Hands of Light

I got the news in the afternoon, checking out at Trader Joe's. River waves a silky corrugated thread and giggles into her pink balloon. Freshly cut bangs, golden sweetness across her perfect brow. I lift her into the car seat. Twenty feet ahead of our parked car, threatening highway madness. Softness against speed, and I'm in the middle protecting one from the other.

"Do you want to hear this now? Maybe we should just talk tomorrow," she weeps. One thousand miles between our careening and I plead, "Don't treat me like that! Of course I want to know." Before the next moment, before a formal delivery, I already understand because I am seeing a moving reel in my mind, images of us from the beginning. Sisters.

"They found a mass behind my left eye. It's pressing on the third optic nerve, that's why my pupil has been fully dilated, why my eyelid is drooping now." She swallows a breath, stifles a sob, "It's big, I saw it on the film."

I'm like a winter Wisconsin lake. Frozen. Nothing will break through the surface. And I'm the fisherman that walks out first with my pick axe to check for sure. Half second later and I know that she can safely cross my back. "Whatever this is, Lisa, you know, I am your copilot."

We drive and hang on the line. What else can we do but what we've always done together, sail through weather. Us on that reflective surface, the world tumbling above. Only.....we are the survivors. We always rise up out of the storm together.

Sailing through the skies, childhood dives into mid-life swan glides, from our position the world below. I see smoke out my side mirror coming from her plane. Somethings happening. I see her fiddling with the controls, a look in the eye I've never seen from her. I don't know what's happening but I know what it means.

This has never happened to me before.

When my mom died it took ten years to fully feel it, so much good riddance mixed in. My other sister died slowly over decades through alcohol, and though she's still here, I've already let go. Escaping relationship with men, picking up pieces of myself as I run down the street; years later there's really no meaning left in that kind of grief.

I have no defenses or strategies, a complete lack of pretentious design as I stand before my sister Lisa. She has never done anything to hurt me.

The pain and worry of loss is a straight, beautiful arrow to the heart.

On the phone all night, poor River eats her noodles in front of Barney, alone. I keep peeking around the corner to make sure she's ok. "Mommy's right here, sweetie," every ten minutes.

Pulling on my pant leg before bed, she asks, "Where's your mom?"

I lean down and pause, "My mom died a long time ago, honey," but she doesn't get it. I pause, "She's gone. She's been gone a long time." She doesn't get it. I pause, "I don't have a momma, River. I don't have a momma anymore." Sadness washes over her face, lips downturn, eyebrows in tender furrow, "Oh......"

She traces my arm with one tiny hand, caresses my cheek with the other. "I help you, momma, I find dockter for your mom." We walk down the hall to her room hand in hand, a night tunnel to heaven, and I switch off each light as we pass.

Hours I sit in the dark and then pull myself up for another walk. Steve's been out of town for two days and I am afraid of the night.

Under covers, up against my chin, I pull my hair down to warm my ears and hide unfamiliar noises in the house. I close eyes and take my seat in a conservatory of stars, where the sound of a galaxy hums inside. The only way to go tonight, behind my left eye, and so I swim through a night stream into that cove.

Please, dear God, please make my hands hands of light. Please, Gurumayi, please show me entry into spaces that I have hesitated to embrace. My own body of light.

Lisa loves Mary. An hour into this quiet, Please, Mary, please, I ask for your grace tonight, please put your arms around my sister as she sleeps. Please take me to her.

To all the visionary plant medicine I have known, I call out to the teeming green kingdom, Please, please....great medicine teachers, please grant me your affection, your wisdom, your wondrous ways of healing and love.

To all my ancestors, I wait in a wide meadow for instructions. Looking up, I wonder, Where are we going? Where will this journey take us? Hands on my heart, a great seizing grabs the center and I startle upright. Feels like a heart attack, the restriction to my breath. I turn slowly, fetal position, and begin again. It's ok, you're ok, it's ok, breathe, Prema, a voice comforts.

2:00am and I'm still gathering my gear, deep meditation. I hear the pitter-patter of small feet down the hall and I'm back. "Here, River, come here..." and I swoop her into arms, surround her warm body with mine, and ask, "Did you have a dream?"

"In my room, momma, butterflies. I see butterflies in my room." With that we sink down and swim, spread wings and fly. Into the light, into the light.

Please join me. Hands of light around my sister Lisa.