Quote from DevonB on July 2022, 3:12 pm

2. Do you have strong connections with your ancestors? How do they touch your life? 

 

I’ve developed daily rituals of connection with my mother and grandmother.   Simple moments — they don’t take long, yet I find them satisfying.  They add a sense of presence to my day.  

One is a kata, handed down to me by my mother. Her mother taught it to her, and so on, back to people I don’t know.   

My mother’s instructions were short and simple.  She conveyed them with a soft tone of solemnity, as if they were treasure.  

I wasn't quite four.  I listened to her directions with my full attention.  She said these movements would bring me a good day.  

Everyday was already good, those days.  Still, power was appealing.  Plus, at first,  we did the moves together.

Some days though, she’d say “I’m late,” and rush off.  I still did them.  Doing things my mother taught me made me feel somehow big.  

The sequence begins with lying on one’s back, in bed, and stretching from one's waist towards one’s head.   Simultaneously, you stretch from your waist down through your toes.  It’s like yawning in both directions at once.

Then sit up, your feet dangling over the right-side of bed. As you do this, imagine what you’d like to do this day….

Usually I’d  think of the screen door, squeaking as I opened it.  I’d imagine the day as sunny, waiting for me.  Someone would want to play.  

The next step was hopping out of bed.  I enjoyed the thump of my feet on the floor..  The thwack of energy rising through my soles.

Upon landing, you rise on your toes while extending both arms out, like opening them as welcome.   As you do, say ” ta-dah.”.  

The ta-dah is pronounced as a feeling of happy surprise.  Feel like you’re getting a Birthday present, only you’re both the opener, and the gift inside.  

I’ve returned to starting my day this way for two years, niw..  As I do it, I think of Ida, my mother’s mother.  I remember her love of ritual, and how I share it.  For a moment, I feel our connection.

I know she isn’t presently in this world. Yet I sense a mutuality of our enjoyment as I recall hers.  

I open my heart to her, that I might breath myself into alignment with this spacious sense of self, that includes her.  It doesn’t matter that we no longer share corporeal time.  What links us is larger.  

I invite her to my presence in this moment.  Time shines as I share space while anchored as me.  For a heart-beat, I step out of clock-time into liminal.  Then I go about my day.

My second ritual occurs with daily grooming.  When I wash my face, and apply my lotions, I recall my mother, and her beloved rituals of beauty.  

She took pleasure in these practices.  She saw her face as a canvas.  I’ve never learned those skills, but I appreciate the scents and textures of the process.  

As I enjoy my senses in the act of cleansing,  I share this happiness with memories of my mother, before her mirror.  dreaming of being beauty.  I offer her the sweetness of these memories. I go on with my day.  

My third ritual is music.  I sing daily.  Songs were once the background of my life.  Both my parents were musicians.  They met in a jazz band.  He played the saxophone; she sang scat.  

The three of us shared a room in my father’s father’s house.  Old photos show a toddler me, happily pounding the piano, as my mother looked on.  

Our music ended with my younger brother’s death.  I was four.  I didn’t see my mother for a long while.  When I finally did, she’d changed.  

So had I.  My vocal chords took on a tension.  They began to fill with my unsaids.  

I started music lessons in third grade.  My voice sounded squawky.  My teacher told me to mouth the words instead of singing  For the next sixty year, I  followed her instructions.  

Sometimes I’d sing a little bit.  I couldn’t help it.  Just for me— my secret.  But then I’d hear my mother in my voice.  It spoke of pain.  I’d lock my jaw again.  

A few years into writing about this early period of my life, I started singing lessons as an act of supportive sociability.  My friend.thought she sounded awful too. Yet part of her still wanted to sing. 

As it turns out, neither of us sounds awful.  The things that make a voice go pitchy are tensions in the jaw and vocal chords.   Fears of being judged. 

I like to sing songs my mother sang.  My teacher says I’m good at jazz phrasing.  She forgets I don’t know how to sing.  

When I relax enough, I forget that too.  The song sings me.    

There are still times when I hear my mother’s voice in me. That note of sadness.    Now I’m at peace with it.  I feel it as connection.  

If I cry while vocalizing, it’s from meanings that encompass more than my mother-memories.

When I sing the feelings of a song, it feels  releasing. 

My mother once experienced this. I invite her to share in my sense of freedom.  

These connections with ancestors feel like reverberations.  They echo an agreement of perspective.  

They’re my understandings of my inheritance.  Both wisdoms and unsolved problems have been handed down to me.  They’re both emotional and cognitive.

These connections carry a sense of we-ness— of membership and belonging.  They exist in the spiritual dimension. Unlimited by time or space.  

I feel ancestral connection the most  when I’m grounded in my differentiations , while still sensing I’m a part of something larger.. 

My memories seem less about specific times and places than they are reflections of our common condition.  

I can even connect to my father’s people, though I barely know  them.  I  discover commonalities through learning their traditions.   We’re linked through our humanity.  

Quote from Alfredo Fernandez Alvarez on July 2022, 11:00 am

Unfortunately for me the experience is very fresh but I thought doing this writing exercise would help me start process it.

Ten days ago I flew back in a hurry to my hometown in Spain because my grandmother, with whom I had a very strong connection, was very ill. She died past Monday in her own bed, in front of me, exactly thirteen years after she became widow of my grandfather.

I was surprised to see I didn't feel scared beyond the hurting sadness her everlasting absence from that moment on would create. As she had her last heartbeat, after rattling for three hours, she immediately left an atmosphere of cold and void in the room. It was easy to understand that what was left was just a carcass and that the energy which was my grandma had transitioned somewhere else. Death was more terrible than I had foreseen but also incredibly natural and free of drama.

While I waited beside her that day, I entertained the thought that humans were actually beautiful in their awareness of death and the rituals and mythology they had created to make it sacred, as compared to the more practical survival instinct of animals and which modern materialism drives people towards. I don't usually think of humans as more special than other species (considering now the damage we are causing to our home planet) but as I wrote I paraphrased an old sentence "(human) consciousness is God looking at itself".

Quote from Mark Matousek on July 2022, 11:43 am

Dear Alfredo,

Thank you for writing about your grandmother's passing, and I am glad to hear that (while painful, naturally) it was drama-free and she was able to die in her own bed. That is a blessing. I agree with what you say here about the beauty of how humans hold death in awareness, while continuing to live day to day. That is our great paradox, the reason for spiritual discovery, and the thing that sets us apart from other animals, who (as you say) are focused on 'mere' survival and and lack a sense of curiosity about what lies beyond the body. I am sending you my very best in this time of loss ad discovery.

Hope to see you soon,

 

Mark

Quote from DevonB on July 2022, 2:13 pm

Thanks for sharing your piece, Alfredo.  It’s beautiful to witness your connection to your grandmother, and I’m glad you were able to be with her for her passing.  I hope the writing gave you a sense of movement in your grieving process—Devon B

Quote from Alfredo Fernandez Alvarez on July 2022, 6:10 am

Quote from Mark Matousek on July 2022, 11:43 am

Dear Alfredo,

Thank you for writing about your grandmother's passing, and I am glad to hear that (while painful, naturally) it was drama-free and she was able to die in her own bed. That is a blessing. I agree with what you say here about the beauty of how humans hold death in awareness, while continuing to live day to day. That is our great paradox, the reason for spiritual discovery, and the thing that sets us apart from other animals, who (as you say) are focused on 'mere' survival and and lack a sense of curiosity about what lies beyond the body. I am sending you my very best in this time of loss ad discovery.

Hope to see you soon,

 

Mark

Hello Mark,

Thanks a lot for your warm words and your reflection.

It's been a couple of rough months but now I am back to normal and moving forward.

And I am finally up to date with our writing sessions and prompts!

Have a great week,

Alfredo

Quote from Alfredo Fernandez Alvarez on July 2022, 6:29 am

Quote from DevonB on July 2022, 2:13 pm

Thanks for sharing your piece, Alfredo.  It’s beautiful to witness your connection to your grandmother, and I’m glad you were able to be with her for her passing.  I hope the writing gave you a sense of movement in your grieving process—Devon B

Thanks a lot Devon. I guess we all have been there, but I never knew anybody who loved me as unconditionally as her. Even though we were geographically away for 10 years I will miss her incredibly. But I was glad to be able to be next to her until the end, radiating love. It was a way of giving back.

But the way I feel about her passing and presence among us now was best described by the famous letter of Sullivan Ballou during the Secession War:

But, O Sarah, if the dead can come back to this earth, and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you in the garish day, and the darkest night amidst your happiest scenes and gloomiest hours always, always, and, if the soft breeze fans your cheek, it shall be my breath; or the cool air cools your throbbing temples, it shall be my spirit passing by.

Quote from DevonB on July 2022, 9:07 pm

What a beautiful quotation captures your connection with your grandmother.  Thanks for introducing me to this mystical piece by Sullivan Ballou.  I missed it in my education.   His view of death seems both possible and comforting.