News from Jules | 11.13.2023 | I Am That I Am
As I walked out of the hospital just over a week ago, I started thinking of people to text with the good news. Those who had been especially close on the journey with me and would be just as elated to hear that for the first time in three years my uterus and ovaries looked “normal”—without enlargement, polyps or cysts—during my first ultrasound and annual exam since abdominal surgery a year ago.
Alas, the scans don’t show whether my body is also healing the severe Endometriosis they found.
But still, it was a big deal.
One of my longest friends and biggest champions immediately came to mind. And then, I felt the twinge of pain in my chest. Like salt in a wound, I remembered that I couldn’t text her. She died. Two months before to the day and at that very same hospital in Portland, Ore. while I was on my road trip.
The dull ache was nothing like the day when I first learned the news. I remember it so vividly. The surprise amplified the immediate sadness and pain.
I had just stepped out of the car in shorts and a tank top at Ghost Ranch, N.M. into the warm mid-September sun on the cusp of fall. I noticed a couple of texts pop up on my iPhone from a close friend in Portland.
As I swiped the text open, I couldn’t believe my eyes. There was a photo of an obituary from the Sunday Oregonian newspaper and the message:
“Is this your Virginia?”
The tears that swelled in my eyes and plopped down onto my screen said both Yes and Noooooooo! at the same time.
Two weeks before I departed Bend, Ore. in late July, a text informed me that Virginia had a stroke and Life Flight brought her to Portland for treatment and rehab. She couldn’t have visitors when I passed through Portland in mid-August, so I sent flowers instead. She was only 78 and otherwise very healthy, so I figured she’d bounce back over time. I had another “get well” card ready to go out in the mail the day I learned the news. What I didn’t yet know was that after rehab, she was moved to hospice before she passed on Sept. 3, 2023. That was over two weeks earlier.
My heart melted.
Right there under the clearest cobalt sky that knows death as intimately as life.
I stumbled to the nearby skeleton of a tree, sat in the embrace of its outstretched branches that curved down to the ground, and sobbed. Every ounce of love poured from my melted heart and out of my eyes until I thought there was nothing left.
Out in the middle of the desert, with just a few other tourists milling about, I felt so alone. And relieved. How could anyone share in my grief?
Just as every relationship is unique, so is every death. There is no formula for grief. Just grieve. As deeply as tolerable. As painfully as necessary. And as soon as possible.
This I knew.
So, in a daze, I continued exploring Ghost Ranch Retreat and Education Center by following the winding, dusty trails past adobe cottages, classrooms, and art studios leading me deeper into the mesa until I came upon a labyrinth. What more beautiful place could I be to fill my whole body and soul with sorrow?
“[The labyrinth] is a very ancient symbol of how to come back to one’s center. It looks complex, like mindfulness, but it’s a very simple pathway,” said Veronica Lynn Clark to the TODAY Show on NBC. She symbolically reassured that it’s okay if not everybody wants to go right to the center since there’s a lot of stuff there.
I invited the entirety of our 27-year friendship into my present as I slipped off my Birkenstock sandals and took a deep breath in before entering the spiral in a walking meditation. As I exhaled and walked several steps forward between the rocks and crystals lining the path, I felt the smooth dust under my toes. I smelled the sweet scent of lilac caught in the breeze. I heard the chirps of birds nearby.
And with every inhale, I cried as I saw another forgotten memory come forth.
From sitting on her counseling couch in Portland hugging a throw pillow during college as we dug deeper into my childhood.
To wandering around her Manzanita beach house in awe, where she’d sent me on my first week-long solo retreat when I was 26 (and let me go over and over again for a decade).
To sitting on the floor of her living room in my 30s doing Ten Percent Happier morning mantras together after she moved to Bend in retirement and got me started with mediation.
To reading the latest pile of books she shared when we met up for a “cuppa” in Sisters, Ore. this spring before I turned 41, including Real Life: The Journey from Isolation to Openness and Freedom by Sharon Salzberg, The Choice: Embrace the Possible by Dr. Edith Eger, and Unleashed: Get Healthy, Stay Wild, Be Free by local Bend naturopath Dr. Michelle Mattingly.
As if every single exchange in our relationship—not only in person, but over the phone, in a letter, through text messages or email, and energetically across our long distances—was cataloged neatly in my heart and readily available for instant recall.
Even though I lost a mentor when I was 16 and my Mom when I was 20, I haven’t experienced enough death to know whether this happens with everyone we lose or only those whom we’ve had the most presence with, baring our souls and stories, helping each other expand and contract into our truest selves.
Virginia and I walked this spiraling path toward enlightenment together, ultimately understanding our lives to be impermanent, imperfect, and impersonal. But important. This is the premise of the Hindu mantra: Sohum.
I am that I am.
I am that
That I am.
Sohum symbolizes how “we are all connected to the universal energy that is constantly supporting and nourishing us,” wrote Melissa Eisler in her Mindful Minutes blog post, “The Power of So Hum Mantra.”
Just so, I am always connected to Virginia.
See photos of us on Instagram.
But I am still mourning the loss of her physical presence in my life. Especially as I am reminded of her everywhere I go here in Bend and constantly feel that twinge of pain in my chest.
Because I miss this soul mate so much.
May you feel it all this week.
Love,
Jules