Monday, August 16, 2010

Ambuya One Year Gone Today

Ambuya (Grandma) died peacefully in her sleep on the morning of 16 August 2009.

It was when they carried her body out of her room and into the hearse that I knew that, in this life, I would never see her again. She was gone forever. As the hearse disappeared into the driveway, I noticed the trees swaying in the wind and I recalled how she used to talk about the wind. She would lie in her bed by the window and listen to the breeze. She'd look out the window and watch the swaying trees and whisper, "God is here..." I used to look out with her and, of course, never saw anything but swaying trees. Today I understood.


Today I walked out and retraced the path her and I used to take for her to show me what leaves and berries we could and could not eat.


The bushes were there no more. I stared out where we used to walk and, perhaps, hoped to see her but there was simply lifeless, dull, dry grass and weeds. The wind was blowing so loud! Louder than usual, I thought. I couldn't think. I shut my eyes to pray and it was then, at that moment, that I heard The Celebration. This was not noise! This was not the bewailing of the wind! This was a fanfare! This was an ovation!


I opened my eyes and noticed the dancing white cattails scattered across the field. I noticed the tall, dark green tree in the distance waltzing with the brilliant purple bourgainvillea that had cradled into its midst. I noticed the tall grass frolicking to the music that the heavens composed. And I noticed the tree that she watched from her window that participated in this grand symphony by rustling its lyrical leaves. I could hear what she heard and I understood.


Khalil Gibran once said that the trees are the poems that the earth writes upon the sky...today I heard an ochestra. Khalil Gibran once said :


For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides,

that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?


Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.


It was then that I understood that Ambuya never really left ...she was there the whole time.


Candy Morrell (Great Grand Daughter)

4 comments:

  1. I am sorry about your loss. I am touched by this because you have used your sorrow to touch others and let them know that all is never, ever lost - the memories live on.

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  2. Many thanks for your kind words. Ambuya was a tower of strength for the family and never ever gave up on living, and on people. Nature decided to steal her breath away in the early morning but her soul lives on in her family.

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  3. It has been a whole year? In my heart she has not left ....yet. My every thought of her invokes a huge smile on my face. I remember her voice so playful and humorous even during those last days of her Life. And those times when any one of us would feed her a spoonful of food and she would immediately, like a skilled tennis player, return the serve, by spitting on the 'feeders' face or laps OMG LOL we would laugh and so would she. She knew very well that that "return serve" on her part would immediately disable any further attempts on our part to forcefeed her. She was so enjoyable. She was wise and witty and absolutely lovable. How Blessed we were!

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  4. when one puts pen to paper,mortality transends to immotality and dust transfigures to divinity.how many decendants has she brought into this world by her stay here. bless her soul.

    laban

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