
Terraces and Bridge in the Bahá'í Gardens
Haifa, Israel
“Don’t rush me,” she said. I sat back, stunned and a little chagrined. Amelia had said she was leaving, twice in fact, and she had been mostly asleep—or unconscious—for several of the previous days, so the strength of her voice and her vehemence now were totally unexpected. We had all puzzled over her grip on life, had wondered why she was holding on with such obvious tenacity; and I sensed that it fell to me to tell her that she should feel free to leave. So while I leaned over to hug her good-bye, one more heart-rending time, I whispered in her ear, “Dear Amelia, we don’t want you to go, but we don’t want you to suffer either, so if you feel you have to go, it’s all right. We’ll be okay; don’t worry about us.” To which, her firm instruction not to hurry her.
Looking back, I realize now that, as my sister said, Amelia was building a bridge to her next life and in some way known only to her, Amelia saw the bridge was not complete; she would hold on until it was finished. A remarkable statement, considering Amelia was irredeemably slipping into coma, had not left her bed in nearly a week, was heavily sedated against the steadily rising tide of her pain. I have often asked myself what was this bridge, this final, mystical and mysterious project she was still working on as she stood on the boundary of the spiritual world to which, inexorably, she was being drawn? And what was there for those of us who remain here to learn?
I can see now that Amelia’s preparation for her next life began well before the final decline of her health, perhaps even as much as two or three years before. She was quiet and discrete, but very systematic about it; while never giving up hope of recovery, she nevertheless set about getting herself ready spiritually, preparing her closest family for a life without her visible presence, and making peace with all those whom she thought she had hurt, and who had hurt her.
I had noticed that Amelia’s prayer life changed markedly about a year after her diagnosis. That first year was largely spent in coming to grips with the blow that had landed on us all, and in doing the things she felt impelled to do if, as the doctors said, only six months or so remained to her. We went to learn about pain control through yoga; we traveled to the Bahá'í Holy Places to seek God’s aid and rejoice in each other’s company in those sacred precincts; we visited family; and we explored healing approaches and made hard choices.
By the second year, though, Amelia became even more regular than she had always been in praying and meditating in the morning upon awakening, and in the evening before retiring. She read all the books she could find about healing, spiritual healing especially, and the mind-body connection, and she began re-reading the history of the Bahá'í Faith. Her understanding of the lives of the Faith’s Central Figures deepened, and so correspondingly did her love for Them, her gratitude for their sacrifices and the labors they had undertaken so we might know the truth They brought. She read deep analyses of certain of Bahá'u'lláh’s Books and Tablets, deriving energy and inspiration from them. She rededicated herself to serving the Faith, by facilitating a monthly study group, and she found new ways to support my own work at the Bahá'í National Center. There was, I can gratefully say, support I could give her in these efforts: the logistics of the study group, for instance, were my responsibility.
At the time I thought this was all a part of her strategy for healing. Now I understand that her work was that, but it was also more than that: she needed to know whence she was going, how to prepare for the journey and what she might find there. She was praying, among other things, for guidance and insight. At one point, a book found its way into her hands; missing its title page, we never could find out the author’s name or when it was published, but it purported to be the story, written by his daughter, of a man who had died and who was sharing with her, in her dreams, his experiences in the next world. Compared with the Bahá'í Writings, the story seemed to share a similar vision, to have a certain ring of truth about it, and the story was positive, uplifting and reassuring. This seemingly random gift greatly aided her in forming an impression of that next life, of the dynamics of spiritual growth in that other, vastly different place, and the knowledge she gained in this way brought her great comfort. Through these and other means, any fear Amelia might have had of that future existence was changed into certainty, even eagerness. A month before she passed, I asked her whether she was afraid of death. “Oh no,” she said, “it’s going to be wonderful. Bahá'u'lláh and 'Abdu'l-Bahá will be waiting for me.”
While Amelia was working on herself, she was also working on us. One example: I had spent many years in music, even thinking of a career as a music professor, but over the years my violin had spent longer and longer periods in storage. Once, taking it out of its case, I found it had cracked, so I got an estimate of the repair cost: $850. With neither the budget for the repairs nor an immediate need to use the instrument, back into the closet it went. Years went by, until the year 2001, when Amelia received an early distribution on her life insurance policy. It turned out that if her doctor would certify that Amelia was going to die in six months, the insurance company would pay out up to half the death benefit. Amelia reasoned that this was her money, she might need it for uninsured medical costs, and she was going to get it; which she did. The first thing she said, though, when the check arrived in the mail, was that I was going to get the violin fixed. I knew that look and that tone, so I didn’t bother to argue. Even before the violin came back from the shop, Amelia had found an ad for a chamber music group at the local community college and, using the same look and the same tone, informed me I was going to contact the professor immediately; which I did. I eventually enrolled in the class and spent several enjoyable months playing with the group, right up to the summer of her passing. We never spoke of this, or at least not until near the very end, but we both knew what she was doing: reacquainting me with an activity that would bring me relief from the emptiness after she had gone.
Another example: our oldest son had been distant from us, and especially from Amelia, over some misunderstandings in the past. Before her diagnosis, out of the essential goodness of his heart, he had found a way to open the door to a new relationship, an opportunity Amelia and I were both glad to seize. After the diagnosis, Amelia’s determination to be more involved in his life became even greater, and more purposeful, as well. We found opportunities to visit him and his family; phone conversations became almost daily occurrences; and each of us took renewed joy from these exchanges. Part of Amelia’s motivation was naturally a mother’s desire to shower her son with love; but also and explicitly, it was to try to ensure that he would be freed of any possibility of remorse or regret over the time lost through those misunderstandings. Amelia treated him as though that time had never happened, or had served to enrich our new lives as a reunited family. How her heart rejoiced, in her final days, in his companionship and presence and his tender care of her!
As her illness became more grave, Amelia seemed to excel at finding ways of showing those around her that she loved them, that she was grateful for their support, and she became a constant, inexhaustible source of encouragement. She missed no opportunity, for instance, to tell our youngest son and his wife how pleased she was that they had married, how sure she was they would have a wonderful life together, how happy she was that this special new daughter had come into our little family. The home health-care person we had to hire received such sweetness and gratitude from Amelia that Alicja fell in love with her, attending her memorial service, having a Mass said for her, offering to help us free of charge after her contract was up, weeping at her own loss, deep despite the brevity of their acquaintance. In all kinds of ways, Amelia was giving us memories and reassurances so that in the long, lonely days to come we might treasure each of those moments, might be assured in her love for us, might know that she was grateful to God and to us for the life we had shared, and might take such comfort as we could from knowing she left with only the fondest recollections of our all-too-short journey together.
And she made peace. Amelia and her youngest brother had had a stormy relationship, despite her having helped him enormously in coming to this country, getting established here, and ultimately bringing his family to join him. He hurt her deeply, and for that reason we had had, in effect, to cut him out of our lives. Amelia, however, always felt that somehow she had let him down, and that in any case, for his sake and for her own, peace had to be reestablished. About a year before her passing, she reached out to him, going to see him with a trusted friend who would, if necessary, shield her from his aggression. Then, about three weeks before she passed, unexpectedly one afternoon she said she wanted to see him again. I said I wasn’t sure this was a good idea, as she was already quite weak, but Amelia was adamant. Seeing it would be hard for me to participate in such an encounter, she enlisted another friend and off they went. They had tea together and, at the end, she invited him to our home the next day. This was strength that, by any objective measure, Amelia did not have, but somehow she mustered the resources necessary and, when he and his wife came the next day, they spent more than an hour going through old family photographs. It was obvious to those of us observing that this exercise was much more important to him than to her, and that it was tiring her, but never once did she suggest he stop; on and on she let him go, until he knew he had been heard, that she loved him. His behavior has been markedly different since that time.
Then, as her life slowly ebbed away and friends and family gathered around, she held on. Day after day in her bed Amelia would be medicated for the pain and she would sleep, waking less and less frequently but always, we could tell, aware of our presence in the house. While one of us stayed by her bedside, the rest were out in the living room, going through photographs and sharing memories, laughing and crying in turns as we celebrated her life and grew closer to each other. New people would come into this little group, some of them with hurts and conflicts, but gradually they caught the special rhythms of that time and the conflicts melted; healing and peace became constant, palpable, ever-present for us all. And still she held on. I know now that, when she told me not to rush her, it was because in some mysterious way Amelia sensed the healing that was occurring; she sensed we were all gathering our strength, helping each other become ready for the challenges ahead; and so she simply endured until she knew that our strength was, at last, equal to the task. And then she took her flight.
It should not be thought that all this preparing for her passing and its aftermath meant that Amelia had given up hope of recovery, or that she stopped working toward a cure. She did not; she doubled and redoubled her efforts as the laborious months wore away. Friends have commented on this tenacity, what amounted to an heroic, almost ferociously determined response to the challenge the illness represented: knowing that pancreatic cancer admits, really, of no survivors, the temptation would have been to conclude that one’s time had come, yet Amelia did not. Instead, she focused all her will, all her strength, on healing, striking a dynamic balance between spiritual and material approaches to the problem. Perhaps this was itself part of her preparation, or more accurately, of her preparation of us, her loved ones; but it was also an affirmation, I think, of her understanding of the interplay between divine will and our own free will. Amelia knew, deep in her heart, that there are chances and accidents in the world, and that our response to them must be to rise above them through effort and spiritual transformation; and that if it were truly God’s will for her to abandon this world in favor of the next, then the only way really to know His will, to prove it beyond doubt, was through action. It was action, in both her inner and outer life, to which Amelia consecrated herself, and we who knew and loved her are the richer for it.
Nor did her work end with her passing. A month later and a continent away, I knew she was still busy tying up the very last loose ends.
I had gone to the south of Chile to visit Amelia’s sister and her best friend, to share those final days with them in some small way. A woman lives there, perhaps the last and only person with whom Amelia had had no chance to make peace. Years before, this lady had hurt Amelia deeply, betraying her confidence and friendship of years, and they had never spoken since. So my last day in that town arrived and, through a series of wholly unplanned decisions and events, I found myself sitting down at a table in a small coffee house when, at the same instant, this erstwhile friend arrived! We were both shocked to find each other; still, she invited me to sit with her and her husband and share lunch. For the next hour and a half we spoke together, of Amelia, of the cancer in this lady’s family, and of the lives we had led since the breach. When our time ended, peace and good feeling had been restored, each had helped the other with the challenges we were facing, and we parted friends once more. Out on the sidewalk, instinctively I turned my face toward the sky and said, “Amelia, you did that beautifully. Mission accomplished, my sweet little girl.” And I know it was so.
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