FIREDANCE

Today a special fire burns in our hearts for Stephen's mother, Priscilla Caswell. It's not a candle. Nor is it the hearth fire in the woodstove or the fire that will distill the sweet maple sap into that liquid gold maple syrup...no. It's not the flame of everyday or the leaping high-reaching flames of a backyard bonfire. No. This is the once in a lifetime cleansing fire of cremation that leads our earthbased physical form from the human body state to the state of ashes...Ashes to ashes and dust to dust...all that remains is her love within us.

So here I am kindling an inner light...meditating on who she was, this mother of the love of my life. Priscilla was adept at all kinds of mending. She could sew and from the time Stephen and I set out to make a family, she began her shower of love with home made Christmas tree ornaments that were soft and squishy and something safe for a small child to grab and pull...or a dog. The lower branches of the Christmas tree have been decorated with those old fashioned stuffed toys for 28 years. She made quilts for the boys and mended clothing like a pro. Her mending and fixing of things went branching out in lots of directions. She loved old treasures...antique dolls to dress, old chairs to cane and paint...she had the knack of giving life to old used up items and making them new again. She boldly and bravely took on the family homestead at 1 Middle Street in Marblehead after James died. I like to think of that house as one of her life's Opus creations. She discovered some old wallpapers in the attic and managed to redo the first floor living rooms with a brittle but beautiful old paper that would have driven me crazy to work with. Not her. She patiently painted and hung the paper...prepped walls and spackled holes, glazed windows...there was no aspect of restoring that house that she couldn't handle with a little help from Stephen. She adored working with him on do-it-yourself projects right up until her cognitive abilities began to nosedive. She was accomplished and in those years after Jim died while she worked on Middle St., she really seemed to come home to herself. Even the landscaping bent to her will. I sort of felt like a third wheel in the home decorating field and though I grit my teeth and plod through the painting and cleaning that always needs to be done, I can't say it's my favorite activity.

Priscilla loved her friends and participating in all kinds of recreational activities. She enjoyed her excersise programs, walks, meeting for muffins and coffee and going out to eat. She adored music and dancing and in her later years, she enjoyed several trips to Ireland, the islands and a few cruises as well. She had a restless spirit that moved her...her passion was looking at real estate, buying and then fixing it up. When she ran out of projects, she would dream up another place and move on. Each place she left better than it was when she found it. That was the power of her love...to make a place sing and to fill it with people she loved and good food. For Stephen and I and our two boys, Priscilla was an angel.

She was a tireless Grandma and always happy to watch the boys if Stephen and I had to go someplace. She loved shopping thrift stores and finding bargains that she could pass along to us. Her home with Jim in Sandwich NH was our families favorite place to hang out in the summer...providing endless opportunities for fishing, hiking, swimming and sailing on Bear Camp Pond. She kept us in touch with the wildlife that frequented the area while we dreamed of and prepared a way for ourselves to move to a more rural northcountry. Priscilla supported our dreams and family visions and helped us purchase our first home at a time when owning a home was near impossible and interest rates were up to 18%. She attended most of the passages our boys made through school and sports and she clearly loved us with a large heart.

When she was unable to care for herself independently, she came to Maine to live with us. While she was with us, Stephen built a beautiful new pine apartment in the walkout basement of our home and she helped him by holding up the boards as he nailed them. She was always ready to lend her hands to help with all kinds of projects. We had visions of her living out her life with us assisting her in daily activities. This dream wasn't meant to be and after 6 months, it was clear that her needs were more than we could provide for and her dementia was not going to improve. Sadly we came to the moment of putting her in a home...something she repeatedly begged us not to do. She had witnessed the slow death of her own mother by dementia and made us promise we wouldn't do the home thing to her. She was always in the market for a little place of her own but I'm afraid living at Ledgeview was not her idea of a nice little place. The move broke all of our hearts.

As we sat with her in her last moments, I found myself saying I'm sorry...hoping for her forgiveness. Stephen and I both struggled with the guilt of being responsible for her ending up in the very place she begged us to avoid. There was our desire to be angels for her and then there was the reality and magnitude of her care. I know in her dementia, she was unable to forgive us. But Sunday night into Monday Morning, perhaps her oversoul hovered above because when it came to the moment of saying Goodbye, I felt forgiven and realized she would have hated it if we had given up the flow of our own lives to make her disease the centerpiece of all of our lives. I also found myself saying Thank You...because her other life's work was the sustaining nurturance of my beloved for in her relationship to him, he was able to know and love me.

So today, as the fire burns...I allow myself to go deeply into my gratitude for Priscilla's life and to see the parchment skinned hands that touched our lives with grace and beauty and love. She has taught me about the thread that connects heart to heart...the tiniest filament that sends instant communication to those that are part of us. Her timing was impeccable and all 4 of us were able to sit beside her during her last moments before she let go. I only hope we were her angels at long last.