Reflection on Keepers 2- Relying on Spiritual Connection

Finding spirit in many places

Florence and Janie (the Keepers’ whose stories I have already told on this blog) place their religious beliefs at the center of how they navigate life. I wished that I had had a religious path to follow, but my experience as a secular Jew didn’t lead me to traditional religion. My parents held few religious beliefs. I went to Jewish Sunday school, but my memories of it are playing with other children and going to parties, rather than religious or spiritual teaching. My great-aunt Fan was a member of the temple, and on high holidays I went to temple with her. I enjoyed the music, but I found little meaning in the services. I had assumed that I had no spiritual life to speak of and didn’t consider the possibility of finding solace in any religious practice. I had to string together a series of childhood and adult experiences with dreams to which I had paid little attention in order to develop my sense of a spiritual presence in my life that I might turn to when in need.

As a child, I was aware of a world beyond what I could see. I believed that this world was filled with angels who held it together. I spoke to no one of this world and both feared and cherished it. One morning, I awoke early and went into the living room on my way to my parents’ bedroom. I saw a group of transparent figures made of gauze. I believed that they were the angels preparing the day. Irritated by my intrusion, they shushed me back to my room. These images are still strong in my mind; they are perhaps only the magical thinking of childhood, but they are strangely connected to adult experiences of a world that I sense, but cannot know.

I have dreamed several times of entering a house with seven rooms. In each room a teacher who looks like one of my childhood angels teaches me a lesson of life. I go from room to room until in the last room I am asked to dance a dance of life. I must dance from my left, dance from my right and then dance from my center. As I dance this dance, I dissolve, not in fear, but in celebration.

The most powerful spiritual experience I had occurred on the day that my husband Ron turned off his ventilator and died. On that day Ron and I sat side-by-side in our living room still wondering what had happened to our life. We were closer than we had been in years. We held hands and listened to the music that Ron had selected for the day. We were surrounded by the yellow tulips he had requested. When the time came to turn off the ventilator, we were joined by our daughters, a close family friend, Ron’s nurse, and his doctor. Ron wanted to die naturally without tubes or drugs. The doctor, who after months of conversations with Ron had agreed to his decision to turn off the ventilator, first removed Ron’s gastrostomy tube and then the tube attached to the ventilator. As soon as the tubes were gone, Ron’s face changed. His strained, frozen look was replaced with his handsome face that I knew so well. I suddenly found myself breathing more deeply as if my life depended on it, or as if I was birthing Ron’s death. My daughters, my friend, and I held onto each other as we watched Ron die. His body didn’t move when he died, and yet we felt him leap out of the wheelchair in which he had been imprisoned. My daughter Sarah later told me that she had held us all down because she was afraid that the energy in the room would lift us away. She said she held me tightest because she thought that I might want to leave with her father. She wasn’t wrong. I felt as if I were there and not there and that part of me was taken up in the energy and light that was released when Ron died. From that day on, I knew that death was nearby. It is not a frightening thought, and I imagine that if I could look a bit further over my shoulder, or turn around more quickly, I could see Ron next to me.

I don’t need to understand or to explain these phenomena. I allow myself not to know, and yet to trust in something beyond what I know. Mostly I try to be in relationship to this world that I only sense. Surprisingly, I now find myself more interested in celebrating Jewish holidays and practicing Jewish meditation. When sitting quietly late at night, childhood Hebrew songs come to me, and I sing out loud. I believe that prayer takes many forms.

Florence’s and Janie’s family stories and religious beliefs gave them a compass that showed them where to look for relief and what to do to prepare for what was to come. Each of us can choose what we will take from the Keepers in our lives. Perhaps mapping three generations of our family might lead us to family stories that we have forgotten. The Keepers may remind us of times at the dinner table when we heard stories of family pride. They might encourage us to tell our family stories and to use them as our guides. Or, as Janie did with her Stella Maris group, the Keepers might encourage us to look outside of family to find others to stand with us when we are afraid. They also challenge us to seek a world of spirit, even if we do not have a traditional religious path to follow. They encourage us to trust our instincts and to reach for a sense of connection beyond ourselves.

If my reflections remind you of a story about yourself or someone else send it to me so that I can post it here and share it with others.