“I don’t know how this story will end, but I do know in my heart of hearts that this Earth Journey is precious, heartbreaking, joyful, deep, rich, terrifying, traumatizing…and ultimately about how wide we can keep our Heart’s doors open while proclaiming ‘YES!’ to it all. Love Earth, Love those around you, Love the animals, the trees, your pets, love flowers, food, Love These Times. Open wide the doors!” ~ writer/therapist Dawn Kirk
I purposely left my smart phone in the car. The prism was captured in memory only.
Restorative. It’s a buzzword these days. Restorative justice. Restorative Yoga. Today, Grace and I went on a restorative picnic. Up the nearby Natchez Trace Parkway I drove, claiming a spot on a small patchy grass summit where we munched our respective salad and sandwich from the nearby bakery/restaurant. While the ants furiously feasted on the crumbs from Grace’s cupcake, I laid back and restored by watching the clouds speed glide in a tarheel-blue sky. The sun played peek-a-boo for a good bit, and at one point, formed a wide prism. I’m convinced it was Melissa.
Melissa Hart, a true light with a larger-than-life personality, died a sudden death yesterday after an equally sudden onset of cancer. It was the third life in my larger circles of family and friends that left this plane. Within two weeks. My cousin, a whip-smart attorney, ended his year-and-a-half struggle with cancer. Then a mother-friend of two decades-plus, ended her life, leaving a young adult daughter and a teen son, both on the autism spectrum. Melissa, too, had a loved one with autism, and left behind a blended family, including the very young child she brought into the world with her new-ish husband.
Kathy, my cousin’s wife, journaled via text every. day. of her dear husband’s known life with cancer. She’d remind the two dozen of us lucky recipients with missives about the importance of being grateful. Take nothing for granted and to hold tight the ones you love, she frequently reminded. We read many of these texts through messy tears, feeling heart break while also receiving the magical blessing of witnessing how much love there was between them as a couple and for the many people in their orbit. Alan Cochran was a gracious man. Plus, dadgum, thigh-slapping funny, too.
Upon her diagnosis, Melissa, a former, local, popular radio host, started vlogging on YouTube. That’s how I learned she was sick. I saw an emaciated version of this once vibrant woman updating folks on her “cancer journey” and eagerly sharing via Facebook posts what she was learning. Her body was weak and weaker. Sometimes rallying a bit. Her spirit, no matter, strong. Her messages were hard to watch. When I learned she died, I googled some of her more recent videos, here, then one on depression and one from her hospital bed filmed the day before she died unexpectedly.
Today, in a Facebook post, one of her former work peers wrote about telling Melissa the first time she met her that she was a “wackadoo.” I replied that before reading her words, that I still thought/think Melissa was a wackadoodle. Her personality was BIG. And effusive. But, there’s a lot of things that Melissa got in life. I was there with her in many respects. I didn’t question her spiritual beliefs. Just her over-the-top delivery. As I watched her gasp for breath during these videos I worried judged that she was consuming precious life-energy to vlog her thoughts. But. Melissa got it.
She got it that her cancer was her teacher. Those words will offend many, and I get it. I also get what Melissa was saying. I’m part messenger here. Don’t shoot me. She knew that she was experiencing cancer to learn and to teach. And she was teaching folks that she had a choice to react and to label or to observe. “Be the observer,” she said pointing a bony finger at the smart phone filming from the tray table of her hospital bed. You have a choice in how you react, she told people in perpetuity. (Hello. I’ve been in reaction mode a lot the last six months. And from beyond the grave, or not even in the grave yet, Melissa was teaching me something I badly needed to hear.)
I’m just now realizing she had that kind of effect on people. We’d mostly lost touch the last several years, though we were in the periphery of one another’s community circles. She wanted to create a retreat center to help people clear their mental-emotional-spiritual clutter. She wanted to share the knowledge that was coming to her. “The Hart Center for Higher Consciousness” had not yet been built. But she was doing it. She was living it. Yet, this fork in the road was not part of her plan. Still, I think Melissa might say, then again, it was. Melissa thought outside of the box. And, it’s uncomfortable to journey to that place in a culture that wants to package life in a neat, little box with compact answers. And in the South, it’s hard to even write about matters outside that box with answers that aren’t so compactible.
And, so, today, flat of my back on that grassy summit, I listened to that voice inside of my head. (Some of you will think that and I are “whackadoodle.” Others of you will get it.) Melissa was teaching us up until the day she died. And, her words are going to continue to teach me and others now that she’s left this plane. That’s all this is, she assured folks in her videos. One life in an eternity. The body—hers ravaged with Pac-man cancer—only temporary.
Thank you, Melissa. Thank you, cousin Kathy. And love to my friend who could not take this life any longer and ended hers. I know she’s at peace now. And small band of us are working behind the scenes to insure supports for her children.
All this. I needed to restore on that picnic blanket today. And, to be reminded via that prism in the sky and Dawn Kirk’s quote above. It is all about the lessons. Life lessons. Either we get them or we don’t. And, the object is to keep being open to learning them. Even outside the box. And, like Dawn writes, it’s our job to open wide the doors of our Hearts. As far flung n’ wide as they will go.
Namaste—as Melissa would always end her vlogs….And, thank you to all the teachers. (We are all teachers.)
