Grace Of A Touch

Her words touched me and opened floodgates of memories. Profound recollections from July 5, 1999 and the three days immediately following my daughter Naomi’s dying at age nineteen. The article, Living With Death, by Maggie Jones, describes the social movement that helps families spend more time with the bodies of their deceased loved ones. 

The New York Times Magazine article of December 22, 2019 follows the life of a “home death-care guide” as she assists at the death of loved ones. She enables the bereft to keep a body at home for days longer than usual.

Naomi held out to the last. She had adamantly refused to leave San Francisco, having vowed not to go home “to die”. We had been inseparable during her two year struggle with cancer. Then her lungs failed and when I had to carry her on my shoulder up the stairs to her appointment with a healer for what would be the last time, I told her I couldn’t do it anymore and please, we must return home. She agreed reluctantly.

Four days later she died in her bed in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

As I sat bewildered with my wife in our living room, a friend gently tapped my shoulder and asked if we would like to keep Naomi home for three days. I had a moment of confusion, then said yes, but feared a bad smell. She promised all would be well—and so it was. Our family and close friends prepared her body lovingly, dressed her nicely, anointed and packed dry ice around her. We brushed her hair and created a halo of rose buds around her head. She lay peacefully in her room, amidst flickering candles and fragrant flowers. We were with her day and night. My ex-wife Jean Tobias visited her in the predawn hours and wrote this poem: 

Blessed be the angels sing,

With joy they guide you in a ring,

Like a halo ‘round your head,

Gently tuck you into bed.

To mighty realms your spirit flies,

Through puffy clouds and deep blue skies.

So sweet the peace within your heart—

With God’s love your journey start.

Many others came and went as well, saying goodbye and praying for her soul’s peaceful transition.  I had time to buy her gravesite and then with close family lay her to rest peacefully.

The grace of a touch on my shoulder and offer to help is forever remembered.

A Heart Traced In Sand

Without A Map

“When the baby looks around him

It's such a sight to see


He shares a simple secret


With the wise man


He's a stranger in a strange land” -Leon Russell

Sometimes the best experiences happen for me when I am lost. 

The other day I set out walking in a new direction from my apartment in Cuenca, Ecuador. Usually I head toward the city center with its bustling streets, shops, cafes, grand cathedrals, and corner parks. This time I went in another direction. I went exploring—like Columbus when he set out to navigate the Atlantic Ocean without a map. He charted a course as he sailed.

Cemetery, San Miguel De Allende, Mexico

 The streets were mostly residential and rather unremarkable. Traffic whizzed by in each direction. I came to a corner and spotted a high wall that seemed to go an entire block. In the middle stood a tall gate. On either side were stalls selling flowers. I guessed it was cemetery. I like visiting graveyards in foreign lands. A few weeks ago I ambled about for more than hour in Nuestra Señora del Cementerio de Guadalupe in San Miguel De Allende, Mexico. It was divided between a large part for Mexican interments and a smaller closed area for mostly American ex-patriots. Now I had found a vast, much larger burial ground with three times as many graves. It is called, Cementerio Patrimonial De Cuenca. 

Tombs, Cuenca, Ecuador

  As in Mexico, most of the crypts are stacked in cells of concrete, in blocks perhaps fifteen feet high and hundreds of feet long. Sometimes there are two levels and stairs to reach the top. Each burial site is marked and decorated in front, often with a glass pane protecting the contents. It is by far neater and more orderly than the Mexican graveyard.

I am fascinated by what remains after a person dies, and how they are remembered with fondness. I lost my daughter when she was nineteen and had to find a spot to bury her. She lays at rest in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. A simple grave marker of marble is decorated with roses and bears her name, dates of birth and death, and the inscription Blessed By The Glory Of God. 

 

As I walked slowly and thoughtfully, sometimes I would stop to take a picture. Turning a corner, to my surprise often a vista of tombs would spread before me. And almost nobody was there but me and some attendants working the grounds. The air was perfect on my skin and blue sky with occasionally fluffy clouds overhead. I could almost hear myself think.

To my surprise, at one point I found a block of grave cells slightly smaller and noticed they were for the pequeños niños, little children. Stuffed toys were seen in many with endearing notes. Some didn't have date of birth, only death.

An old horse drawn hearse. Cuenca Cemetery.

In the afternoon, I set off in the familiar direction of downtown but angled onto a street I had not been. A long wall two stories high without windows had a small single entrance. A couple were coming out the door. They looked like tourists. I stopped and peeked past the threshold. It seemed the museum was full of religious objects. I was not sure I wanted to pay for entry. It was cloudy and about to rain. Perhaps because I was exploring and not in a rush, I entered. 

Staging of a nun, at work with textiles.

  Immediately I began relishing the place—formerly called Convent of the Immaculate Conception, begun in the year 1599. There are two stories surrounding an inner courtyard open to the sky above. The second floor has an open hall with railing that goes completely around the courtyard and you can look down upon it, with the trees, shrubs and flowers and tidy order of it all. The wood floors and stairs are smooth and polished from wear, as well as the stone floors on the ground level. I imagined all the feet that tread there, and the footsteps of the nuns and sisters. So much devotion had occurred in the spot that I felt blessed being there, as if absorbing spiritual vibrations where the closely knit devotees of Christ for hundreds of years dwelled their hours, years and sometimes, lives. I imagined their tight bound community and the rituals they obeyed in sisterhood. 

San Rafael and Tobias sculptures

The collections are made up of 64 paintings of religious themes and about 250 religious and costumed sculptures, as well as toys, furniture and handicrafts. What particularly struck me were incredible sculptures depicting saints. Made by mostly anonymous artisans, they all had great feeling and conveyed a master touch to bring out devotion in the viewer. A few were playful. Some figures were wood, others fired clay and painted to be lifelike. They might even have human hair and glass eyes.

By the time I left, I had gone slowly throughout the former convent, and taken many pictures. Fully satisfied, I made it home before the rain.