One Good Thing

The cosmic dreamscape of a lunar eclipse

{Photo by Amy}

Yesterday I found myself in one of those surprisingly intimate conversations with a person I had just met, where we talked about grief and grieving — somewhat tearfully relating our own experiences and commiserating with one another.

Her experience with loss was much more terrifying and tender than mine, and yet my own experience is both tender and also terrifying-adjacent, and that is how we connected.

The conversation felt rare and important.

Over the course of this long talk, we drifted over to talking about the experience of loss surrounding our respective mothers’ deaths.

I relayed to her what my Aunt Millie once said to me near the end of my mother’s life.

I remember that I stood in the driveway of our old house during a very cold winter night, talking to my aunt on the phone. My mother was near the end of her life, and I was somewhat frantic for comfort at that point.

Millie — one of my mother’s older sisters — was probably nearly 90-years-old at the time.

I asked her where she thought people “went” after death, and she said something like: “I think we were all made of matter and born of stars — and that’s how we end up. We become part of the cosmos — stardust drifting.”

I remember looking up at the sky on that night — it was clear and cold and the stars were like a dome over the snowscape. The sky felt very close that night — like a soft blanket thrown over me. This gave me a way to comprehend and envision a question too big for me to answer, and I will always be glad that I’d asked it, and grateful for my aunt’s answer.

Yesterday, my new friend relayed something her own elderly mother had told her near the end of her life. My friend asked:

“Mom, will you come to me in my dreams?”

Her mother said:

“Whenever you think you see me, that will be me.”

I’d had a very long day, and just before I went to bed I learned about the lunar eclipse that was scheduled to occur overnight.

The Super Flower Blood Moon: The very name of this event drew me to it.

I threw a raincoat on over my pajamas, poured a glass of whiskey, and went outside to catch what I could of this lunar show.

[Below — my nighttime selfie with the eclipsing moon behind. I already look tired…]

[Below: My perch. An Adirondack chair under the blooming pear tree. Those white specks on the chair are pear petals, which drifted down onto my head as I watched the sky.]

As I sat in my chair on a very mild May night, I heard an owl hooting off in the woods. The sheep in my neighbor’s barn were lowing themselves to sleep and eventually grew quiet. As I stared at the night sky, I kept thinking:

“We are stardust drifting.”

“Whenever you think you see me, that will be me.”

I know it’s not wise to start a work week with an essentially sleepless night, but then again, sometimes having chronic insomnia brings its own advantage. I spent hours alone in the yard, seeing and believing. I thanked my ancestors and longed-for loved ones for bringing me to this space.

It’s always disappointing when clouds obscure a beautiful night sky but in the case, the brightness of the moon painted the edges of the clouds platinum. It was beautiful.

[Below: Timelapse footage from my yard as the moon starts to disappear and the Earth’s shadow creeps and clouds pass across it.]

Seeing the moon actually be RED was shocking. It was large and lovely and very red — but I only got one photograph of it (above) because I was trying to capture a time-lapse version of the process. Instead, I sat in my chair and … watched it.

[Below: Time-lapse footage of the blood draining from the “Blood Moon,” as it is restored into a large and luminous milky white moon. Follow the little pink dot as it crosses the sky. I shot this in my yard from around midnight to 2:30AM]

Here's a nice wrap up, featuring wonderful photos, from NPR

I hope that, like me, you are able to start the week with …

One Good Thing

Love,

Amy