14

Dorothy’s Joy

 

To embrace one’s own life fully is to then fully

awaken to see the beauty in everything.

 

     Vibrant and outgoing, Dorothy was often seen about town wearing a red coat and dark red shoes.

     Dorothy was ninety-two years old when she taught me about the beauty of life. Dorothy was once a second grade teacher, a job she loved dearly, she thought that a good education was the most important gift we could give our children. Dorothy had her share of tragedy—the loss of an eighteen-year-old daughter in a car accident, the loss of her husband to cancer, living alone for ten years, with remaining family members far away. And yet she had a remarkable enthusiasm in her continued service to life, working for human rights and women’s rights for equality around the world.

     “Empowered women and empowered men, walking together, that’s what will change this world,” she often said, as she lamented the current state of conflicts in the world, due to endless power struggles between men and the unending need for wars.

     “They desperately need our help,” she also frequently said, and then followed it with, “we must get on with it by educating men and women in a different way.”

     That was her main dream and hope, of someday seeing empowered women and men working together for the children of the world, for a different and better future for all.

     Seemingly alone, and yet fulfilled in so many ways, she was always expressing thanks for life and seeing the beauty of life. Even the death of her husband was seen as a gift, for though dearly missed, “being alone allowed me to find out who I was outside of the role of being a wife.”

     Her health was remarkable, and so one day I was moved to ask her, “Why are you so enthused about life and in such great health?”

     “Well,” she said, “Every morning, since my daughter died, I begin my day like this.”

     Her hands slowly came up and into a self-embrace. Her eyes closed and her head bowed slowly, her body softening more and more with each breath. Shoulders softening and dropping, jaw softening, face softening. Then slowly, deeply and softly her voice began, “I love you, I love you so very much, I love you, I love you so very, very much.” Head moving slightly from side to side, “I love you, I love you so very, very much.”

     Voice of her heart continuing to reveal its love, becoming deeper and softer, deeper and softer, then becoming only the movement of lips, then going completely inwardly, no visible outer sign left of the healing words the heart had called out.

     I watched in silence as my heart center, too, was now fully in my awareness, as if my heart, too, had called me inward into an energetic communion. I, too, was breathing with her, my head, too, was slightly bowed.

     Stillness came to her whole body. Silence and stillness. Deeper and deeper into the center her awareness went. And then it came as a subtle wisp of wind might touch our cheek and awaken us, as love spread across her face, alighting it, and she sighed gently, as if deeply lost in the fragrance of a rose. Lost and then found in the garden of the eternal now. Lost in a silent and still communion with her heart that lasted over three minutes.

     Then a slight rocking of her body began. Her hands then ever so slowly, gently and lovingly moving up and down over her shoulders, blessing her own body. Her head moving slightly from side to side, in ever deepening gratitude for the self-nourishing touch of the heart. And then after a few eternal moments, her head turned and her cheek rested over her right hand. Cheek and hand caressing each other. Moving slowly and tenderly. I had watched patiently, heart-fully.

     Then slowly her head came up, her eyes opened and she looked from deep inside and straight into me, as she threw her arms open to her sides. Smiling radiantly and saying, “Do you think that might be it?” and then she laughed, as her eyes squinted and her head moved from side to side. I grinned and nodded my own head up and down in agreement.

     Even into her mid-nineties before the diagnosis of her cancer, when I would visit her, she would still be pointing out a flower, or a tree, or reciting a poem, or speaking of the sacredness of the human body, and remarking, “Isn’t it beautiful? Doesn’t it just make you want to weep?” And sometimes she would.

     When asked about her healthy eating habits, she replied, “The body is a temple, why would you want to treat it any other way.”

     She died at ninety-seven, electing to have no surgery or other therapy for her leg cancer but to die at home, doing “my work as long as I can.” Near the end, I spent an evening caring for her. She only weighed seventy pounds; she was so weak she could only talk with great difficulty, struggling to share, trying to put a few raspy words together.

     She delivered three messages to me during that night. Words I could only hear by holding my left ear just inches above her mouth, patiently waiting as her heart insisted the messages be delivered, even as the voice and body struggled to make it possible.

     The first of the three messages came at two o’clock in the morning. Each single word required rest thereafter. One word at a time, and with time coming together as one sentence, “I want to give you the courage to trust people,” which in the moment, I realized, was to trust the deeper resources and capacities we all carry to love and live life more fully. She was speaking again of the light that exists behind everyone’s armor of beliefs and actions, no matter how they might be judged or carry themselves on the outside.

     Exhausted by the effort, she slept for another hour and then was able to share again. It was one of her favorite sayings that reflected her joy of living, “I’m happy as a lark,” and she smiled as best she could, for one so close to death. Her eyes closed after the delivery of the second message.

     As I prepared to leave in the morning before another caretaker came, her thin arms came up to pull me toward her…

 

     The past and the future released.

     Heart gently resting next to heart. Heart to heart.

     Centers ignited and igniting.

     And the garden of life was full and radiant again.

 

     She whispered into my ear again. They were her last words. The two most beautiful words in the English language, “Thank you.”

 

     Dorothy died peacefully at home in her bed shortly thereafter.

     Many months later I visited her grave. The small flat gravestone was a testament to her life, it had these words written on it, “My cup runneth over.”

     Thank you, Dorothy, for teaching us through your life, to no longer see only the surface of things and people, but to be opened so deeply that hidden beauty is revealed and liberated in an experience of wholeness that can only be called a radiance of love.

     Dorothy had awakened to the deeper beauty of life from time to time. She had gone beyond the struggle between the old ways of just engaging life mentally and the new ways of trying to live from her heart. She had found the way to experience the wholeness of life over and over. Her “Well of Life Transforming Water” was filled with life rejuvenating energy that was deep, clear and filled with joy, and was shared in our every encounter.

     Dorothy had found her way home, and gone beyond the fear of love to experience its radiant liberation.

     Now in her remembrance, she is still telling us to trust our hearts: to hear the call to come home now, to become empowered with others, to find renewed purpose and passion in life, to come into gratitude and into joyful service to life, even to the last breaths, even as many others were still suffering and could not see, hear or embrace it…