Showing posts with label hospice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hospice. Show all posts

Sunday, June 18, 2023

TIME to SOAR my dear friend Raven


Flowers Sent on Memorial
September 22 2023
Designed by Karen Vickers 


             


                 Raven Cyprienne Jewel

    My magical meeting of both of these women occurred almost to my lack of awareness.. I had just moved to a small island in Puget Sound in Washington State. I knew no one and did not know if I would meet the compatriots I yearned to share my life with.

      Cyprienne called to tell me Raven died May 23rd morning in a voicemail. To my regret I failed that day to answer this message, as I do with many voicemails, a resistance, yet for me to totally understand.... until today..my many recent losses and my need to let go... again... 4 times this past year... 

     As I age my family of friends are diminishing each year. This circle grows smaller in diameter and will continue until it reaches myself at the center.

                           The BIG LET GO


      At this center is where we all will join each other again. Raven would have loved the direction my art was heading and most importantly was alongside my understanding of this circle of our shared SPIRIT. This light in the CENTER has grown only a bit brighter since she moved on ahead of us.



   I have a TOTEM creature as Indigenous Peoples have coveted to become a guide on their journeys. It is the Raven. We first met on my move from Vermont back to the NW and my family roots. They graced my yard as I parked and loaded the moving van and  I would find them around the van as I came out of the motels each morning!?
    RAVEN my friend was to be a companion too and to keep going.. "all is well" no matter where it leads us to, including my leaving the island with great heart ache. My last meeting on Anderson Island with Raven foreshadowed her decline in health, as was my own health from the lockdown at that time. 



We all are connected yet at the same time must fly our own pathway till we land on the spot we can claim as only our own . Raven made her choices and I honor those even if we no longer can be in view of each other. 



             Fly Away  Far As You Wil 


                   BE AT PEACE


Tuesday, September 13, 2022

90 Orbits around the Sun : Gerald "Jerry" Alexander


1932 - 2022

My dearest and oldest friend crossed the road
 for the last time.
 My variation of an age-old joke askes, "which crossed the road first, the chicken or the egg?" With age comes some wisdom? Answer: "At the same time!" He acknowledged that this may have been my best joke yet to create. He said he would share that one. "My master class was complete!"

We are all connected to each other and 
"No beginning, no end."
He carried all the many jokes with him that have lightened my load over the years.



We only talked of the most important issues for us both in the last months. Not to waste any time for laughter about our country's tribulations, the worlds future and our own destinies.
The uncertain climate and political future, he would not experience, was his main concern for his grandchildren, most of all.
His next journey was very dim and dark to him, until we agreed that
he was loved and gave love.
Albert Einstein came up and I asked him if he knew why he was a physicist? "To find out how God thinks." And now with our explorations we can take a selfie of our home.


  I concluded to see what God sees.


Mirror image of a nebula from Webb Telescope

As my Blogg askes about love and God, I reminded him LOVE is our creator shining through us to give to others. I let him know in one conversation that he did not have to believe in God. Jerrys love for me kept me on this earth longer at a time I could see no other way than to "Get Out". I said this was my proof.
Many times we shared about his loss of his wife and daughter and his failures.
 What he learned may have saved my life.


Jerry was a grateful man who loved to eat, and my last contribution was my rich banana bread. As a former cook and caterer having Jerry as a neighbor was a treat to share my culinary dishes.
 

Our last meeting, along with his two surviving sons, was short and yet very sweet.
When I received the news on Labor Day afternoon. I drove out to the oceanside and reminded myself that life is so precious. Any of my heartache will now remind me that love is the source of this pain and the joy in our relationship. 


Until our next joke together


My Prayer for Jerry

"Hear O Israel"




On the one year 
Memorial September 2023

I shared with his sons
"He is with me every time I laugh out loud".. 

















 

Saturday, July 9, 2022

Roads Past and Present and Future



It is time for me to arrive back to my journey, no matter where it leads or from where I already have emanated from in my previous 73 years.

July 4, 2022, turns out to be my time for revived personal independence and freedom. I again, after the lockdown, to write about my world , my mirror, in this Blogg. This does also include the many people I come in contact with on my travels and who I am grateful to for enlightening my foggy view at times. I fell in love with this wallpaper image I found and did not know why at first. This has been true for me as an artist to notice the attractions in my world around me without judgement. 
I create artwork from these attractions, a form of love. My timeless episodes of painting, sculpting, or writing always helps me, like a mirror, find my place of healing. I believe now it comes from the soul, always and forever. My soul speaks through my art, and I am so grateful to have been shown and encouraged as a young child. My few years of teaching art, 2012-2019, to all ages, was a gift to me. To watch others, trust their personal creations and become enthusiastic. {meaning full of the spirit within}



 
This photo of a road heading into a fog seems obvious it represents our futures, yet I also saw it include the road already traveled. 
My last couple of years has spurred on my desire to heal from my traumas, PTSD, and hopefully find 
a renewed zeal for my future, of which I can see clearer each day the final horizon looming.
The current healing therapy has been very intense and so much more advanced from my early days of the 70's. I feel blessed to have lived long enough to take advantage of these new treatments, yet my time here is limited. This foggy photo has reminded me it will be okay to let some of my past be forgiven and let it go from my view or memory or even understanding. 
The clear, in focus and divided road in the forefront of the image represents the HERE and NOW. This is where we stand each moment. We can choose to move forward with a willingness to embrace what comes in to view. A person, place, or event that will teach me what my heart yearns for. Life has been clearly a time for learning and most of all for making mistakes. A humbling experience yet the door we need to point us in the next direction, classroom so to speak. Most difficult for me has been the many meetings of persons on my highway. I have no doubt each has collided with me for a reason, for a chance to love and be loved perhaps? My many pets have at times been the most loyal with the gift of a being to express my love to too. Most important of all is To Love over being Loved.  Note either way for me has been full of great joy and greater sorrow...................
     This has happened may times, too many to count now.
I say thank you too All.

The foggy area engulfing the trees, road, view and even direction is also a blessing in disguise. Yes, because the foggy cold damp air is misleading.  My periodic boughts of depression have made me so fearful at times. After so many in my lifetime I named a dear pet "Blue Sky". There is always somewhere a place above my dim view to catch the sun and continue to play out my future. 
*******

A Footnote

On July 4, 2022 from 6-7pm Port Angeles' 4th parade passed by my window along that 2-lane street out my window. Early that morning I ran out to move my car off the main street parking spot to make room for the events to follow. It was the first one since Pandemic surge. I moved into the Lee Plaza Apartments a couple of weeks prior and was so impressed by the hour-long train of "Small town America" that passed before me. As I sat curbside right in front of Lee's doorway., I saw the bands, the politicians, animals, pets, floats, and of course the many bright red Fire trucks.
I was able to break away from my grieving for a short time, that I had moved from a home I loved so much. Anderson Island was a place I planted myself and I was blooming in so many ways. A small community where I could find a place for me to express myself to others. Art community, church fellowship and asked to be an honorary family member by my neighbor, to be another daughter, on her deathbed. " Her sunshine", I felt I was no longer invisible, instead like a bright light in her life. Her final conversation with me was a reminder of many others. Her feeling I was there so she could do this passage. "I cannot do this without you, "sunshine." and a declaration that I was to get on with my life and be happy.




 I was to light up the way? yet I knew it was her faith and her knowing her rebirth was soon to come. 
she was my sunshine too.
 September 5, 2018, 8:30 am

********

I am looking for inspiration and blessings each day I wake up now each morning. I found this beautiful Jewish Blessing written in  100 B.C.E. by the Qumran community outside Jerusalem. This is from a Hebrew translation of the Dead Sea scrolls.


A BLESSING of LUCID FIRE and SECRET GRACE

May the being of the Universe
breathe into you the light of blessing and ripeness, 
the fulfillment of health and balance.

May it protect you from
distractions brittle and bent
with a sphere of Lucid Fire.

May it enlighten
the heart of your passion
with the contemplation of living energy.

May it uncover the
hidden strength within you,
insight gathered from the eternal now. and

May it show you its face
of secret grace and silent refuge in a 
communion of deep 

PEACE.

********


in memory for Cocomoe


Portrait for Karen

























  

 

Thursday, April 2, 2020

All People [April 4 Post Script]

is the meaning of the word PANDEMIC. This Covid-19 has made us all equal all over this earth... the great EQUILIZER. Yet those who will be most vulnerable to dying in the next years are the elderly already in poor health, first responders in close physical contact with patients and under the emotional stress of seeing so much loss of life, the poor living in unsanitary forced communities like refugee camps, workers of essential businesses and government agencies providing basic supplies and even more of those who have chosen to disregard the lockdown, recommended face covering and distancing mandates. In these ways we are NOT EQUAL.



What has LOVE got to do with it?
What has GOD got to do with it?

I am determined not to have these questions render me speechless. I am praying for the guidance of the Holy Spirit to fill this posting with the comfort and wisdom I so need at this time. I sit here at my computer on this second day of the latest 30 day lockdown. Friends and myself asking , "What will happen, will we get through this?'. Friends with children to raise with an uncertain future, others in there 80's anticipating their lives ending soon without seeing their children again and husbands driving trucks across country or partners working as first responders.

I suddenly felt overwhelmed by the courage I have seen in most to face each day. As a person who has easily given up many times to almost let go of my life for good, I know now when I see this courage in others, that THIS is LOVE.



This disease will by its nature, in its finality for some, tear us all apart from each others side, from each others hands, arms of comfort, of direct expressions of love. Even in the last breaths for those dying they will be totally alone. As a hospice caregiver, this is breaking my heart for the dying and the families only able to say their last words over a phone held by a compassionate nurse. In other places in the world, poor populations do not have these blessings. They will pass away, where they lay, with family or not, infecting others at the same time.



 With LOVE as the guiding force of my life and how I strive to treat others in my life, I will continue to be in awe and humbled by this powerful teaching GOD has for us all. I am loved by my creator and protector , no matter "though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no[t] Psalm 23…..I am not alone and with this virus I am being shown my connection with everyone.


April 4 Post Script

I will turn 71 on April 5, 2020. I have lived a longer life than both my parents [56, 69]. In hearing this virus will be affecting how we live our lives for the next 2-3 years, I am feeling my vulnerability, with my age, being able to survive this pandemic. The vigilance on my part to do this will require me to maintain my mental and physical health and most of all my spiritual health.  I will be as vigilant as possible in my own environment. Most of all I promise  to keep close to my loving creator that awaits me, my hand is being held and I will be guided HOME.

The Lord is my shepard, he makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside the still waters, He refreshes my soul.....Psalm 23