Every once in a while we are gifted with magic. The magic can be a part of the breath-taking creation we are surrounded by each day or the magic can be relayed in the words from a stranger or maybe a close friend. The magic may be a smell, a touch, a hug, a smile or whatever vessel you need it in to recognize it is magic….It is delivered in the perfect way and at the perfect moment in time…..just for you. Sometimes we are gifted with magic….in a person.
MY PERSON. There will never be another…..and I had no idea all those years ago just how much magic there was in a single human being. We met at a Spoga class (Spin & yoga) I used to teach a wonderful bike shop called Transition Cycle located on the lakefront of Pewaukee. She was riding and laughing and we started talking after class. Amy was training for her first Ironman. I had done a triathlon at the sprint distance a few times and had seen the Ironman on TV. Pretty amazing race, yet here Amy was….as normal as can be and laughing about her training which was just getting underway. She was laughing at the pure volume of it and the fact she had never gone any of those crazy distances before. She was as crazy as I was! From that moment forward we just clicked. We just got each other and could speak through just a look. We both had traveled through some crazy life circumstance and we were both bloody and bruised from them, but also all the more brilliant from traveling through them.
One of Amy’s struggles was with cancer. She had it three times…..once before I knew her, and twice during our friendship. I can not tell you how unbelievable she was through them. How positive she charged through her battles. How much passion she devoted to breast cancer awareness, the Susan G Komen foundation (she became a board member) and the unrelenting support of others she gave. She was a true super hero and she was my ‘Person’. And that is exactly what we called each other—Person. We no longer called each other by name. We acknowledged we were the same spirit living in two bodies and somehow we must…we just must be related. We could share it all….the truths and I mean the HARD TRUTHS. We also shared a lot of laughter and I am talking the kind of laughter where you can not breathe and you swear you are going to pee or maybe you are peeing and you just don’t care and where oxygen is not necessary and you have to gasp and sound like some jet engine intake which only makes you dive deeper into laughter….that kind of laughter. Do you know what I am talking about?
A few days ago, I pulled into her driveway and was looking forward to loving on my Person with an AromaTouch session. It is an essential oils application of 8 different oils (some single oils and others are blends of oils) that lift the spirit and tend to the soul. The application makes the receiver and the giver feel so good, grounded, as well as physically and emotionally better. When I pulled in….there they were…..cars. Lots of them. Amy had gone unresponsive a few hours before I got there. This was it. The moment I wanted for her, but DID NOT want for me. It was beautiful and tender and loving and sad. It was breath-taking for many reasons….the honor of being in that moment with her, the reality of losing someone I held dear, the number of people who loved her trickling in and out of the house, the tender loving care we each gave to her, her husband, her son, her daughter-n-law, the love in the room, the presence of God awaiting His child, the silence, the ache, her breath……slow….labored. The experience is and will forever be a multi-faceted gem with so many sides reflecting one another.
Being present in the space of me during the space of this. Breathing into areas of my body that hold hard memories of my bother’s death, my family hurting…the blackness of it all. Feeling the energy of my person in me, around me, and our friendship plays like a looping slideshow….snippets of it all from beginning to end. The hurt and the ache are deep, but so is the pure brilliance of our time traveled together. Sometimes we forget the small things and here they are rushing back at me begging me to surf their moment in time….and I do. I surf them all. Sometimes the waves beat me under, but other times their power makes me soar. The hard and the soft of it all….just like yoga.
Person, I am thankful for all our moments together and I am looking forward to eternity with you. See you later. My cup runneth over. I love you fiercely!
~Person
Get on your mat. Feel to heal. BE courageous to be present with it all for it all is a gift….one huge, giant, brilliant gift.
Onward and upward we go…..
OM
