Author: Lisa

Harmony’s Friend

/ Lisa / 2 Comments

My last post was about the loss of my sister’s partner, Harmony. Now I’d like to tell you about his close friend, a man I only met once, at Harmony’s gathering. I’m not going to use his name here for obvious privacy reasons. But I’d love to tell you about him.

I’m not sure of his age but he’s slowing down, his memory is fading, and he is rarely able to get out of bed or leave his home. But friends made sure he was able to be at the gathering.

There were a lot of people there I didn’t know and he gave me a safe oasis to be in the crowd. I sat with him in the sunshine and listened to his stories and he gave me a reason to be there. Since he couldn’t get around much, I could offer him food, or get him something to drink, or just be company for him. Although that was an excuse because he didn’t need my company. Every single person there gravitated to him.

In his younger days, he was a naturopath, an acupuncturist, an herbalist, and one of the founding group, along with Harmony, of the famous Barter Faire in the Pacific Northwest. He helped start a well-known Antakarana Circle.

He built his own house, a round home, on six hundred acres, where he and Harmony and their friends lived. When it was lost to fire, he built another round house and told me he built it out of pallets and cardboard for less than a thousand dollars. Thinking about cardboard, I asked him if he worried about mice. He replied ‘I have a cat’. A round house, because spirit gets stuck in angles. It makes me think of all the round houses in so many cultures down through time.

He told me he’d had to put shoes on to come to the gathering, and how he rarely wore them. He said we should go barefoot on the land, soaking up the earth’s energies and neurons. It wasn’t long before his shoes were off and his feet were in the sun-warmed grass. This is something I’ve heard before and I’m going to follow his advice.

Once it stops raining.

So many people were happy to see him, to reminisce, tell stories, and re-introduce themselves to him, resurrecting a long, shared past. One person from the old days, who shall also remain nameless for obvious reasons, told him it wasn’t surprising he didn’t remember many of them because back then they hadn’t had clothes on.

I absolutely loved being in his company. Not only because it gave me something to focus on and a way to feel useful and needed, but because he is an amazing person. You know how it is when someone crosses paths with you for a brief moment in time and you know you’ll probably never see them again? And yet you have this deep recognition that this is a person who should have always been in your life? He and Harmony both should always have been in my life.

There are so many stories there, in that man, and I will never know them. But I am so grateful for the tiny window he opened for me.

And guess what? At the end of the day I was told by someone how much he had enjoyed me sitting with him…and that he knew I needed tasks to do and a place to be.

Harmony

/ Lisa / 2 Comments

I only knew a small part of Harmony. I didn’t know him as a child when he answered to a different name and hadn’t found his true one yet. I didn’t know him as a teenager or young man or before he lost his short-term memory.

I only knew him as the person who came into my sister’s life and never left.

He was the one who apologized when I first met him, telling me he wouldn’t remember me the next time we met. But that eventually, when I had been in his life long enough, I would enter his long-term memory. That was a wonderful day. It felt like becoming family.

I didn’t know Harmony as a father, and have only recently met his sons. But I knew him as the music in my sister’s life.

She and I would be visiting, non-stop sister words and laughter and stories. Harmony would pull out a guitar or dulcimer and there would be soft music flowing behind our stories.

I knew Harmony as a person of giving. But like his music, softly, unobtrusive, in the background. When a visit was over and I’d go to the car, there would be a little paper bag of homemade soap tucked between the seats. Once there was a box of apricots. And of course there was the repurposed cardboard orange juice container with soil and worms for my fledgling compost bin, inspired by his.

I knew Harmony as a reader, a storyteller, a person who could talk about experiences hitchhiking across the United States (twice), about world religions, about music, about books, about peace, and of course, about harmony and balance.

I only saw him angry once. And that was towards the end of the story – or maybe the beginning – when he was mad at himself and blaming himself for what my sister was going to face in the weeks and months ahead as his transition began.

The same thing those of us who knew him face today. The loss of music. The loss of stories. And most of all, the loss of Harmony. I hope one day we’ll meet again out there somewhere and hear his music. And I hope he’ll remember me. It will feel like family.

Journaling

/ Lisa / 4 Comments

As some of you know, I used to journal but several years ago, I burned them in a giant bonfire. Why, you might ask? Because I was burning my mother’s diaries at the time, and I was horrified by the realization that someone I cared for might read mine and my words might break their heart.

Do I have regrets? Only one. That I didn’t give my sisters or my brother a chance to be part of that decision.

Anyway, since then I’ve never journaled. I love the idea of it but shy away from the reality.

Instead, I’ve found a way to keep a diary of sorts without the deep intimacy of one.

For some time now I’ve been jotting things down in a little brown book. Bits of advice and lessons on the craft of writing I come across. Quotes. Poems I find. Song lyrics. And wow, I had a thought the other day that made me laugh.

I kind of want to keep this non-journal a secret in the hopes that some day I can haunt those I love and watch them trying to figure out my diary.

There are things in this little book that I write down because it triggers a fantastic story idea. Or a poem that an amazing character can be built from. There’s writing advice I want to share with my son. There are snippets I want to remember to share with a poet friend, or something that makes me laugh that I really want to pass on.

Then there are words that make me cry. That reach down into my soul and breathe out ‘this is who you are’.

Which is which?

Well, I know, obviously. But it will be so much fun to haunt those loved ones as they read the non-journal and wonder if I was crazy, or depressed, or a closet witch.

That is, if they can read my handwriting. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this little poem from the non-journal and you can wonder about why I might have chosen it. This is by Lauren Oliver.

“It’s amazing how words can do that, just shred your insides apart. Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me – such bullshit.”