Only Love: Ike & Edwina
On the 15th of December as we embarked on our annual trip to spend Christmas with the family in Pretoria my mom called in tears. My grandparents were ill and they were waiting in the hospital car park because no beds were available. Later that day as we arrived at the Karoo National Park I felt my grandfather's spirit fall on me, like a weighty shadow. It quite literally knocked me over.
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| For more on the loss of my brother & my friend |
After my mom phoned and confirmed what I already knew, that my dear Grandpa had left his body, I went for a walk in those ancient hills at dusk.
I asked out loud "Doesn't it feel good to be free?" and he arose instantly out of the sacred desert as a breeze and kissed me on the cheek. We laughed together into the sky.
In Pretoria it was all about managing the stress of trying to organise a Zoom funeral with my family in quarantine and both my grans unwell. While supporting my children through the loss of their dearly beloved great grandpa.
I knew it would be my last chance to see my Granny Edwina. So, respecting the quarantine, I stood outside her bedroom window. The hospital had sent her home, no room at the inn during these COVID days, where my mom, Aunty Charene and Dad cared for her. She lay there stripped of all pretense. She was indescribably beautiful. Her heart laid bare, broken, surrendered.
My mom sat beside her in bed stroking her hand and my gran and I exchanged pure Darshan. A word in sanskrit that means "vision" and is quite simply beholding divinity in the other.
It was a moment of the most extraordinary love and I'm so grateful we could share that in her last days.
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| With life as short as a half taken breath, why plant anything but love ~Rumi |
She died the day after Christmas. My grandparents loved Christmas and they hosted us in their beloved apartment by the sea in Umhlanga and later Umdolti on the North Coast of Kwa Zulu Natal all through my childhood and my children's. My family and I were staying in the most beautiful place on the beach on The Bluff in Durbs, where my gran's treasured brother Ronnie and family used to live during my childhood. The golden thread weaving through this spiral way was writ large.
As I turned 45 this past weekend I gave myself the gift of facilitating a retreat since it is the most powerful learning experience I've come across and one of my greatest loves is to learn.
The moon was full and palpable. The space was resonant with magic. The circle was growing in ways both subtle and seismic. I hadn't slept for three nights both as a result of this potent full moon energy, the marking of my own cycle around our sun, and most especially, holding the hearts in our group very close to mine. Many had come with major challenges, traumatic losses and serious health concerns. Some had been on retreat with me before, others were new to me. All were dearly beloved teachers and co-creators.
When I left my bedroom on the last morning we were to sit together on retreat, the moon was giant in the rosy dawn hovering over our labyrinth where we walked and set our intentions. The majesty of creation knocked me to my knees. I felt myself vibrating with what I thought was exhaustion.
As we sat together for meditation and I sounded my tibetan bowl I realised that the vibration of the bowl was the same as the one threatening to tear my corporeality to pieces. The same that had prompted me to cry out silently: "Help!"
Then my grandpa was right there beside me. I realised I'd dreamed of him for the first time since his death that night. And I heard his voice saying clear as a bell his pet name for me: "Reeskallah."
Afterwards those present came to me individually to report that their beloved deceased ones had come to them. That they had felt their arms around them. That they had seen hosts of angels. That the light and warmth and Love had blown their hearts open too.
Since then I slip constantly into the light. I call it the Dance of Atoms. It's the energy, prana, chi, spirit that we all are, that everything is. It is quite simply Love.
This is to say thank you to my Grandpa for coming in my hour of need to remind me, as he did so often in the flesh, that I "have a heart like a hotel with room for everyone." Something he assured me I shared with my Great Gran Daisy who raised my mom.
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| Holy Trinity of Maternal Line: my mom, her gran Daisy and my gran Edwina |
Just a reminder to future me that allowing your heart to break open again and again is what it's all about. That in so doing we allow the Divine Love that we are to Be.
Thank you to my circle for bearing witness.
Thank you to Life.
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| Beloved Grandparents & Great Grandparents, Ike & Edwina Swartzberg, Rest in Love | |
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