My friend Margaret received her diagnosis in November. Barely two months, and she has passed away. It happened so quickly I can only imagine what her family feels.
I wrote this on her Facebook wall a couple of days before she died. She may or may not have seen it. I don’t know. It would be a lot to expect family or friends to show her a message in her last moments.
Dearest Margaret,
It’s later than I should be awake, and I’m sitting on our bed while the baby sleeps. Thinking of you and wondering what you’re looking at right now. It’s early morning for you, though, so perhaps you’re also asleep.
I think of you often but in particular when Lila and I put money in our abundance jars. We almost don’t have room for any more coins or bills, so we’ll be donating the money somewhere soon. We’ll do our best to find a place we think you’ll like.
I’ve never thought too much about vibrations until you talked of your vibrational energy and how it sustained you in the face of a mortal diagnosis and doctors who couldn’t say how little time you had left. I have never been more moved or inspired. I can feel your vibrations here, all the way from where you are.
I told Lila you are not well, and she asks about you.
It is amazing what relationships form long distance, between people who have never met. Thank you for teaching me so much. Thank you for the vibrant flowers you share on your wall. When I think of you, I think of a blushing japanese magnolia — do you have them in Doncaster? — forever opening.
Much love to you!
xoL
Tiger Lily in our garden in Argentina.
Margaret showed me how to believe in abundance.
As per the directions on Margaret’s website, Lila and I took jelly jars and filled them with phrases that offered happiness, hope, prosperity and love. We put into our messages the things we most wanted to experience and feel.
I am surrounded by people who love me.
I am calm.
I feel the kindness of strangers.
I am capable of great outpourings of love.
Each day, we put our money in and fished out a paper, increasingly crumpled and folded as the year wore on.
The day I found out, Lila came home from camp to find me in the kitchen looking sad. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “My friend Margaret died,” I told her, and she silently ringed her arms around my waist with a gentle hug. “I’m sorry,” she said.
We put 100 pesos each into our abundance jars that afternoon. The note I chose? “I’m happy.” Lila picked., “I’m at peace.”
I am happy.
I am at peace.
Those vibrations still at work even now. Her family requested people wear not black but bright colors to her memorial. I imagine the scarlet, saffron and fuchsia of her garden.
A thistle found in the Gorge of Verdun, France.
It’s a strange thing, perhaps, to have my last post of 2014 be one of death. Yes, I am sad at Margaret’s passing, but I am ever richer for knowing her. She was a light on the other side of the internet. Someone who taught me the strength of trust and belief, and yes, of the vibrational energy that connects us.
Her death along with another friend who died shortly before and yet another who died last week have made me see my online relationships differently.
Ginger flower in Costa Rica.
They make me realize how the technologies we use have forever transformed the way human beings interact, and suddenly we are connected with people and places that in the past we didn’t even know existed. Our words extend far beyond the immediate environs as we etch permanent traces everywhere we touch.
We are ephemeral shadows, everlasting.
And that is the thought that takes me into the new year.
