Love Notes for Annie

On Sunday 2.12.12, I got a call.  Anna Rosalie Ferguson, my little sister Annie, was in the hospital.  They weren't sure what was wrong.  Only an hour or so earlier, Annie had posted on her FB page that she used to dance around to Whitney Houston songs when she was a kid.  She finished the post with "RIP sweet lady."

Who knew that in a few short hours, that very phrase would be for, not just from, Annie.  It was a brain aneurysm.  She died.  Aged 28.

Annie was the first member of our extended HumFam to bring us a treasured child.  She is also the first to depart from us into the Great Mystery.  There's a beauty in that.  A hard beauty, but beauty.  And Annie was all about the beauty.  I wish you could've seen her.  She'd have made you smile.  Or maybe drool.  I mean, *seriously.*  That girl was *sumthin*.
  
I fly out very early tomorrow morning, to attend to family and to attend her services.  I am awash in mixed feelings of joy at seeing beloveds I see far too seldom, and sorrow in the reason I'll be seeing them.

Annie was a treasure, a gem, a vibrant, vivacious spark of the Divine in a body.  She was also fully human, riddled with foibles and challenges--not the least of which was being a young, single mother.  I was there with Annie and family when her daughter Korazon Pearl came into the world, and I will be there to commemorate Annie's leaving of this world.  That is a blessing.

When a HumFam sister, Jen, called to tell me she was going, my first teary, sobbing comment was, "I wish I could go."  Shortly thereafter, I got a call from Kari in Chicago, saying that if I could, by any chance, manage the journey she'd catch me on that end and care for me.  After I told my partner Lo I'd gotten that message. Lo commented, "Well, you never know.  If you're really being called to go, maybe you could ask the community, and they might help.

I never even had to ask.  Less than 4 minutes later, I got a text from a member of our Tribe, telling me that she'd start a collection if money was the only thing that was keeping me from going.

It was.  Within minutes, I am told, the funds were collected.  Minutes.  Our community, the extended family to which Annie and I belong, stepped up.  I was told that (and I cry as I write this) that they felt Annie would want me there and they wanted me there, too, to represent our HumFam.  I am an envelope for love notes to Annie, because my community asked and offered me this tearful, joyful task.  I am a container for all the tears at Annie's loss, and there have been many.  I will do all I can to get big enough to hold both the love and grieving, sorrowful tears.  So many synchronicities occurred in such a short time that I choose to believe I am meant to go.  And I am going.

Some of the HumFam will also be there.  I can't help but wonder how we'll be met there--the other, weird, Californian members of Annie's family, showing up to see her off.  Regardless of the differences in geography and culture, we all have one thing in common:

We love Annie.  And Kora.  And Patty. And Kimmers & Daniel, too.

The funds remaining form the airfare collection will be going into a fund for Kora and Patty.  Patty thought she was done being a Mom like that, and now she begins again.  I'll keep you posted on that as ways to donate become available.  Many of us are as committed to Kora now as we were when she was born.  We promised Annie would never do without--and neither will her daughter, if we can help it.

Meanwhile, I hold my grief and love in the same envelope as the love and grief of our HumFam for my little sister Annie.  Your prayers, blessings, and light are most welcome.  If anyone is particularly good at health stuff, some sort of blessing for not getting sick on a plane while traveling to the Midwest in winter would be awesome.  My instructors have been awesome around all of this, but the world and graduate school--despite my feelings that somehow they should stop to and take a knee to commemorate the passing of my sister--keeps on spinning and I'll be back in classes on Tuesday.

Here comes an envelope, Annie--full of love notes.  See you soon, baby.

If you'd like to see pix, go to Facebook and find me, Patty Stamos, Teresa Howell, Jennefer White and Jenn Asspittle.

The Jewel in My Net Named Annie

When Anna Roaslie Ferguson found out she was pregnant, we were all thrilled.  This child was to be the first new being in my intimate tribe, and we were ecstatic.  We had a Blessing Way for Annie and the baby (Korazon Pearl).  It was my privilege to be there when Kora was born. This story was my Blessing Way gift to them.  It can't touch the gift they are to me, but here it is anyway.

Once there was a woman. 

She was a good woman: pretty, smart, fiercely temperamental.  One day, she wandered away from her village into the woods, where she met a beautiful stranger.  The stranger called to her and she went; they danced in a clearing and laid down under the stars and whispering trees.  In hindsight, she felt that the whispering trees might have been telling her to go back home, but that was hindsight, and it had been good for those moments on the forest floor with the beautiful stranger.

In the morning, the woman awoke alone and with a big, hungry belly.  She had opened up to the beautiful stranger; during the night while she slept, a spirit had crept into her belly asking her to give it a body so that it might become a human and discover the mysteries and wonders of being a person.  Surprised, the woman thought about it for a moment, and agreed.  “Alright, spirit.  You may live in my body for 3 seasons.  But after that, you must come out here where I can see you, and we will finish growing you in the open air.”  The spirit agreed, and the woman went home to tell her village.

Some in the village turned away from the woman.  They were not ready to help a spirit in a new body learn to move through the world.  Some in the village ran towards the woman, asking what they could do to help.  Some quietly went about the business of getting the village ready to house another spirit in a body as it journeyed through the world.  The woman spent time dancing and crying and screaming and redecorating and talking to the spirit in her belly, just like all crazy women who wander into the woods and lay down with strangers do when they find themselves unexpectedly hosting a hungry spirit in a big belly.

As days and nights tumbled over one another, moving time forward through space with their antics, the woman’s belly got bigger and bigger.  The spirit in the woman’s belly became more accustomed to wearing skin, testing out the idea of being in a body by stretching and poking and punching the woman from the inside.  The woman’s belly got so big that she was certain she would burst before the spirit ever decided to come see what the world looked like with its own, new eyes.  The spirit laughed at the woman, telling her, “Don’t worry, mother woman.  I have been here before; I have seen the world.  But by the time I get outside, I will have forgotten much of what I know, which is why I need you—to help me remember, and to survive the remembering.”

The wise, cranky, itchy-bellied, woman smiled and patted her belly, saying, “Of course.  And when I remind you, I will be remembering myself, and we will move through the world together.  After all, if we wish to know the way ahead, we must ask those coming back.”

The spirit laughed, making the woman’s belly ripple from one hip to the other.  It said, “By sharing the pain of my becoming, I will show you how strong you really are,” and took a nap.

A little while later, the spirit woke and knew it was time to leave the warm, dark comfort of the woman’s belly.  The spirit still remembered that each new beginning is an ending of something else, and that’s always the way of things.  The villagers walked with the woman to the gatehouse, where all beings come out of the previous world and into the present.  The villagers faded into the trees, close enough to be there should the woman call, and far enough to give the woman room to expand into new life.

The woman walked around the gatehouse rubbing her lower back.  She squatted low when the pains came, breathing the rich, fertile earth into her body and blood.  She leaned against a tree when her legs grew tired, the world itself cradling her.  She breathed deep.  She panted shallow. She contracted.  She expanded.  When she had at last surrendered enough of the world she had known to make room for the new life to enter, the baby slid easily from her body, landing gently on the soft, welcoming earth.  The woman removed her shirt, cleaning the child’s face and wrapping it close.  She cradled the child in her arms watching it remember how to breathe while wearing a body.  When the child inhaled deeply and let out a strong cry, the woman laughed and put a nipple in the child’s hungry mouth.  The woman, the child and the entire universe breathed a deep, easy sigh of contentment, and everything kept moving right along, just as it has always been and will ever be until it isn’t anymore.