After being away for two days, I drove into my customary parking slot and greeted Vince who was working nearby. He said "Justin was killed in a wreck." It was like getting knocked down, blindsided. I was reeling, and starting to grieve. Justin, who usually had an amused sparkle in his eye, was luxurious in few words, at ease in quiet, fluent in music, thoughtful in work. Gone in chaos. The last time I saw Justin, he was busy building the stone wall in front of the Lodge that we designed. We looked in each other's eyes, and there weren't any words to say. No words; no clear thoughts at all; I looked at Justin, felt love, but no words. He seemed a bit bemused like me, like he usually seemed; we hugged goodbye.
My friend Gretchen came to mind. Recently, when a lover was in town on short notice I was telling her how I wanted to have Gretchen create one of her stained-glass windows for me. My lover took on a strange look, laughed nervously, and said, "But she's dead, didn't you know?" A week later, I ran into Gretchen's husband. This was startling, and out of context--not on the rural island where I had known them, where I had lived in a tent on their land. He and his stepson were headed for Mexico; all three of them had planned to take a vacation together. They had gotten typhoid shots the day before Gretchen woke up complaining of a bad headache, just before the blood vessel burst and killed her. He told me about the ritual held on their land. My "brother" Paul, who had been lovers with my lover's sister, had been learning stained glass work with Gretchen; he'd gotten as far as learning the copper foil wrap and soldering. Gretchen had cut the glass for a perched owl for Paul. I later saw Gretchen's last window in the front door of Paul's hand-built cabin while his new child cried in the bedroom with its mother...life in the face of the reminder of Gretchen's death.
My mind goes to the time I was stung by a yellow jacket when I pulled a branch near its nest in my nursery plot. A few minutes later, I was talking with my landlady in her living room as I felt myself passing out. Fortunately, she had a niece allergic to bees and called 911 before I collapsed in the back yard and began puking. I was down a deep, dank, obscure and horribly cold well that was getting deeper like the down elevator, and I was struggling with all I had to hang on. I've been caught in a rogue wave while body surfing. I've heard my father tell me about getting his rental car hit in the rear by a drunk doing 60 at noon. I saw the scab on his forehead from the time he was hanging out his open door by the seatbelt as his car spun around and around in a big Detroit intersection. I've read about getting seized by a crocodile or great white shark. It was like that; and I didn't have any power in this situation, either. I heard the fire department volunteers, and some were saying things that sounded real bad. But something told me that the helicopter and doctor were coming quickly. That much tipped the balance for me, I think. Bored and hyper-aware from the drug cocktail dripping like ice water into my veins in the I.C. ward, I still felt too lazy to reach for the call button for the nurse to fetch me a book. I watched the cardiac monitor oscilloscope and realized I could will the sine wave to flatten and that would bring the nurse without the need to reach across to the button. The nurse hurried in, a bit perplexed when the curve showed normal again. She explained that most I.C. patients don't want to read and suggested TV. I watched Siouxsie sing "Peek-a-Boo" in spooky black and white. Later, I lay in bed looking at the skyline of the hills above Portland, and made collect calls to family and friends telling them my new temporary phone number, and how curious it was to "bee" alive. The volunteer chief who had responded visited me and told me god had special plans for me. The doctor, a blond, athletic angel in an immaculate uniform visited and told me how worried she had been. Ever since I've been very quick to tears; movies, talking with someone, or just seeing something beautiful can start the flow.
A few years later, I heard that a horticulture friend had committed suicide. I then seem to have erased the information from my mind. Why? Was I too busy? The next year I went to a meeting in his city, cool grey Seattle, expecting to see him. I remembered him telling me he was digging a well (!) under his house so he didn't have to pay for city water. I heard the story from someone at the meeting: he'd been growing pot and his antagonistic neighbor turned him in. The police put pressure on him to finger others. A divorced veteran, he was threatened with losing his house and garden, all he'd put back together. He went down into the uncompleted well, wrapped an American flag around himself, and fired a pistol. They found him a long time after. I guess my body knew to wait to learn it all, because the image of being down a well was just too close to home.
After many years of stings, in a different nursery plot, I reacted to a yellowjacket sting for the second time. I relaxed, and I calmly told my customer what was going on. After it became evident that I was reacting, he took me up to the nearby house, and someone called 911. This paramedic crew works US 26, and carries epinephrine, so there was no need to call lifeflight. It got to where the world was tangerine orange for me, and I'm told I was incoherent when the call was placed, but I was permitted to refuse transport with my signature. I never left that time; I didn't go down the well.
This year so far, three friends have died; two of them died in the same week after long illnesses. Simon depended on charity, and had been waiting on a new liver. Bill had great insurance, researched the world's best surgeon, and managed a few more years in his beloved Belize with one third of his stomach before the recurrence of his illness. Both, from their last messages, seemed in a very good place before departure. Another friend has brain cancer; diagnosed, admitted, and operated on in just three quick days in his own hospital; when he awoke he was unable to speak. Justin left Lost Valley, went home to Texas, and was killed in a wreck.
My friend Elaine was killed by a woman driving drunk, to whom no one would give a ride home from the tavern. She was cremated--not her wishes, but on short notice; what can you do? A friend made it to the memorial service where Elaine's ashes were passed out in Abundant Life Seed packets. My friend brought a packet back to me; she thought I was a good one to give some ashes to because she was nomadic and I had a garden. I split it in two and sent half up to our friends in Seattle. The other I sprinkled over a compost pile. Understand, like an heirloom sourdough starter, my composts inoculate new piles, and my compost culture dates back to my return to North America in 1980. So Elaine is all around us, here at Lost Valley and elsewhere around the Northwest, and who knows, perhaps even further. As they say with homeopathics, dilution makes it stronger.
Rick Valley is Lost Valley Educational Center's land steward, a Permaculture teacher since 1987, and an instructor in the summer 2005 Ecovillage and Permaculture Certificate Program. Contact him at [email protected].
©2004 Talking Leaves
Winter 2004/2005
Volume 14, Number 4
Transformation: Endings and Beginnings