Remembering Lyn

My meditation walk is covered with yellow and brown leaves but the centers of energy around which I traverse can be brushed off.  Today I will walk in honor of a friend who left this earth on Sunday.

She was very tall and skinny and had been on life-sustaining, cancer abeyance medications for 4 years.  Her struggle to stay alive was coupled with her struggle to continue to work despite dizzying side effects. A gentle soul who cared deeply about ecology, peace and her daughters, we shared several threads of connection: the people we knew and living locations although at different times. Lyn was the Volunteer Coordinator at the hospice where I worked for some time and always tried to offer ideas for working with children since she had run creative programs for little ones for many years.

About a month ago, I visited Lyn in her home. She was still trying treatments but her body was rejecting even hydration attempts. She could no longer drive but she had many friends providing help.  She wanted to clear the energy in her home and we developed an affirmation for her to hold with intent. She wished to release negative thinking and ask for what she needs.  I gently suggested that she ask to receive whatever this was, including peace.  I lit sage and wafted it all over her home, upstairs and down, into nooks and corners, over boxes, books and bedclothes.  Lyn sat on her couch with her eyes close, desperate to hold on to the thinning cord of life that she still had.  With sympathy and love, I made her lunch and then gave her a cardboard circle and some pastels.  She made herself a shield with a golden center, black lines jagging out of the circle and blue lines of peaceful energy pointing in.  Then she said she was tired and I left.

Last week another former colleague and I went to see Lyn in the hospital.  We gave her a stone engraved with the word Peace and another that said “One Day at a Time.” She clutched them both and said she was scared but she also had what she needed – her two daughters had returned to be with her.  Lyn finally decided to enter Hospice on Friday.  My colleague felt that she would be more comfortable there and would probably feel better for a week or two; I thought I would have time to visit her again. But we did not know what was happening inside her.  Perhaps having finally accepted that death was near, she relaxed and let go.  Lyn floated into peace on Sunday.  She was a gentle, loving person and now, she has melted into that peaceful energy that surrounds us.

Today I will walk in Lyn’s memory rather than attend her funeral. I am glad I got to see her, hug her frail body, one more time before she left.  Relax, Lyn. You’ve been holding on for a long time.  You deserve this peace.