Blessed by Spirits
I have had three visits from the spirit world. Some might say they are “vague imaginings” born of grief and loss. But I know vague imaginings and these were different. In each case I had a soul connection with the spirit in question while they were living so it is not so strange that I would connect with them in death.
The first one happened when I was on my first trip to Europe at age 22. I was off to visit the tiny peasant town where my Grandfather was born. It was a tiny mountain town in the province of Enna, reachable by train and then a long bus ride up the mountain. The name, Valguernera Caropepe. I was in the train station in Sicily and an old Sicilian man looking very much my Grandfather’s type— short, grey-haired with a warm smile— saw me and started singing the words to Stormy Weather. I turned to look at him stunned. When I was a little girl I spent lots of time with my grandparents in Larchmont. Grandpa and I were inseparable. We danced and sang to music on the Victrola or his mandolin by day, had our evening cocktail together in the late afternoon (a Shirley Temple for me, Whiskey Sour for Grandpa and I got his cherry). And, at nights in summer, we went for walks catching fireflies, or sat together in the bedroom, each at our own window, in the silence of our thoughts, watching the neighbors in the courtyard below. Even as a little girl, I could feel that there was something special about the quiet we shared and that we were always connected. Physically, emotionally, and I like to think, spiritually. I took his death very hard. About Stormy Weather— whenever I walked into the living room where Grandpa was inevitably to be found smoking a pipe or reading, he would sing: “Here Comes Stormy Weather.” I looked into the smiling eyes of this man in the Sicilian train station as he sang the lyrics of the song Grandpa used to greet me with and I saw Grandpa for a few seconds. And then I had to leave to catch the train to his town.
The second time I had a brush with the spirit world was when my father died. Dad had been sick for three years battling colon cancer. The end was near and I visited the hospital often but had just taken a new job so was not at the hospital every day as, had I been stronger emotionally, I would have liked to have been. Again Dad and I were very close. Not like Grandpa. But in temperament and looks. My father married a Sicilian and I was the only one of the three children who looked like him with blond hair and light skin. And I was shy and quiet and liked writing and music like Dad did and didn’t like the screaming and yelling that was much a part of our family life. Dad didn’t either. Dad and I were sympatico— even to the point that my mother was sometimes jealous, though she had no cause to be. A few days before Dad died he went into something like a coma. His eyes were closed and he was mostly unresponsive. My Mom in an effort to get a response, teased him (Dad was the tease in the family) one warm November day, one last time, and told him it was snowing outside. (It wasn’t.) Dad’s eyes fluttered and he opened them and looked out the window and presumably saw it was not snowing. A few days later Dad died. I was at work in the ladies room at the time. I remember the exact moment. I knew Dad had died. I went back into the office. Moments later came the phone call. I had the moment down right to the minute. I called my fiancé to go to the hospital and see Dad before they took his body away. And then I stood on the street corner waiting for him, frantic with grief and stunned despite all the time we had to “prepare” for Dad’s death. Suddenly I felt a zephyr pass through me on the corner. Dad’s spirit. No mistaking it. No, for sure it was Dad. And then it began to snow. The snow only lasted a few minutes. A sign. Dad, a teaser, gave his last tease, for the benefit of my Mom. I told later told her there were a few moments of snow.
I didn’t get a message when my Mother died. We had quarreled the last night she was alive. My husband and I had done some fancy footwork to grant her last wish— we had gotten her home so she could die in her own house. We had been her main caretakers and it had taken a terrible toll on us. And though I didn’t get a message from Mom when she died, I’ve got her inside of me. Today even clearer than when she was alive, I hear her telling me how to handle the problems of life. (I still don’t always listen.) And, we inherited my Mom’s ten-year old dog— a miniature poodle, named Ko-ko. Ko-ko came to live with my husband and me and we loved her to pieces in our childless marriage. We never expected her to survive losing Mom (especially after losing Dad a few years before) and losing her home, but she adjusted. When she lost an eye to my aunt’s cat we again never expected her to pull through, but she survived. She drank up love like a parched plant and we were only too happy to give it to her. And then she developed Cushing’s disease and a cataract in her good eye, arthritis and a bad heart— but she kept on going with the spirit of a puppy. I almost believed she would live forever— even when she was diagnosed with cancer. But she didn’t. And in October, her 17 and ½ years came to a close. She had an appetite up until the last— eating dinner the night she died. Ironically it was a stroke or something she ate that impaired her breathing. It was too late to go to our vet. We decided to take her in first thing in the morning to be put down by the vet she knew and loved. I stayed up through the night with her trying to help her make the transition but she clung to life. And in the morning we brought her in to be put to sleep. Our tears were joined by a tear streaming down Dr. Howell’s face. I think he had begun to believe in her immortality, too. He gave her the shot. She reared up a moment and then was gone. We had made plans to meet my aunt and uncle that day. We could not break the date— it was too late to even call. They were coming to New York from Connecticut. I just couldn’t go. My husband, God bless him forever, went to meet them with out me. I went home to rest a bit, collect myself and then meet them later. I was at home on the bed doing Reiki, an ancient Tibetan form of energy healing, on myself. My eyes were closed but I was wide awake. And I “felt” Ko-ko. She was running in a white field filled with white flowers and then going towards a tunnel. I was with her at her eye level close to the ground and all around was pure white and she was very happy and excited. Running to be reunited with my parents. And I felt profoundly blessed by her presence as I did in life, for she had a beautiful soul. Instead of visiting us in spirit, my mother left us an angel.
I have longed for further contact with these three souls and with my Mom but the longing goes unfulfilled like so many desires in life. I am indeed lucky to have had these three visits. They are high up on the list of treasures in my life, whispering of a life beyond this one. Treasures too ephemeral for touch, treasures locked away in the depths of my soul.
Good Grief
It is Springtime and I am doing my annual Spring cleaning– maniacally giving away old and unused clothes and items that no longer serve or never did. Some things I remember as I go through the linen chest– others are totally forgotten as to origin and use. And then it hits. In the corner of the chest is a neatly folded piece of green check cotton cloth. I immediately know its source. It is the cloth my Mother used to make curtains for her kitchen. Mom was always making curtains. When my husband and I were married she made curtains for our first apartment. Seeing this green check cloth brings me back to a hard period in my life when seeing my Mother was my only joy… we are sitting at the table in her kitchen having tea and laughing. It is a happy meeting… So many years ago.
And now with the sun shining and the birds singing and fresh air wafting in through the windows I am struck with a clutching stomach of grief. Tears that feel they could go on forever when I was in my fifties now are gone some 20 years later. Loss has hit again since then… a few times and those times are more sore. I let the sun beat down on me to soothe the memory.
Grief is not just a human phenomenon. Elephants will stand over the dead body of one of their herd, in some way showing respect for the departed spirit. And I think of examples close to home. The doe we saw one day going over to the dead body of a fawn on the side of the road. Or the baby rabbit we saw crossing into the middle of the road where a large mass of flesh with fur lay. And even closer to home– my husband and I adopted my Mother’s dog once Mom got too sick to care for her. Ko-ko had stayed with us many times in our house and loved being there. We never took her to see Mom again because the parting was too hard on both of them. We did take her toys though, from Mom’s house one night, and put them in our bedroom, among them a corroded rubber Santa. We were sitting at dinner that night and Ko-ko went into the bedroom. We heard a blood-curdling yelp and then whimpering. We went in and found Ko-ko with her old Santa in her mouth. The Santa was her version of my green check curtain. A stabbing wound and tears.
Clearly animals feel grief. Some die of grief just like humans. Grief binds us together, human and animal, and perhaps provides the special appeal of the new life in Spring. Yet when Spring inspires happy faces and a general feeling of well-being, and flowers are blooming everywhere, the contrast can be cruel. As T.S. Eliot so eloquently put it: “April is the cruelest month.” But once it is May the new life has settled in and we can go out in the yard and bake in the sun– the universal giver of life. And then with June… “And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days…” (James Russell Lowell)
We humans have no prerogative on grief. Our lives entwine with happy moments and tragic in this vast web of existence, and Spring and loss are just two facets of possibility.
For contributions to Michael’s Makindye Foundation providing a home for street children in Uganda click on the link below. Michael and Angie appear in a photograph below the link.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/sustainability-support-for-the-makindye-foundation
The Line is Dead
She’s finally gone
after fighting for life for
6 months of painful half-life
and multiple causes of death.
*
Gone is my last link
with Grandma and Grandpa
and happy days in Larchmont,
Grandpa playing the mandolin,
me dancing,
and Grandma cooking
unimaginable treats.
Happy days in Larchmont,
the Larchmont one weekend
Aunt Nina and I revisited
with our respective spouses
and cried tears of nostalgia.
*
Aunt Nina died Saturday,
the last of the LaMannas,
the aunt who knit the best-ever
Christmas stockings for
my brother and sister and me
which I still drag out every year.
The aunt who let me
play with her jewelry
in her blue bedroom
in Larchmont
with light that slid in
through the venetian blinds
and danced a jitterbug
atop Renoir prints,
with twin beds
covered in puff-ball bed spreads,
kept so clean by Grandma and
Aunt Nina wanting to sleep
and me pestering her to play.
*
Aunt Nina took me home once by taxi,
back to the city I hated
when I was sick.
She nursed me on the ride
And said “hang in there”
and held my hand
as I said to her a month ago
as she lay shriveled into a ghost
of her former self.
*
Gone are the days
of spaghetti and meatballs,
Arancini and sugar cookies,
wine and mandolin,
chewing gum in the desk,
watching at the windows
with Grandpa, as evening
fell all around.
Days of Big Grandma Castiglione
in her light-filled, white-tiled,
lace-curtained, one-room apartment,
with holy water font
and the smell of steam
in the yellow kitchen.
*
Gone are the days of
visiting Nina as she raised
her two “adopted angels”
as they were called,
and, who, with my uncle, she crafted
into two magnificent children
and later had four grandchildren
who adored them both.
Larchmont repeated.
*
Gone are the days of
visiting Aunt Nina in Kent, CT
and later in Danbury,
now much older and
with my husband whom
Aunt Nina and Uncle Ray
welcomed with open arms
and grew to love,
my husband of almost 24 years
who never knew this love as a child
and so does not know its loss.
*
Gone are the days
of a phone call
every few weeks,
Aunt Nina always seeming
happy to hear my voice as
she exclaimed “Ellen!”
as we talked about problems:
difficulties in the best of marriages
the downhill spiral of my Mom
after Dad died,
Nina giving support while
my husband and I cared for Mom
during her difficult path to death,
Aunt Nina listening to me recount
the downhill spiral of my brother
as he spent 3 years
dying of lung cancer.
And we talked of our
problems with anxiety
and later of her sorrow and fears
as her friends were dying
and she was fighting Parkinson’s,
bravely shouldering through every day.
*
Gone are the days
of pasta salads and olives
and prosciutto and provolone
as Aunt Nina and Uncle Ray
visited our little barn upstate,
where we laughed and laughed
in the Memorial Days sunshine.
*
Gone gone gone
my Italian heritage,
the last of my blood elders.
Aunt Nina was there
For 63 years,
All of my life
and all I can do
is cry
and try
to imitate
her admirable character.
For the Lord giveth and
the Lord taketh away
but why such pain
when he taketh away?
*
Because love grew
year by year
visit by visit
phone call by phone call.
I did thank her,
before the end began,
in a foresightful note,
telling how great an aunt she was.
God put the thought in my head,
and for that I am grateful,
for now it is too late
for now the line is dead.
MOONSIDE 
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