A Song for the Witches

wisewomen healers who were burned at the stake-
you who were stoned and tortured-
I mourn your fate-
witches, my sisters, millions through the years-
patriarchal fires be drowned with my tears.

through the full moon that shines on me as it did on you-
through the lunar cycles you watched as I do-
pass me your power and courage tonight-
to fight the oppressions you fought long ago.
pass me your power and knowledge to heal-
to heal all the people as you did long ago.

wisewomen healers who were burned at the stake-
you who were stoned and tortured-
I mourn your fate-

Past Death Experience

Sometimes I wonder if I will die soon and that’s why I feel so compelled to write about my life. When my daughter, Alana, was about four years old, she would often ask me if she could have certain of my possessions when I died. This happened often enough that I became suspicious that she had a psychic knowledge that I was soon to die. But 15 years later I’m still here.

When Alana was a baby I wondered if she would die soon. She seemed too perfect, too angelic, to live in this world. These fears came up for me even more strongly after I attended a stillbirth.

Part of my healing from that experience was to go to someone who did past life regressions. She led me into a past life where Alana had been my daughter. It was centuries ago in England, in a small village along the coast. We had settled recently in my husband’s ancestral place and then he had to go away for several long months in his job as a trader. The minister of the town church tried to seduce me. When I rebuffed him, he countered by accusing me of being a witch. Because I loved plants and intimately knew their ways, and also was a newcomer, some of the villagers believed him. Shortly thereafter he died unexpectedly and some of the villagers accused me of poisoning him. It was talked up until, one night they stormed our house. Alana and I fled to the upstairs loft where we were trapped as they set fire to our home with torches. Our spirits flew away together into the night, with the smoke rising from our burning house.

This is why both of use anticipated each others death at times of insecurity – me, after a stillbirth and her, beginning preschool.

Reunion With Mother Nature

I’ve reached an age where my own death looms as a real possibility. The Hospice volunteer training that I did had something to do with it. We talked about how helpful and useful it is to the family if you make your end-of-life plans ahead of time. And write them down.

For me, death is when that part of me which is nature returns to the Mother and that part which is spirit returns to the Father. Each deserves consideration. I spend time daily meditating, praying, and serving to prepare for my union with the Father. Yet how would the Mother most like to receive me? How do I prepare for physical reunion with Mother Nature? How might my body be of service to the ecosystem?

Definitely not embalmed and in a sealed metal box. This was designed to keep the body from Her – to avoid that final dissolution of the “me” with which we each have so long identified.—to deter decay, which is, in fact, the process of becoming one again with the Mother Earth.

For some time I’ve thought cremation might be my way, burning it all up. I envisioned my ashes later being sent up into the night sky with fireworks and exploding into one final exciting orgasm of light. Sent off with the “oohs” and “ahhs”. But now that seems a great waste of my nutrients—just burning them. Spectacular, yes. But why not pass on what I have in the form of physical nourishment to other living beings instead of wasting it?

Once I read a novel which told of necrophagia as a spiritual practice. They would respectfully eat the dead, to take their beloved’s physical self into their continuing bodies, to literally carry them with them in their very own cells. This might not go over with my dear ones. And I’m not sure how I could arrange it. Could I find a butcher willing to be prepaid to quickly skin and chop my flesh into eatable cuts? I think I’d like to be stewed with lots of vegetables and spices.

The Native American tradition of placing the body on an open, wooden platform, out in nature, leaving the dead to the elements and scavenging birds appeals to my airy nature. But this probably wouldn’t fit in with the health codes. And I’m sure that there would be objections from some of the neighbors, if not my husband, with the public display of my bones being pecked clean.

Maybe the waters could claim me, with a burial at sea. I love the ocean and the creatures swimming in that world. Snorkeling has been a great pleasure for me. So maybe I could be dropped off the side of a boat, wrapped in a simple silk cloth and go under to feed the fishies. But I’m living in landlocked Colorado.

So going back to Mother Earth may be about feeding bacteria in the earth to enrich the land Herself, putting my bare body into the ground and covering it with dirt. Would this be too brutal for my beloveds? I’d like a tree planted on my grave—maybe a peach tree. That would bring me into full juiciness and sweetness in their memories and their mouths.

Death is so full of questions.

Treated Like a Dog

What is it about people and their dogs now-a-days? I’ve lived with dogs and loved them. But to me they are not human. They are expressions of that uniquely loveable animal called dog. They are endowed with a spark of divinity, just as, I believe, all of creation is. They should be respected.

Yet, no one uses the phrase “treated like a dog” anymore. At one time that meant being left outside in the weather and being fed table scraps. Now, many dogs are treated as well or better than many children. I see doggie bakeries, doggie day care, doggie chemotherapy, doggie this and doggie that. It goes beyond respect.

What ethics are involved in providing more medical care to a dog than some people can get? My bottom line -- as long as there are people who are medically underserved I find it unethical to spend thousands on prolonging the life of a dog. Does it serve the dog to prolong its time of disability? Does it serve nature to try to cheat death? Does it serve society to spend money in this way? Does it serve the family to postpone facing the death of a loved one?

I believe in reincarnation. If we let the dog die, then it can be born again, maybe as a human. But alas, then the reborn one might have less food, less medical care and less attention than during its doggie life.

Blending

One day, while talking on the phone I paced around the house, doing thoughtless, little household tasks. Suddenly, right in front of me, in the kitchen, the blender turned itself on high, loudly whirring, with smoke spreading from the base. Wow! I quickly unplugged it.

Sometimes, being in a blended family feels like that useful appliance gone wild. The step family unit whirrs wildly into blending mode, short circuited into action by our fantasies of family. The blades mash our hard edges against each other, trying to smooth out our exotic flavors and textures originating in five or six different families into a new, hopefully pleasing melange.

We get mixed up. What are we? More than roommates, not quite a family.

Visits to the Land of Dementia- Searching for Words

We’re going around the table, practicing finding words and sharing something we like about ourselves. Most of the women spurt out some disconnected sentences, dementia limiting their fluidity in language. I try interpret their personal dialect and mirror it back. They nod or look at me with a puzzled expression.

“You mean you were a good mother?”
“You take good care of your husband?”

Maggie’s turn. She struggles and then, realizing her struggle, haltingly forms a new question for me. I mirror it back to her.

“You mean, can God understand your prayers when it’s hard for you to find words? God understands every language, even the language of silence. He knows what is in your heart and hears your prayers, even without words. God loves you.”

Tears well up in her eyes. “Thank you for telling me this. I know it’s true.”

Happy Birthday to Me -- Where Do I Come From?

I arrived on the ripples of desire that Mom felt over 50 years ago when she first met Dad, at that Wisconsin dance hall. “He was real cute!” Mom still says with an excited giggle.

I was sparked by the sparkling of snow on Norwegian hillsides my Grandma Moan skied to school and also by the beams of midnight sun in the village where my Grandpa Moan learned to speak his stubborn, Norwegian mind. Those Nordic lights became holograms twinkling in my father’s eye.

I also sprang from Grandpa Johnson’s Swedish immigrant parents whose first six children died before the age of 3. Grandpa Johnson came at the right time to survive, to marry three times and father three daughters.

I was born here by my Grandma Johnson’s spacious womb, where my mother gently gestated, when I was just half of me, a Terra egg in Mom’s fetal ovaries. Mom breeched her way out into the world and I was waiting for the right time when Dad’s Norway and Mom’s mostly Sweden met to form my physical geography.

Then the spirit song that I am, sang through that baby landform, to populate it with a personhood that came to America to live long and prosper and create new vistas for those who would follow.