October into November 2010

I’ve come and gone from writing here four or five times since late September, never quite knowing what or how much I wanted to or needed to write about these overfull weeks. Tonight I’ve wandered on from where I last left off a week or so ago and decided to put it up on the site as a compendium of pieces that came along the way to here. So here goes:

September 29
After an unusually temperate summer, we’re in the middle of a second September triple digit heat wave. Pulling up more expired/gone-to-flower greens, daily pruning crisping-as-soon-as-they-open roses, all while harvesting a bounty of apples, cherry tomatoes and beefsteak tomatoes. Zinnias of all colors seem to thrive in this heat and so, too, the multi-hued dahlias, the sages, heliotrope, coneflowers and lavenders.

Lots of now-emptied pots are awaiting fall veggie planting once the heat abates. Even so, there’s abundant greenery overflowing the remaining pots. The garden endlessly amazes and comforts me. Puttering among the pots, sweeping up avalanches of sunflower seed shells and scatterings of birdseed on the patio, wiping bird droppings off patio furniture: all of it calming, meditative and replenishing after another ten-day trip to NYC to finish the business of emptying my sister’s chaotic and squalid apartment.

The stillness here, the birds by day, the crickets, owls and coyotes at night as I float and nap on and under air mattresses in my hot tub, the loving cuddles with my two fur kitty-companions: all of this and the garden so nourishing after the booming, buzzing sea of noise, chaos and nonstop being-among-people that was my second NYC sojourn in two months!

October 5
It’s six days later and I’m packed and ready to leave tomorrow morning for my third trip to NYC in as many months. The respite between these two trips has been barely eleven days, four of them filled with work and self-care appointments, the rest about catching up with the house and garden chores and pulling things together for tomorrow’s departure. Though there are many tales to be told from the last trip – about the crazy/magical adventures with the condo management company, the Salvation Army, the haulers, my once-again amazingly helpful DC area cousins and the remarkable celebration of my sister’s life arranged by a good friend/colleague of hers and attended by 90 friends, family, professional colleagues, students and former students – I can’t just now find the energy to write about any of it….

October 20
Back here again two weeks later, enjoying several days of dramatic (and unusual for California) thunderstorms and cooler temperatures. It’s just a week since I’ve returned from my third-in-as-many-months and final trip to New York. This one, planned long before my sister’s death, was to co-facilitate a semi-annual advanced Overcoming Overeating Weekend Workshop (Turning to Ourselves Instead of to Food) with my friend Carol Munter (who originated the process/wrote the books). We had eighteen women participating, half of them from among those who’ve been coming regularly to our west coast workshops and half from those who’ve been working with Carol on the east coast. As always, the ten hours of sessions spread over three days were rich and profound. The mixing of the two groups was seamless and energizing for both contingents. The women dove deeply into their issues from the moment we began and several of them had significant openings or breakthroughs in the course of the weekend. Yet another experience in the many I’m having these days of the magic that unfolds when women come together in circle to explore the issues in their lives!

The finale of this most recent seven-day trip involved me officiating at the wedding of another dear friend. (I became, for this, an on-line ordained minister of the non-denominational Church of Universal Life in early August and am now certified for life as a marriage officiant in New York City.) The wedding was a love-fest in an enchanted New York City setting: a dance studio with 20+ foot ceilings, two fully windowed walls overlooking the river and NYC skyline with one mirrored wall reflecting it all. Close friends and family gathered, a goodly number of us having been regaled for many years with stories of almost mythic proportions about each other. Feeling as though we already knew each other because of these tales we’ve been hearing, our conversations were intimate and substantial rather than superficial. This made the overwhelmingly social time doable for me: I abhor small talk, avoid both it and the kinds of gatherings that call for it. This celebration was a very different sort of being-out-in-the-world experience for me, one that I actually enjoyed even as it exhausted me. It was touching to hear my friend, her husband-to-be and many of their guests speak about and bless their coming together before I read the vows they’d provided.

Though it was my third intense and people-packed city-sojourn it was, at least, one where all the intensity came from joyous rather than painful and challenging demands on my energies. I was so wiped out after the second 10-day trip to NYC to complete the emptying of my sister’s apartment that writing about the journey felt beyond me when I first came here to do that three weeks ago. Now, with the time and distance it feels more doable though not quite as compelling to process by telling as it might have been earlier on.

Though I’d worked diligently to get all the appointments and paperwork set up and organized well before I was to head east in mid-September, things seemed to be unraveling the afternoon before I left. When I checked with the police precinct about releasing the seal on the apartment, it turned out that the letter I’d gotten from the executor weeks before needed to be notarized (and the executor was out of the country); an assistant at the condo management company left a message (that I received when it was too late to reach anyone on the east coast) telling me that, when she called them, the haulers did not seem to have me on their schedule (turns out that a completely uninformed worker-bee had answered her call); the same woman assistant left yet another message while I was en route to say that they hadn’t known Salvation Army was coming (not the case since they had been asked to and had indeed arranged for elevator blankets to be put up for the day Salvation Army was to come as well as on the day the haulers were scheduled) and that a certificate of insurance had to be in their possession before SA would be allowed to keep the appointment I’d barely been able to set up a month ahead. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep that night and made some on-the-edge-of-hysteria phone calls first from home at west coast dawn and then from the Denver airport during my layover. Everything about my well choreographed/sequenced trip seemed to be falling apart. My cousins were driving in from DC specifically to be with me through all the things that now looked like they might not happen after all.

I felt crazed, furious and helpless. It took a lot of deep breathing, petitioning the Grandmothers and talking to all my various selves to calm down and be able to begin giving it all up to Spirit. Such a task: to surrender into and allow whatever was going to happen to unfold however it might, trusting that the magic in my life would help me to be okay with whatever the outcome would be.

November 2
All these unexpected bumps magically smoothed out even before I arrived in New York that night. The next morning (Thursday) my cohort of cousins and I arrived at the police station anticipating a repeat of the long wait we’d had in July for an escort to accompany us to unseal the apartment. Miraculously, the lieutenant who’d helped us get into the apartment weeks before was standing out in front of the building. He recognized our troop and barely looked at the notarized paperwork before sending us off on our own to break the seal and go on about our tasks. In and out in minutes rather than hours, we were able to make an earlier appointment with my sister’s friends who were coming into Manhattan to pick up her recently purchased flat screen TV, toaster oven and vacuum cleaner – the only things besides her jewelry and some photos that were worth salvaging. And, the haulers were delighted to be able to come earlier to do their look-see and estimate of the job they’d be doing on Monday.

With all that done by just past noon, we were able to head down to City Hall and the Property Clerk’s office to retrieve the jewelry, check book and cash the police had removed from her night-table when they removed her body. My cousins had to wait in the park (it was a glorious day) while I was practically strip-searched before entering the bowels of 1 Police Plaza on my quest. There I waited with many unhappy, put-upon other folks lining up to deal with the cold, abrupt and fairly nasty clerks behind the chain-link cages as they tried to retrieve their previously confiscated property.

The Grandmothers brought me to Angel’s window. The immediate bad news was that none of my official ID’s had a street address for me and a street address was essential for the property release forms. Almost in tears, I explained to Angel that, since I lived in a rural area in California, all my mail and official paperwork came to my post box address; that even if we were in California instead of New York, I’d have nothing official with a street address since even phone and utility bills have the post box address on them. It was clear that any of the other clerks would have turned me away at that point. Angel however was an angel and went off to his supervisor to plead my case. Somehow, this sympathetic and caring young man managed to circumvent the system’s rigid rules (I’d been watching, as I waited for him to return, and seen several upset and frustrated folks being turned away nastily in what seemed like similar catch-22 situations.)

His getting the exemption and then retrieving her jewelry from one department, her checkbook from another and his waiting to have a check drawn (and signed by three officials) for the cash they’d taken, left me sitting in this sad room watching countless dramas of desperation unfold as so many people caught in the vise of the system fared so much less well than I did with the officials with whom they had to deal. It was so sad and so clear that my race and class and the accident of coming to Angel’s window had brought me a more sympathetic, caring experience than the others were having. I thanked the Grandmothers yet again for what definitely felt like their intervention.

We almost missed the appointment with the Salvation Army people the next day (Friday). Their dispatcher had told us they’d be coming sometime after noon and that they’d give us a heads-up call 15 minutes before their arrival. So, with cell phone at the ready, one of my cousins and I went off wandering around the neighborhood getting some exercise and fresh air as we waited. Just before noon, we got a frantic call from my other cousin who, on the road driving back to Virginia (for Yom Kippur services with her husband), had been receiving repeated and progressively more angry, upset calls from the trio of Salvation Army guys. The guys (and she) had been unsuccessful in raising me on my cell phone. They’d been waiting outside my sister’s building for about 20 minutes and, frustrated at having been unable to reach me (obviously traffic and construction noise along our walking route had made it impossible to hear my cell’s ringtone), they were preparing to leave momentarily to get on with their day. (This would have meant having to try to reschedule and probably having to wait another month!)

Pressing the dial-recently-received-call tab on my cell, I got through to them while race-walking the two avenue blocks and two shorter street blocks it took to get to them. Breathlessly and profusely apologizing, I pleaded with them to wait the 5 more minutes it would take me to get there while I kept updating them on just where I was at each moment. Though they started out irritated and short-tempered, my abject apologies, regrets and sooo-sorry’s were accepted and they came upstairs to set about removing tons of shopping bags and some furniture. As we worked with the two who fetched and carried down to the one who packed and watched the truck, it was obvious that none of them were used to being treated caringly or with respect for their time and energy. Whenever they had to refuse to take something because it didn’t meet their guidelines for acceptable conditions, they all but cowered, expecting (as they later explained to us) to be yelled at, cursed and argued with. Time and again my cousin and I assured them that it was okay with us for them to reject whatever they needed to reject; that the haulers would be able to take whatever they could not. As they lugged stuff away, my cousin and I were racing to un-hang and bag all the clothes we – not knowing that they could only take the clothes that were off hangers and bagged –had left hanging in the closets. They were stunned by our working with them, our reasonableness and our ongoing appreciation of all their work. And, when we tipped the three of them $30 each to thank them and to make amends for inconveniencing them, they were full of overwhelmed gratitude. Another sad experience of how poorly people at the low end of the totem pole are treated and expect to be treated.

The haulers came to strip out the apartment the following Monday. As my cousin-companions and I sat in the air-conditioned lobby of my sister’s building being available to deal with any glitches, the five guys worked like pack mules. They hauled endless numbers of large wardrobe movers’ boxes filled with the detritus of my sister’s life out past us to their truck. They were an amazing, efficient ensemble. It took them just three hours to remove all the appliances, damaged furniture and the disgusting wall-to-wall carpeting and padding that they’d cut in segments and stowed in those wardrobe boxes. Once again, it was sadly clear that they, too, were unused to being treated with respect and appreciation.

As they worked, there was another glitchy interaction with the management folks. I’d called to tell them both that the haulers reported a smell of gas as they emptied the oven preparatory to removing the stove and that they’d told us we needed someone qualified to officially turn off and cap the gas line. The agitated agent apparently hadn’t expected us to be removing appliances despite the heads up I’d given them weeks before. Yet, in the end, she calmed down and did reach the superintendent who arrived in time to do what needed doing so that the stove could safely be removed. My dealings with the condo management people were repeatedly frustrating. No matter how carefully I tried to communicate my plans and timing, they either didn’t listen or didn’t register what I’d tell them. Trying to communicate calmly when all I wanted to do was to shout at them took every shred of patience I had.

Over and over, it felt as if the chaotic energy of my sister’s life kept introducing static and challenges. Each time, the magic of my life (with the Grandmothers’ helping presence in it) would trump the chaos and smooth the way. But, maybe it was all simply the static of so-called normal life, a kind of life I’m not, these days, used to having to handle.

In between these two challenging days of being immersed in the squalor and mess of her private world was the incredibly moving, love-, laughter- and tear-filled Celebration of Lydia’s Life. Organized by a dear friend and colleague of my sister’s who’d known and loved her for 30+ years, it was held that Sunday (September 19th) in a large classroom at the West 23rd Street Touro College campus where Lydia’d taught and served as Academic Coordinator in the Physician Assistant Program for the past six years before her retirement in November. Maureen (with help from her husband who’d also long been a fan of Lydia’s) had gotten the word out in their professional community, secured a venue, arranged for coffee and pastries, created a photo slide show, printed an extraordinarily touching Remembrance Book gathering reflections from some 50+ friends, relations, colleagues and students of Lydia’s and, with her funny and poignant tribute, started the program of eleven people who spoke stirringly – through their laughter and tears – about who my amazing sister was as a beloved friend, cousin, professional and mentor. There were 90 of us there to honor this funny, brilliant, beautiful, much loved and remarkable woman.

The contradictions between who she was out in the world and the disturbed, tormented being she was in her private, inner world were and are mind-boggling. I come and go from the struggle to make sense of her life, her pain and her inability to save herself or to get herself any real help for that journey. I come and go from trying to understand how we could come from such similar wounding and take such opposite paths dealing with our inner lives. I come and go from being so furious with her for leaving me all this messy complexity to deal with that, if she weren’t already dead, I’d want to kill her. I come and go from thinking I’m finally done with the challenging business of closing up her life only to be faced with new wrinkles of complication that need attending to.

And, in the middle of all of it I realize I haven’t fully encompassed that she’s gone from the planet. I still have no idea whether or what else I might begin to feel once I’m shed of the stressful burdens the aftermath of her death has brought into my Universe. Even dealing with the bounty of money she’s left me brings complications. Even though I’ve opted out of the decision-making processes involved as the Executor and his feet-on-the-ground partner work with the woman contractor whose crew will be doing the cleaning and renovations needed to make the apartment habitable and marketable, there are still complex interactions with them to be navigated. I hate all of it. I’m so tired of all of it. I want my simple, quiet life back!

So, I have tantrums and then patches of peace as I slowly move back into the rhythms of my life after spending (by mid October) 27 of the preceding 92 days in New York City. It’s taken time for my body to stop vibrating with all the energy and adrenaline it hummed with in New York. For a few days it felt as if my body was falling apart with aches and sorenesses I hadn’t felt while all that adrenaline was keeping me up for what had been on my plate. Now, the beginning of November, three weeks home from the last trip, my body has been feeling more in balance in a non-adrenalinized way. Slowly I’m reincorporating my yoga, tai chi and free weight routine that fell by the wayside when all this began in mid-July. More and more I’m here in the middle of my world even as some parts of some days I do get pulled into that other energy. It’s getting easier to reclaim my usual self.

The September (The Thing to Do with Feelings is to Make it Safe to Feel All of Them!- Sharing and Reflecting on Our Successes and Challenges Around Allowing Ourselves to Safely Feel Our Way into and through Our Grumpiness, Anger, Disappointment, Sadness, Grief or Pain) and October (Who Am I Now? - Sharing and Reflecting on Our Successes and Challenges Coping with the Impact of Aging and Changing Roles on Our Sense of Our Selves) Women’s Wisdom Circle’s have been delightful: energizing, hilarious, profound and rewarding. The Grandmothers each time inspire a meaningful guided journey with which to begin the gathering. We spend about 20 to 25 minutes with the relaxation and guided imagery as we start and then things just take off and meander about with lots of laughter and wisdom being shared among us. I can seat only 22 comfortably. There’s always a waiting list of at least 10 women, all hoping that life will have intervened for some of those first 22 resulting in cancellations and open slots. This actually does happen quite regularly since women are signing up one and two months in advance.

Next week I start a second cycle of the seven original free monthly talk/sharings to run on my alternate workweek. I wasn’t sure whether there’d be the same amount of interest this time around. Yet, it’s already filled and has a waiting list! Many are new women and some are among those who’ve been coming for a while though they missed out on the earlier topics. I’m amazed at the hunger for community among these women in their 50’s, 60’s and 70’s in Ojai. I feel so grateful to the Grandmothers for nudging me into creating a space for satisfying that hunger. It’s being a delicious adventure for me even though I’ve never been much drawn to doing groups either as a facilitator or participant. There’s something unique and magical about these circles. The only preparation they involve is creating or updating the flyers (which I love doing, using my own artwork), posting them out and about town, submitting the press releases to our local papers and bringing in and putting back out the outside chairs. Such a deal!

Around the edges of my life and its transitions, I’m moving toward my annual 10-day birthday retreat at home in my cottage and the hills and beaches around Ojai. Ten years ago, I’d asked friends and family to write about how it was that I lived inside their hearts/lives so I could make a box of celebrations for my 60th birthday. It felt like a significant crossing and that felt like a meaningful way of honoring it. As I come now to my 70th birthday I don’t seem, as yet, to need or want anything from my friends or family by way of celebration.

I feel excited and curious about this next chapter of my journey. It tickles me so that this is what 70 feels like in my life. I’m extraordinarily grateful to feel so healthy, fit, strong and juicy at this threshold. That both my dad and my sister are freed from their respective suffering and I from my worries about them feels like a huge gift from Spirit for this birthday and the decade ahead. I keep saying that now there’s no one left but me to drive me crazy and that I haven’t been inclined to do that to my self any more.

I have two old masks to refurbish: one that lived in a closet at my sister’s and needs to be cleaned of nicotine staining and one that lived with a friend and got infested with moths and termite droppings. There’s the second half of the manuscript that’s about halfway re-edited and waiting for me to return to it. There are still some empty pots waiting for more fall veggie planting, though I’ve done some of that since I’m back from the third NYC trip. There’s room for a possible Solstice/New Year’s card to be born and inspiration/quotes to be gathered for the New Year. And, there’s all the year end/year beginning processes and chores to be tended to.

But, I haven’t a clue if, where or how Spirit/the Grandmothers will lead me in the open time of my birthday retreat. So far, I have no sense of needing to do anything particular to celebrate my self/birthday other than opening and emptying the space of time. We’ll see what comes and I’m sure I’ll write about it here.