Excerpt #1 from “The Death and Adventures of Jackie.”

What follows is a collection of writings from my mother’s journals, my own journals, poetry, short story, Jackie’s words, my words, part memoir, part fairytale, and 100% true story…

Chapter One

“Whoosh”.

She was out.

She was up.

She was everywhere.

A deafening wind. Engulfing. A wind that drowns out all thoughts, all emotions, all sense of time and body. The wind just swept her up and out of the car. For a while, the rushing wind was all she could hear and then she was weightless.

Weightless and looking down on and into the car, only for a moment, and then she felt a constriction, a tightness in her chest and then “Whoosh!” she was sucked into and filled the car. This twisted heap of junk metal and glass now housed her whole spirit, just filled it, to every edge and every corner as once her beautiful body had.

“Whoa,” and “Well done,” Jackie thought to herself. “Oh Shit! Shit! Shit!” she thought a moment later…” As she began to ponder her being, she saw Nadia.

There was Nadia, crumpled in the front passenger seat, needing all of her attention. Right now. She stopped thinking about the wonder of herself in this new state and turned her attention to the healing that had to happen. It simply had to because it was absolutely not time for Nadia. She didn’t know why, she couldn’t explain it, but there she was; completely whole, burning bright inside a broken body.

Nadia needed tending. ‘Well then,” said Jackie matter of factly. She tended the wounds of this broken body of such a beautiful woman, her niece…tended to her body, yet not her spirit. Her spirit was strong. So strong! She crooned and rocked her, holding this woman in her armless embrace, in her bodiless embrace, filling her up. She was pure energy, and directing the Reiki energy was effortless. “You can do it.” she whispered into her skin, “It’s going to hurt like hell, but you can do this.” She reveled here awhile. It could have been centuries, it could have been seconds, and then she had to go.

Leaving Nadia in that car was so hard, she didn’t want to go, yet a ripple just out of sight demanded her attention. Jackie wanted to just swoop her up and take her with her, carry her with her when she left. She tried and just couldn’t. She couldn’t pick her up, she couldn’t hold her anymore, so she left her to the people who knew what to do for her, who knew how to heal her body, who could take her to where she needed to be.

As she was about to take off, she sensed something sweet and warm radiating out and through what would have been her chest and torso, making her giddy and quick of breath. The warmth continued to grow and blend into a sensation that was all too familiar; her Sheila. Her sister. This strange embrace was more than touch or taste or fragrance.  It was perfection. Heaven. The two women, free of the restraints of their physical bodies, held Nadia in this embrace with no boundaries, yet held fast.  They let the sweetness of it flow into Nadia’s spirit and flesh.

“Sheila…Oh!  Sheila.  I’ve missed you.”

“Stay with Sheila, baby.  Stay with your mam,” Jackie comforted her niece, “I need to see Anna. I’ll be right back. I will always be with you. I will never leave you. I will be right back. I promise,” and flew up and out of the car.

Jackie was pulled. She shot up and out and everywhere, blanketing the sky. A picture of Egyptian deities, Nut and Geb, that her granddaughter had drawn when she was a small child made absolute sense!  She stretched her body out, willing all of her tiny, brilliant parts across the heavens and she found her daughter, her darling girl, splayed out, spread-eagled on her deck in the redwood mountains of California. Gasping. Breathing in too much. Feeling too much. Her skin pulsing, shaking, tremors racking her whole body.  Jackie looked straight into the eyes of her daughter, heart swelling with pride as a look of shocking recognition transformed the features of her darling girl’s face, now changed. Forever different.  She saw her!

“I don’t think I’m ready for you to be so good at being dead!” Anna cried, gasping and giggling at the same time.  “How can you be here?  How can you do that?”  Anna gazed up into the huge sky, seeing and sensing her mother woven into the stars, her presence as familiar as her voice over the phone, or her enveloping hug when she visited, so warm. This warmth flowed into her body. “Breathe, baby. I’m so sorry. I didn’t quite see this coming.”  Jackie sent these words to her daughter, amazed at how effortlessly they slipped into her child’s skin, without the barriers of her own physical body needing to translate through vocal cords, tongue, teeth, and lips. “It’s going to be all right. Just breathe. Breathe deep.  Breathe me in. I’ll help you, don’t worry. You have everything you need to do this.”  She watched as her daughter felt her words enter.  Slowly Anna’s body stopped shaking.  The tears rolled down her cheekbones, “like my cheekbones,” thought Jackie with a smile.  They rolled down her cheekbones, onto the deck, through the wooden cracks, into the dirt.  Calm. Centered. Okay. The pride she felt was all she could have asked for.  Her children were going to be okay. Her grandchildren were going to be okay.

Anna and Jackie basked in each other’s glory, astounded and comforted by the immediate and effortless sensing of each other, surrounded by ancient trees that tickled the night sky as they swayed and watched the conversation unfolding before them.  A conversation that needed no words, communicating as they once did when Jackie held her child in her womb. Unspoken conversations that once travelled through circuits of blood and flesh, now traveling through tiny non-physical particles of the most basic essence of each other….