Life After Death

Life After Death

After physical death there's an inherent part of the human psyche to believe that the soul, or its
equivalent, goes into another realm of being. From earliest childhood I saw beings from other worlds in dreams or with an inner sight. When I got old enough to attend school, the nuns and Jesuits replaced those visions with stories of heaven, hell and purgatory. Stories of spirits were drummed out of me. It took many years to unravel that indoctrination and resurrect the more real imagery of my childhood.

I was 25 when my grandmother "Bobo" died. Two weeks after her passing she appeared in what I thought was a dream. Except I'd opened my eyes and she was standing there in a long white gown next to my bed. She took an object out of her pocket and handed it to me. I said "It's the number 8. She said, "Turn it on its side." The message for "infinity" was clear. In April on her 88th birthday, her daughter, my Aunt Polly, died. As I wrote the numbers 88, the hair on my neck stood up with the coincidence of Bobo's infinity message.


Polly was my hero from the age of 12. She was an independent woman who did things her way. She drove a green convertible MG sports car before graduating to a big truck. She built things. She rode motorcycles. She loved fished and boating. She was All City and All State in softball and basketball. She traveled and camped in a van all over the country with her life partner. Diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 40, she told the surgeon she'd survive. She did for 48 more years until she was felled by a stroke.

Our family gathered for her funeral in Jacksonville. Most of her contemporaries had already passed on so it was a small gathering. I wanted to be alone with her for a few minutes so
waited until all the visits, tributes and accolades were over before entering the little chapel. I was now alone with her in the now dim room. 

I stood in front of the casket to thank her for the influences she had in my life; for the role model she represented to me as a strong, proud and independent woman; for teaching me to drive in her MG; and to water ski on my first try. (It helped that she told me alligators were in the river.)

I told her I didn't want to see her frail condition as she died, but would stand with Janet, her life partner, and the family in saying goodbye. Finally I said, "I love you Aunt Polly." The moment I said those words, I love you Aunt Polly, a white flower in the large flower arrangement that was on top of her casket fell. In slow motion, the flower hit the casket, bounced off, and came to rest on the floor in front of me. Intuitively I felt her, knew she'd heard me, and this was her message back to me. It was the only time I shed tears.

I went out to find the family and tell them what had just happened. They asked where was the
flower. I said on the floor. They insisted we go back and get it. As we walked into the chapel two men from the funeral home were wheeling the casket out a side door. The only thing left where the casket had been was the white flower. It now sits on our altar.

The following night I had a dream about Aunt Polly. She was dressed in a white summer dress. Her hair was curly and short. She was about 35 and looked radiant. She was "hosting" a memorial service for everyone at a swank white restaurant. Then she whispered to the family members, "Let's get this thing over with so I can change into shorts and a T-shirt. I'm going fishing then we're going to eat at a real Fish Camp." With those words, I knew Aunt Polly was just fine and had survived Life After Death!

                                                                                           Jo Mooy - May, 2017  

Mom Sent a Buddha

Mom Sent A Buddha

She was a force to be reckoned with. She was educated, strong willed, properly attired at all times and presented impeccable manners. My sisters and I were often

Mom's Tennyson Birthday Book

amused by her "regal" pronouncements stemming from a proper British upbringing. Her favorite phrase to correct any of our misdemeanors was "Ladies Don't!" I told her I was going to put it on her tombstone. I didn't.

We telephoned every Saturday morning. Though we lived in separate states, the miles disappeared as she chronicled the lives of our far-flung relatives. She knew all their birthdays, who had married, who just had a child or a grand-child. After she died I found all those facts with notations recorded in a little black book called Alfred Lord Tennyson's Birthday Book. He was her favorite poet. As a child she read me Tennyson's magical stories. Through her eyes and words I grew to love knights saving the world, The Lady of Shalott, Sir Richard Grenville, and the glories of the British Empire.

I knew something was wrong when I saw her that January. I hoped she was just getting old. But in February she was diagnosed . By the end of September she was gone. It wasn't supposed to happen like that. The doctors said "It doesn't have to be a death sentence." But in her case it was, though she endured treatmentsgallantly for seven months.

In those seven months I learned more about her than I had in her previous 82 years. As though she knew her time was limited she unburied the long held family secrets. She told me about the guy from Ohio she should have married. She asked about heaven and did they have food there. She felt she'd be bored playing a harp all day long. She used to paint landscapes so we talked about art. She asked about the mandalas that I painted and what they meant. When I explained that painting mandalas was like a meditation, her questions grew deeper. I realized my answers were taking her beyond the strict Catholic shroud she'd worn since her childhood. My diversion away from Catholicism had been an issue, so when she asked questions, I answered carefully. I knew she was opening to whatever was to come after death.

At her death relatives came from distant countries to pay their respects. As she taught us, we held it together with a British "upper lip" while hosting the family. We remembered what ladies do and don't do! When lots of people are around, it's hard to grieve but once the hubbub dies down reality sets in. But all too soon everyone returned to their regular lives. After two weeks it was also my time to return to Sarasota.

For the first time since her death I was alone, driving down a backwater two-lane highway in Florida. Memories of mom mixed with overwhelming grief. Tears fell so hard I couldn't see to drive. At the first chance, I pulled into a seemingly abandoned old motel on the side of the road. Weeds were knee-high in the cracks of the decaying asphalt. Had I been in a normal state of mind there's no way I would have done this. But I drove into the motel and sat in my car in front of an unpainted door falling off its hinges. There was a weather beaten chair propped outside the door.

For about ten minutes I sat there, tears falling. Then quite mysteriously the door opened and a tall ragged man came out and sat on the chair. I should have put the car in reverse and hastily exited the area. Instead, I sat there frozen, watching him. For some reason I was unafraid. The man saw me and nodded his head. Then he pulled out of his dirty pants pocket a long brown mala with a brown tassel. I watched as his gnarled fingers slowly moved over the beads and his mouth mumbled the words of some prayer.

In a flash I remembered my very Catholic mother asking me about the mala I often carried. When I explained it was like her rosary, our conversation traveled from Catholic Rome to Buddhist Tibet and the similarities of religions. This was an enormous leap of faith for her to even discuss another religion. But she was dying at the time so perhaps she'd thrown caution to the winds.

As the memories of that conversation played out, I looked up and found the man I would later call "The Buddha on Highway 301," smiling at me. It was as though he'd been summoned out of time to this abandoned motel, on the side of a barely traveled highway, to pray silently while I cried my eyes out over the death of my mother. I smiled back in gratitude for his presence. I bowed my head to him with respect for the sign he represented. Then I dried my tears. For I remembered what mom had promised me during her illness. "If I can, I'll send you a sign!" She did. Mom sent a Buddha! 

Jo Mooy - May 2015   

Snapshots of a Mother

Snapshots of a Mother

She was formidable but gentle. Practical, yet given to dreams and fantasy. She was British, haughty, regal and very elegant. She was called "the most beautiful" of eight sisters, all of whom were well-known beauties. She was adventurous, swimming in barracuda infested waters in her thirties and body-surfing into her late seventies. She wrote both prose and poetry, was an artist, articulate, well-educated and well-read. She was a prolific writer, leaving hand-written commentaries in the margins of books and opinionated note-cards about people or current events tucked into nooks and crannies. In the latter part of her life, religious fervor blossomed. Not until the last year of her life did I notice a hint of mysticism. She was often challenging but nevertheless, a strong guiding force in my life. She was my mother!

She sometimes lived in a fantasy world where chivalry was still the norm and ladies dressed a certain way and behaved with elegance and decorum. I remember once yelling out the car window to a friend. With her famous haughty tone of disapproval, she informed me that "Ladies don't shout from moving cars." Over the years I learned that ladies didn't do a lot of things that I was guilty of doing. I told her I was going to put on her tombstone, "Ladies Don't ..." But I never did.

She often talked about the movers and shakers of the world as though she knew them personally. She spoke fondly of Sir Richard Branson's adventures circumnavigating the world by balloon and insisted he wrote her after one of his failed attempts. My two sisters and I indulged the fantasy, rolling our eyes behind her back. She regaled us with stories of her correspondences with Al Roker, KatieCouric, Pope John and other dignitaries. We were positive she'd gone over the edge. But after her death we found boxes of letters from all the people she'd told us about. She'd written to correct their pronunciation of a word on a TV broadcast, or to congratulate them about an achievement. In the box we found hand-written response letters or post cards from Branson, Katie Couric, Jimmy Carter, Al Roker, and all the people she'd written. Just like she said! She also wrote commentaries about people in public office that she didn't care about. I found this on a newspaper clipping about Richard Nixon's death: "An outpouring of insincere words for an unscrupulous man. I'll put out the flag not for that rogue but for the Presidency."

She was a feminist long before the word became an anthem for a generation. The Belgian nuns who taught on the island insisted that boys could take art but girls had to take needlepoint. I wanted desperately to take art with the boys but the nuns told my mother it was impossible. Petitioning my grandfather, a formidable man in his own right, both of them visited Mother Superior at the Convent. I never found out what they talked about, but the next day I was the only girl in the "boys art class." She concluded rules should be challenged and lived that lesson to the end of her life. When she was stopped for speeding in a residential area she told the young police officer that she was late for Mass. When he told her she was speeding in a 30 mph area, she summoned her most disdainful tone. She told him he'd be of much better use to society by tracking down real criminals instead of 82 year old women on their way to church. He let her go.

 

These stories are the snapshots of a life well taught and well lived. But it was not until her funeral mass that I learned about the deep faith and mysticism that guided her life. We all knew she went to Mass every day and that she donated to charities all over the world by helping the poor and those in need. But it was learning about her personal practices that moved me to tears that day.

When the funeral began a tall, thin, man with ragged clothes, a knotted rope for a belt, long wet hair and a long beard tucked into a rumpled shirt walked into the Church. He stopped in front of a photo of my mother for a full sixty seconds then placed his hands in prayer and began softly talking to her. Then he went to the front of the Church and knelt there for the entire service.

After the funeral family and friends milled around talking. I caught sight of the homeless man standing alone with a sad smile on his face staring at my mother's photo. I went to him and introduced myself. He told me his name was Jim. When I asked how he knew my mother he said: "Your mother was a kind woman. When no one else cared about me, she did. If you look at me you can see why others would shun me. Your mother never did. She picked me up at Publix grocery store every morning and took me to mass with her. Then she made me come and have breakfast in the church hall with all the ladies. Most of the time it was my only meal of the day, but your mother always fed me. She was a great lady and I loved her very much. She helped me to find the Lord God in my life and to believe in God again."

I invited him to eat with us. He felt he couldn't because of all the fine people that were present at the funeral. I insisted he join us, and barely reaching his chest, hugged him. When I pulled back I saw tears flowing down his cheeks. All he said was, "Thank you ma'am! Your mother was a fine lady and I loved her. She saved my life." Jim had lunch with us at the family table. Just like mom would have wanted!

On Mother's Day 2012, I celebrate her life well lived and her life of spiritual influence. Happy Mother's day, Mom! This is for you and all the moms who have left us a legacy to live up to!  

 

Jo Mooy - May 2012