hypnosis

She says, "You may be feeling heavy." And I am feeling so heavy, nearly paralyzed. And yet, conscious. The words come out before I think them. My conscious self has stepped aside.

She guides me into a boat that moves backward through time, like a movie about time travel--fall, summer, spring, winter, fall, summer, spring, winter. We dock and she tells me to get out of the boat, and asks me if it is night or day.

Night.

I am twelve, a street urchin, an orphan named John hiding at the docks, stealing food. Men find me and beat me; throw me into the water. It is a short, dismal life. I never knew love. I never relied on anyone.

“What did you learn in this life?”

Survival.

We travel further back.

Is it day or night?

Day.

 What are you doing?

Stirring a huge pot in the middle of an old kitchen. A cauldron. I want to be alone with the food. I’ve sent the children to get vegetables from the garden, I’m adding herbs and whispering prayers over the pot.

What are you doing?

Folk.

Like folk medicine?

Yes.

It has been passed down from my grandmother and mother. And it was to protect my children from illness.

Do you do this for everyone?

No, just for my family. I don't want them to know I do it.

Why?

They are afraid and do not understand. They think it goes against their religion. And the women pass it on.

And so, I keep it secret. But the people are getting sick, and I use the herbs to protect my family. I sense that this is magical.

The hypnotist asks me to fast forward to an important time in that life. "Is it day or night?"

Night.

And it was the night of my daughter's first period, and I am teaching her about the herbs. She is crying and afraid of the blood. I show her how to walk in the moonlight and pick the herb and then we whisper all night, trying not to wake the men up. This life is so beautiful and pleasant. I never want to leave. She asks me to look at my daughter, and she asks me who it is, and I say that she looks like my daughter, Beatrice, but not.

Oh, I whisper, it is Lucia.

She moves me to the end of my life. I see myself old in my bed. My daughter holding my head, using a cloth on my face. I am wasted away. It has come quickly, this death. She asks me if I am afraid of death, and I say no. I have had a good life. My children have children, and their children have children. None of the things that happen to families happened to our family. None of my children grew sick and died. The herbs protected us. I can leave now, happily. I ask my daughter to give me belladonna. The men do not know. The women all die the same way. I am so happy to die this way, peacefully, with my daughter there.  

We return to now.

Why did Lucia die in this life?

It is our agreement. She just needed unconditional love, and I could provide that for her, even though her death would hurt. And that was part of my suffering in this life. We suffer to remove the obstacles that prevent us from spiritual growth. I need to learn through the suffering of her death.

Learn what?

Learn how to ask for help. Let go of John and his suffering, remember the trust I learned in the life where Lucia was my only daughter. In this life, this one I am living right now, I need to learn to trust again--myself and other people. I need to ask for help.

She helped me die peacefully, and I helped her. I am a moss-covered thing, traveling through the centuries, capturing the reasons for my grief, my aches, my hookable places. There is a peace in knowing I had one life where I mothered her, where I held her, soothed her fears, released her peacefully as she released me.

Do you feel like you had other lives with your children? Have you mothered or fathered them before? Do you feel like you chose this life? How does that feel to you? Is it comforting? Or does it make you angry?

fortune tellers

I root for each fortune teller I meet.

Say her name. Lucy. Lucia. Say it. Mention her.

photo by ManWithAToyCamera.

I am like a magpie, and their blinking neon sign the shiny thing I must peck. I am drawn to the gypsy caravan, the crystal ball, the smell of sage and incense, the Zoltar machine, and aura of pure indigo. Each one talks about my failing writing career and my husband, artwork and my marriage, how I myself am psychic, and destined to be a reader myself. Nothing about the daughter that died.

Channel her. Speak her words, share (what must be) her stilted, strange wisdom of never having breathed, yet so grieved. Channel her.

The five buck psychic asks me for a question, and I tell her about Lucia. How she died in me, and how my husband wants another baby, and I am scared this baby will die too. Right before he is born. (This was eight months out from her death, but it feels like today.) I wanted to know why she died. Science failed me. There is no physical reason my daughter died, but surely, there is a metaphysical one. I found the five buck psychic on-line. She sends me her reading four days later. She tells me that Lucia is a Buddha and that she chose me for her last life, so she could heal old wounds, the ones that need the comfort and unconditional love of a womb experience. And she knew that I would be strong enough to handle her death. It was the soul contract we made. I read her email aloud on the way to the airport. We were flying to Panama for a week, taking our grief on vacation.

"Do you find that comforting?" I asked my husband. Unsure if I should be offended or reassured.

"Yes. It is comforting." We were comforted for the rest of the day. The next day, we ceased being comforted and were back to relentless discomfort of baby-death, grief, angst, fear, anxiety, and bitterness.

Still, I find that idea most comforting of all the ideas posited by the religions of the world--that my baby is a holy woman, a wise soul, an awakened being, a Buddha. Her soul released from suffering. That I gave her unconditional love, that she choose this life because I was strong and loving and earth mother-y. Further, I found the idea that I choose this life comforting. Of course, it arrogantly supports the vision I have of myself as capable, loving, selfless, in control, powerful, rather than the truth of it which is that I am chaotic, frightened, humbled, mediocre, out of control, powerless. I found out later that this idea is a Hindu understanding of stillbirth, that the baby who chooses to be stillborn is in their last life before achieving moksha, before being released from the samsara, the cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

Still, that first psychic gifted me with a moment of solace. It wasn't enough, though, I wanted to hear about her from her. I wanted to hear her voice. And so I began my hero's journey through the metaphysical world. In the last three years, I have consulted psychics, tarot readers, astrologers, fortune tellers, palmists, hair readers, angel channels, auric interpreters, shamans and medicine women every few months hoping for a message from my daughter.  And not one of them, until two weekends ago, mentioned my daughter without my prompting. She is gone. Her energy doesn't reside in mine. But I still rooted for them. I thought hard as they pulled cards, sat still in meditation.

All of my writing, my artwork, my entire life changed after I pushed her dead six pound body out of my vagina, surely you can see this on my soul, in my aura. It must be etched in gold, or charred and blackened in the parts of me that once shone. Surely, you must feel it when you touch my hair, look into my palm, read the tea leaves. I can see it, even the cheesemonger can see it when I ask for a pound of provolone. Just say her name. I believe you can.

I watch these psychic shows when no one is around. They are my guilty pleasure. The one with the lady with long fingernails, talking like a mobster. She channels stillborn children here and there, and despite myself I weep, blubber almost. I watch her in the middle of the night, on-demand, so no one can see me almost blubbering. It is babylost porn. She tells the grieving mothers mundane things mostly, confirmation that their children are around them. I just want that. A confirmation of something--that she lived, that she died, that we grieve, that she is a person with a soul, or rather perhaps that I am.

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We wear headphones and microphones. It is the Mind-Body Expo and we are nestled on the second floor on the football stadium, tucked in the corner next to the Tibetan arts table. Here there are psychics and soul artists, channels and astral journeyman, reiki masters and healers in modalities I have never heard of, tables of jewelry purporting to open your third eye or connect you to the Akashic records. My sister signs up to see a shaman women. She is barefoot and beats a drum. I waited for the "World Renown Psychic Medium," as her sign states. I read laminated newspaper articles on her table while I waited. She found many missing persons. Well, three.

I have a missing person.

She whispers, "Can you hear me?"

"Yes." My own voice startles me. She tells me about her process and that she will be talking fast. I get a chill and she begins. She tells me that my grandparents are stepping forward.

She holds my hands in her own, and says, "Your grandfather is here. He is holding up two fingers, then a third. Do you have two or three children?"

 I gulp.

"I have two living children, and a child that died."

"Okay. I see you have two in spirit. The miscarried one is a boy. He said he liked the name Michael." That is the only name on our boy list during this last pregnancy so convinced I was that the growing dot in me was a girl. Michael is my grandfather's name. The hairs are standing up on my neck, and in my gut, I know that is true now.

"Your daughter will be reincarnated as your oldest daughter's first child, and your son will be your second grandchild. They will be part of your family again. They have always been part of your family."

The tears fall unself-consciously. I want this all to be true. I want Lucia to be a Buddha, while simultaneously and selfishly, I want her to come back.  I want to hold her again, some day, even as an old woman. I want to bathe her, and feed her rice and beans. It wasn't her voice, but it was the hope that I may see her again. And maybe that was enough.

Tell me about your experience. Have you consulted a psychic, channel, medium, palm reader, tarot reader, or other metaphysical worker for insight into your grief? What were you told? Was it comforting or disconcerting? If not, have you considered it? What holds you back?

pomegranate

I open my mouth. The scream escapes. It is a primal, ancient scream. The Banshee wail that precedes death and mourning. It has been building inside of me through all of my tragedies, humiliations, fears. But the death of my daughters propel it forward, out of me. It is also the scream of Demeter. It comes from deep inside of all women. The goddess roars through me. It is hardly a noise one knows before a child dies, it is something entirely different. A different cry, an animal sound, a wild rage that tears through normal ears. It is the hurricane. The volcano. The typhoon. It is in the Ancient Greeks, the Druids, the Celtic gods, the old Norse and Inuit tales where I find my story into the underworld. We babylost are no longer of this era and we should stop trying to be. We come from the distant past. The grief goddesses inhabit us to retell their stories. We channel their woe, their anger, their cries. We are transported to a place halfway between heaven and hell, the blessed and the cursed, the living and the dead.

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I can only really muster worship to the goddesses of grief--Demeter and Hecate, the Norse goddess Frigga, the Aztec goddess Coatlicue. There is a distinguished lineage of goddess grieving. She rarely behaves well. I learn the lessons of grief from mythology. I starve the world. I punish others. But the earth people will be restored. It is me who withers again when Summer leaves, every year, when I am reminded of my daughter's death. It is me who curses the most human parts of myself.

The chill moves through me. I nod to Autumn, bow to her, make elaborate arm gestures to welcome her through my life again. Autumn equinox marks Persephone's descent--her return to Hades, the god who abducted her all those millennia ago, raped her, held her captive in the underworld, fed her pomegranate to seal her fate. Her mother Demeter, the goddess of the harvest, begins her long walk around the world weeping, mourning, taking the life from the crops. Autumn equinox marks my descent too. I walk into my grief season, seizing the harvest, choking the life from everything around me, falling into a deep darkness. It is a welcome turn, when the earth and sky match my insides. It is my slow trudge until my daughter's death day on Winter Solstice.

This veil is thin now in October. Do not underestimate its power. The ancestors step just out of view, like through a gauzy film, whispering: Be better than you think possible.

I shake my head and rub mud into my skin. I light bonfires and bring them forward. "Oh, no, I mourn now, grandmothers. I am my shadow and myself. Two people mourning. Weep with me. Share half a tear, half a cry with your half-daughter."

On the first year, when the earth opened and swallowed Persephone, Demeter walked the earth for nine days searching for her daughter. She ate nothing. She drank no ambrosia. She refused to bathe. She just hunted her only daughter, desperate and possessed with the finding. There are rumors that Persephone screamed before she was taken. Hecate heard it, in fact. And they ask Helios, the sun god, who tells them it is Hades who stole the virgin, raped her. When she was told what happened, she enlists the help of her friends Famine and Petulance to punish the humans until she can see her daughter once more. They are the withered old hags of goddesses, but powerful nonetheless. They delight in cauldrons of poison and starvation and cackle to themselves. And Demeter, a compassionate goddess, felt justified in her actions.

Persephone is allowed to return home only if she has eaten nothing. But she could not resist the allure of the blood red pomegranate, sexy and furtive. The juice drips down her chin, and Hades licks it off her, sealing her fate to return for six months every year.

photo by zenobia_joy.

I find myself jealous of Demeter, seeing her daughter for six months, exacting her grief in such a global way.  And the jealousy reads like a sweet nectar of what could be. I drink in the hope. Lucia ate pomegranate in my womb. Or rather, I did. I pulled the seeds from the membranes one by one until my hands were sticky and stained. I didn't know better. The seeds shone like garnets in my hand. And I, gluttonous and greedy, ate more of the underworld. I couldn't stop at six. I ate the entire fruit and then more. I ate resentment and anger, grudges and hurt egos, swallowed them whole. They were still alive and writhing when they hit my stomach, inches from where Lucia slept.

When she died, I walked this liminal land, the space between the dead and the living. The land running alongside the river Styx. I barely heed the warnings of those who came before me:

Do not pay the ferryman if you see him. Do not approach him. But wave across to the others, vacant and plodding through the dark. Ask for your child. Wail, if you must, the shriek of Demeter will be recognized here. But do not get on the boat. And for the love of everything holy, do not eat any pomegranate seeds yourself any longer. They mean something different now, love. Even though they taste like Lucia. They mean something different.

I have existed in liminal spaces for a long time. The borderlands are my patria. My homeland. I am half white and half-Latina. Half-American and Half-Panamanian. I am half a believer, half a skeptic. I am half straight and have AB positive blood. The creatures drawn to me wear horns, and tall boots with twenty-seven buckles, and white make-up, wooly vests and listen to songs about vampires, but work in a corporate office during the day. I live in a suburb, a small town that feels like mid-town. Halfway between city and country. We have a farmer's market and tattooed vendors who smile at your bike trailer and say, "Right on."

After the first snow without her, I became half a mother. Half a breeder. Half of my children are dead. I have half a song. It is about winter, and the triple goddess, and pomegranate seeds which I suck just enough to be allowed visitation rights. She is gone and my summer never comes. Just space and time until I grieve again.

It is half a myth without an ending.

Do you feel between worlds? Which ones? Do you feel close to certain myths or stories now? Has that changed since the death of your baby(ies)?

a girl on the train

I am going to tell you this story. I don't think I ever told it before.

 photo by .aditya.

This was a few years ago, and I was less than a year from Lucia's death, and I was pregnant again and coming home from a midwife appointment in the city. I was on the train. I was listening to Stereolab, holding onto a pole, staring out the window at graffiti and darkness passing underneath the city.

Then I saw her waiting for the train. I couldn't believe it. She walked onto the car, brushed past me. I smelled her without being weird. And she even smelled like I thought she would. She had dark hair and eyes like my husband. I couldn't stop staring at her. She was Lucia grown up. I mean, I thought Lucia could look like her. Then I guess I thought she was Lucia. She must have been twenty-two, or so. She looked athletic with wide shoulders. She wore orange and red, and carried a small purse crossed over her chest, nothing ostentatious. She checked her iPhone and listened to music and tapped her toes. She wore cool, sensible shoes. Clogs. Just like me. And a scarf around her neck.

I whispered Lucia's name, but she didn't budge. I turned away now and again for the sake of convention. But I situated myself so I could mostly stare at her while pretending to look through her, like she was a specter, which of course, she was. And when the train pulled into my stop, I stayed on. I stayed on the train to see her longer. To look at her face. Praying she would smile, or talk. She was my baby, but she didn't know it. I wanted to see the way her neck eased into her shoulder. It was a very adult part of the body, and Lucia was never adult.

My God. Lucia will never be an adult.

The fact hits me like I fell in front of the train instead of rode in it. Lucia will never kiss a boy. She will never go to college, or eat a peach or dance in a rainstorm. I will never run into her randomly on the train where we can ride home together. I sometimes forget the details of all she will miss in my missing. She will not wear sensible shoes on a Tuesday, or crazy heels on a dark New Year's Eve. She will not hate basketball, or love it, even. Lucia is missing everything too. This body, this youth, this sexiness, this life we lead when we are young and death is something conquered, not an inevitable destination. Lucia never left the station.

I have nothing left of her. A wisp of hair, and grief. If there was a tea to take away grief, I wouldn't drink it. It is all I have of her--grief. An astrologer said I ride the train through two worlds--the living and the dead. I will never fit in either place. It is my destiny, he said. By the alignment of the stars, and my birth time, and this life, he said, Remember,  you made this soul contract. You picked your suffering. To me, he said, it looks like you picked the express train to spiritual growth, which means this is going to be a hard life.

I want this grief, this dis-ease of the heart. The grief is love, I think. It is the aching part of love. It is the sad part of love. But it is still love. Grief ties me to her. Aching. Pain. Suffering. They are her calls to me, and in that way, the pain is sweet and beautiful. She is just a name now. To my children. They stopped asking me about her weight, and what age she would be. She is Lucy, the very sad story I told them one afternoon. She is a butterfly now, and maybe a ladybug. She is the dedication of a song, or a picture, but not a real girl. She doesn't ride the train, and listen to music. She doesn't wear her hair down. Not like the other sisters.

This ride home felt like a journey between two worlds. I am Orpheus, walking again with a lyre into the underworld, and it invigorates me. It is not unlike going into 8th Street station. It smells of piss and cigarette smoke. There is a darkness in me. One I finally see. If I embrace it, the astrologer says, I will be happier. Even way back then, before I knew about the darkness in me, I paid the conductor, and followed the girl that could have been my daughter. My Lucia is dead. Her ashes are lumpy (so is my soul.) I probably wouldn't recognize my little girl walking and talking like a twenty year old. After all, I never saw her live. But that girl on the train was her for twelve minutes. And I loved her like my baby. The girl gets off the train and runs down the stairs. I watch her disappear behind a wall. Lucia is dead again.

I cross the platform to the train going back to my home. It's only two stops. The car is empty. It is hard not to cry, so I don't fight it.

Have you ever seen a stranger who reminds you of your child? Is there any adult in your life that reminds you of what your child could have been? Who is it? Do you want to be close to them, or far away? What parts of your child's adulthood do you miss most? 

questions and answers

photo by wakingphotolife.

What is Lucy made of, Mama?

She is made of people ash with bone.

She is white, almost. Sometimes grey.

She had no knuckles, she was too young, I think. So there are no knuckles bones. So she is the other bones with people ash. That is what her body is made of, daughter.

But the important part of her is made of whispers and prayers and paint fumes on a spring morning, a candle lit to push away the stink of it, and a moment we took advantage of. The wind blows the chimes in the dining room.

She is made of chimes.

She is made of sprouts and nests and small mites writhing in hay. There is a chipmunk who sits on the roof of the garage. I wave to him every morning. She is made out of him.

She is made of wood blocks and printing ink. She is made of porcelain and  papier-mâché. She is made of vine charcoal and 90lb. paper, shredded and waterlogged with seeds embedded in its pulp. She is made of summer and fiddleheads. Yoga and smoothies with berries and almond butter. She is made of long flowing skirts, and a purple dress that made me look like Barney, but feel like a goddess.

She is made of email fights and heartbreak and broken clavicles, too. I try not to talk about that part of her, because I used to believe that the dark parts of her making killed her. Sometimes I think that is what made her live so long. It gave her tenacity. She is made of strength.

She is made of the moon. Further, she is the moon. Hanging effortlessly over our nights, disappearing gradually day by day, and then appearing again, brighter and closer than ever. She is also made of winter solstice. She is made of icicles and darkness and sad songs about sunshine and being taken away

She is made of atoms and stardust and self-sacrifice. She is made of nothing, but everything.

How old is Lucy now, Mama?

She is as old as the trees, my love. Her roots are so far into the earth, they are lava and rock. She is the Anasazi. She is the crone. She is the baby whose bough is breaking. She is as old as the canyons and young as the idea. She is a moss-covered age, one with ferns at her base. She is sixteen and driving erratically. She is eighty and hunched over in secret lives never lived.

She is three and two months old. Younger than you, but also ancient, like the gods, and at the same time, she is always newborn.

What happens when we die, Mama?

Our skin grows cold and turns ashen. Our body becomes stiff. The skin around the fingernails recede making every fingernail longer. The skin hides away and reveals something animal about our humanity. The meaning of life is gone then. The carnal meaning, I mean. The impulse for more is gone. We are just skin and bone. We are carbon, filtering into earth. It nourishes something lovely, we like to think. That also is transitory. The spark leaves our eyes and enters other people's hearts and burns brightly. So brightly it feels like fear. I want to tell you that our body is a shell, as cumbersome and heavy as a turtle. We figured out how to carry it, but it is not comfortable. The part that rots and makes a home for other creatures of the dark, that part is not us. It is something else. It is soil. It is life in its death. We do not have a soul, baby. We are a soul and have a body. I read that once. I believe that.

But what happens to our soul, baby, is not my privilege to know. I just sense that we become part of every person and everything, like a raindrop falling into the ocean. Can we separate the raindrop again? Never, but we still are water.

What do you think happens when we die, baby?

I think we go into trees, Mama. That is why it is very important to hug trees.

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What round about answers are you giving these days? What kind of questions do you get asked, either by children or adults, that stump you? How do you answer them? What kind of questions do you ask? Are your answers concrete or esoteric? Have your answers changed over time?

or alternatively, you can just tell me what your child is made of...