Naturally, I go in and out of grief. Chris told me the night Lorene died "she is a huge teacher for you, Mariah....." The acupuncturist I saw after Christmas caught me on a day where I was....high? from the love I was opening to. She suggested I was still grieving....I couldn't understand what she was telling me. Me? No, I am fine! Later that night, I lose the connection, or maybe it is just how the connection is supposed to be...I fall into a deep funk for a week.
Being as how it is Christmas break, I hang in with the ups and downs. And, start to come out of it by the first few days of January. Still sad, but happy, so gosh damn happy for having been given the time to share with Lorene.
I go onto Facebook, and realize I hadn't heard from another healing friend, Ann-Marie...the "Musings of a Mad Brit" author. So, I look up her site, only to read that she had passed away December 30th!!
Ann-Marie and I were fast and close friends the last 6 months I was in Wisconsin. I met her at the GNM seminar she had at her home. The first day of the seminar, we talked a few minutes, and then each said "I feel as if I have known you all my life!" We talked often, she near Milwaukee, me in Green Bay, and manage to get together as often as we could...made easier by my monthly drives to Chicago. Her husband was just the neatest guy, he was just as easy to be with. The three of us together felt like a couple of hobbits dancing around (Ann-Marie was british, and they lived in this cobblestone and big thick beamed ceiling home by the Milwaukee River) everytime we got together. Smiles, laughter, joy in spite of the fact that both Ann-Marie and I were "dealing with cancer."
Sometime in July, I believe it was, Ann-Marie developed bilateral breast tumors, which continue to grow and be very painful for her. She had a history of skin cancer occurrences a few years prior, in the upper Right chest area, if I remember correctly. She had surgeries, and chemo, I think originally, and then had decided to go to Mexico to be treated by the Hoxey Method. This time around, she went back to Hoxey, decided it didn't feel right, and so joined me in seeing Dr. Guo. We talked and talked GNM, but I could sense she wasn't embracing it for some reason.
In August, she decided to work with a healer in the Madison area. Her guru encouraged her to go the western medicine route, as well. These people found "brain tumors." The healer talked her into getting her teeth amalgams removed. She did coffee enemas, chemo, radiation. After she died, I learned from a mutual acquaintance that "the cancer just exploded all over her skin, body." Final separation conflict, everything being let go of.
It's hard, I was surprised she was going the way she was, and yet, I told her numerous times in September and October when she would express concern that I would be unhappy with her for her decisions that she didn't need my approval/disapproval and I wouldn't entertain any of that. I asked her to believe in herself and do what felt right to her. We stopped talking, though, sometime in the end of October.
Ann-Marie was an amazing woman...so filled with love and laughter, ingenious in so many ways. She drew people in to her life, and innoculated us all with her infectious love. She taught Phoenix Rising yoga, laughter yoga...she even had these really cute cards made up with her in funny yoga postures and funny words relating to them (example: she's in what I think is the Eagle Pose...arms and legs all twisted up...and a goofy grin on her face....inside the card read "sorry I haven't connected with you lately, I have been all wrapped up with myself!") She sold these to raise money for her Mexico Hoxey Clinic trips (I found them this morning as I was cleaning up my apartment and putting stuff away...more than anything, this is what finally prompted me to get back to blogging. I also realized I missed writing/working out stuff with the blog...too wrapped up in school....that will be another post.....).
When she passed on, a community of people from all over the world celebrated her life. She touched so many in her 50-some years of life. I am blessed to have had her touch mine.
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