta was my son Kai's aunt. Thank you for remembering her in such a beautiful way.
Shawn
Posted by: Shawn Duff | 28 November 2006 at 11:54
Patti-
Thank you for this post and Meta's story.
I would have to very much agree that the death of a person doesn't end the relationship as much as it changes the nature of it.
I'm writing a post on my blog that will link here.
Dan
Posted by: AdriftAtSea | 28 November 2006 at 13:06
Patti and all,
You all get it. What Meta wants us to know, how she wants us to treat each other, why she is, and each of us can be, an Ambassador of Love.
Daddio
Posted by: MIchael Racine | 28 November 2006 at 23:28
Dear Patti,
What a blessing and what a gift to get to be touched by the life of glowing Meta, who is "on fire from the inside out" (always, now). How good that her light found its way through you with your tender, appreciative, fearless way of touching the deepest true places of our lives. And blossoming too in all of the beautiful, moving/moved, comments above.
I love the observation that "death ends a life, not a relationship" and find it fitting my life exactly, too. When my first-born died at 12 weeks old, there was a moment when I realized that the relationship I had with him before birth and after death would be so much longer than his brief lifetime. While the thought was too stunning at the time, in the years since then my sense of him has become, as you describe, something precious and shining, and comforting, too.
Thank you for all the ways you invite our hearts to break open in love and beauty again and again.
Posted by: christy | 29 November 2006 at 01:21
As always, thank you for your words and your insight.
Posted by: Joy R | 29 November 2006 at 02:52
Having known Meta was such a gift, as was losing her. This experience of her physical death has transformed my family into one of awareness rather than avoidance. We now talk about the next loved parent, sibling, or friend who will leave us and face it without too much fear. WE LOVE YOU META!
Helena and Marc.......
Posted by: Helena | 29 November 2006 at 17:16
words cannot express. i am so utterly, completely, moved i feel transported to another dimension. i will write once the transformation - my new skin - fits a bit better.
patti - thank you.
Posted by: bee | 29 November 2006 at 21:38