photo by Rusty Storbeck on the desert
December 9, 2008, 8:10 am
A Giant Wind Blew Last night
There was a giant wind in the night. I woke up in middle of night briefly for few minutes and walked out my backdoor into my kitchen door, and experienced its blowiness.
It certainly blew out all the clouds which had gathered all day long yesterday. The morning was wonderful blue sky and delicious warm sunshine, but by noon the clouds started to gather and gathered all day.
But big wind blew all night, and it is crystalline blue sky this morning. And when the Sun rises high enough to be seen it will be wonderful and bright.
I can see some clouding rose above the mountains to the north, but I think this strong wind still blowing, but not the powerhouse it was in the night, will dispatch all clouds. It's as if storms keep trying to arrive and wind blows them all out quickly.
My big cousin John called from San Francisco last night. I was so pleasantly surprised to hear from him. I had called and left message on his machine "would he be kind enough to give me report about New York visit."
But I am not very in tune with my cousin's life, I did not know whether he would call back or not, his life seems to be very busy. So I had tried to call my cousin Goldi first. It seemed like an intimate thing to talk about, all our family back in New York at a time like this, I thought Goldi would have a lot to say, and I wanted to hear all of it. But her phone number didn't work, and after I tried it twice, I called John and left message asking him to call me back.
And to my great surprise he did call back later at night. Bill was the one who answered the phone, I had actually dozed off in the middle of a TV show, I did not hear phone ring, I just heard Bill call out "your cousin John is on the phone."
Apparently Bill had talked to him about football, which is very wise, I am sure it relaxed my cousin John, he too loves football, because when I talked to him he seemed relaxed and happy.
And I must say he gave an excellent report, it was so clear I felt like I was there myself.
He said it was a very simple ceremony, about 75 people came who knew and loved our cousin Richie very much, and those who talked about him knew him very well and loved him very much. Allie, Richie's younger brother, spoke first and talked about Richie's interest in guns and motorcycles and body building.
This was the teenaged Richie who had still lived at home and would be when Allie knew him best.
And his college roommate from graduate school in history in Wisconsin, they have been best friends all these years, flew in for it, and talked all about Richie.
And Richie's son, Jeffrey, had come in from Germany when Richie was first laid up and they became close. There had been a divorce, the children were young when it happened, and apparently their mom had not let them have contact with their dad.
Jeffrey said he and Richie played the harmonica together, and Richie encouraged him with his music.
I had no idea Jeffrey was over in Germany studying music and I had no idea my cousin Richie knew anything about music or played the harmonica, this is a Richie I did not know. But I do know that is what the past 4 months have all been about, this opportunity for Richie and his children to reunite. I am sure all 3 wanted that, and this is how it happened.
John said after everyone who knew Richie so well talked about Richie, the Rabbi who did not know him, talked about him, but did nice job bringing all the strands together. And then they went to cemetery, it was bitter bitter cold back in New York, and the rabbi said a prayer.
And then they all went back to Aunt Mil's apartment, where there was closeness and love and talk. And then John flew home, he arrived back home bone tired and fell into bed. He said he and Goldi had taken the Red Eye together on Saturday night. I think it is possible my cousin Goldi stayed on, he said "we went out together," he did not say we returned together.
John was very glad he went and I can see why, this is our family.
After I had first called John on the phone and left my message on his machine, I decided to connect with John in spirit, which I had never done. And we were close and loving.
And that took a lot of pressure off the physical conversation on the phone when he did call me back. It just seemed simpler to let him do most of the talking, since always before our communication, I had been so excited I had done all the talking, I never really let my cousin talk, I never got to hear him on anything.
He did ask me how I am, and I giggled and said "my life is great. What about you?" And he said his life is fine too. And that was nice for both of us, to hear we are having happiness now.
It was still very early in the evening when he called me but he said he wants to go to bed now, I guess his trip still exhausted him. But he said he was very glad he went. And I thanked him for his report and he said "you are welcome."
And of course after that there were two Johns in my mind, the one I had just talked to on the phone, and the one I was connecting to in spirit. Each time I would reconnect to him in spirit, my mind would go back to phone conversation with him, and I would see him that way and realize just how much I did not know him at all and wonder what he thought about me.
So you could say my mind was in a loop. I couldn't seem to sort anything out. There was hearing about Richie's life from John and the people in it. There were my own memories of Richie and I together as kids.
There was John on the phone. And there were memories of when we all had been family together. And at the same time I had begun new closeness with John in spirit. And from all of this I couldn't figure out what was real. It was making mishmosh in my mind.
Finally John in my mind said "let me help you, I can do this for you Annie, I can help you."
I didn't see how he could. I had fallen into a mishmosh loop, I didn't see how he could help me out of it.
But I said "OK let's try, thank you."
And it's very interesting what he did. He went right into the heart of family, what we had all meant to each other.
This is what he said to me in my mind:
He said "we knew each other’s homes, we knew each other's parents, you knew my room, you knew my room in the old apartment on Riverside Drive, and you knew my room in the new apartment on West 96th Street.
"You knew my father, even my wife never got to meet Phil.
"You knew my house in Adirondacks.
"We had all those family dinners together.
"It's not as intimate as you and your brother where you actually lived in the same house and shared your days together, but a cousin is a brother once removed.
"You know my food too, what my mom cooked for supper, you ate it. You know the pictures my mom had on her living room wall.
"And I know your parents too, I know Leon and Eleanor, I know your apartment in Queens and your house in Old Forge."
He took me all the way back to his old apartment on Riverside Drive, and how I would come into his room when our family was visiting there, the TV must have been in John's room, and all the children would watch Walt Disney together, we all watched Tinkerbell together, we had shared Tinkerbell.
And that is where we wound up, in John's room when he was still a kid and not a teenager yet, all sitting and watching Walt Disney come on and watching Tinkerbell.
And John said "what do you notice about all this? It is all the past. We shared a past together. And that is what family is, a shared past."
That is what had rung in my mind during my phone conversation with John-- I had said "it is so good you went, you went for me too, it was important you be there, we are family"-- the words "we are family" had rung in my mind.
And I think that is what caused all the confusion in my mind later, that intense feeling we are family.
And why it helped me so much when John in spirit showed me that it all took place in the past. We were family in the past.
And then John in spirit said "let the past go Annie, let the whole past go, because the past is the past, they are sunsets on days which have past, long ago sunsets on long ago days, which no longer exist anymore. Just let the whole past go, it was all a dream anyway, let it just evaporate."
And that is what brought me into the now. It really did help me. It is a odd technique John did but it worked.
He brought me so deep into the bosom of family and the bosom of the past, and when he had achieved all that, he said "Let it all go, none of it was real, none of it ever happened, the only thing real in any of it was Tinkerbell."
It seemed funny that Tinkerbell, that lively mischievous fairy out of Walt Disney's imagination, could still live, still be, but all the rest was gone. All that is here is the now. It was how John brought me into the now.
It had a good effect on me because it made our connection in spirit much stronger that he had helped me and communicated with me, and it did evaporate a lot of the past for me.
He said "it's a different thing when you write about it, because that is art. And art always infuses the now-ness into the past.
"Art is always in the now, no matter what the topic is. But let it go from your mind and memories, let all the past go."
And so I did.
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