This site began as a way to honor mom’s legacy and share her naturopathic healing wisdom. In the year since she departed, I envisioned that monthly or even bi-monthly posts would be inspired while combing through her belongings and tending to her affairs. When the reality of her death set in, ensuing chaos was anticipated; a vaguely familiar road map from prior experience of family losses was in my mind, however ethereal it seemed. But the year has not proceeded in linear fashion–of course it did not–and I find myself frustrated that her tangible presence has slipped away without more than a handful of writings. She would be pleased, I’m afraid, since she was a private person who did not embrace current day trends towards public story-telling and media attention.

The road map of parental death turned out to have inconsistencies with the actual road. An unforeseen hospice enrollment morphed into a rapid demise, followed by a flurry of funeral planning and management of immediate needs. Her posthumous impact and unseen hand on my life have been felt differently than imagined. There has been little combing of belongings and even fewer safe opportunities to emote over her departure. Her funeral was held off by a few weeks to allow for family participation. After writing thank you cards and carrying out the instructions of her will, we were well into June when I enjoyed a small respite by celebrating my grandchild’s and my own birthdays with some long drives in mom’s zippy little Chrysler Crossfire. I find meandering treks on my bicycles more enjoyable than car rides, but driving her little car created a sense of bonding. As an autoimmune sufferer, she could not go to public events and gatherings to enrich her life, so she took drives in her sporty car with the music turned up high.

But June festivities intersected the July news that my long-time housemate and companion was riddled with Stage IV, metastasized cancer, and the size and speed of that highway overrode whatever else could be done to make headway on the road that I was on. One of the hard sayings of Jesus was, let the dead bury their dead. It’s a hard saying because it feels callous to dismiss loved ones who are no longer with us. But it is a true and helpful spiritual sentiment because our duty is to the people that are in the here and now. Once our loved ones cross the threshold, the spirit that animated their flesh is in the hands of Creator; we are inept to do anything more for them and a faithful person must accept that loved ones are in more capable hands than we can dream of. Let the dead bury their dead it’s time to put our life force to the needs of the living. For me, that means tending to my companion’s health struggles, and that is how I’ve spent the past eight months. Their journey is a story for a different set of posts; suffice it to say that it has been a difficult ride for us both.

Mom was the single most consistent, loving helper, sagely guide, and prayer-angel in my life. I’ve not had the fortune to be well-cared for by a partner. I am blessed with friendships that are mutually uplifting, but the comfort, love, and vested commitment of a peer has not been my experience. My companion was sickly long before the cancer diagnosis, and they can not show up as an equal while pushing their rock up a hill every day. The closest I’ve had to an experience of invested love is Mom’s continual devotion to the goals and well-being of my children and I. It does not feel good to let go of writing her story, and I won’t stop altogether, but the pace is much slower than expected.

Her life was cut off too early; her grandmother and mother both lived to ninety-eight. At eighty-one and physically healthy despite autoimmune disease (AD), Mom might have shared another fifteen years with us. I say that because I discovered after her death that something was slowly poisoning her at home, which caused the onset of symptoms that she believed was her AD flaring up. She was sure that the methods she had successfully employed for forty years to mitigate flares were no longer effective, and that meant it was time to walk on. In reality, a silent killer was filling her home and making it impossible to feel ok. Intuitively, I sensed that AD was not the culprit behind her rapid and hard-to-pinpoint demise. At Christmas 2022, one of my gifts was a two-pack of Co2 detectors because I wondered if something in the home was behind it. But Co2 was not at play. On October 31, 2022, she had a new gas-powered water heater installed, and three days later, a new gas furnace. She complained that the plumber who installed the water heater had cut some corners; her cousin also used the same plumber in mid November  2022 and had major water damage following the failure of a faultily installed pipe. When the HVAC team came on the third of November, she had them correct a small but annoying installation issue with the condensation hose that she noticed on the water heater. What she didn’t notice was that the connections between the gas line and water heater were leaking unburned methane. Since Mom was hypervigilant about volatile organic compounds (VOCs) like those emitted by adhesives and plastics, she installed two large HEPA air filtration devices in her home to counteract the effects of VOC off-gassing from the new appliances. However, I reached out to the engineering teams at our local gas utility provider, and at the air filter manufacturing facility and they both confirmed that HEPA filters remove the large molecules of a sulpher-based additive that warns people of natural gas leaks by creating a rotten-egg smell. But, HEPA filters do not remove the gas itself, which is made up of tiny molecules.

It wasn’t until after she died that I turned off the filters and the furnace, only to reenter and be overwhelmed by the familiar rotten-egg odor permeating the house. A visit by the HVAC team confirmed my guess, and the pipe was repaired, but it was too late to help Mom. It doesn’t feel right or in any way honoring to let go of tending Mom’s affairs, yet my friend, who is alive and right here in my life, has pressing needs that cannot be ignored.

This is an expose on detours. Mom’s life was detoured as has been the life of my companion and my own.This new territory is in an entirely unfamiliar landscape. Without the help of the old maps, it’s time to make big, blind decisions that will involve temporary if not lifelong upheaval, and it’s time to hunker-down and steer. I sometimes feel Mom’s unseen hand on my life. Memory of her ways has certainly guided and provided naturopathic insights that are helpful for my friend. I recall what she taught about clients who were beyond medical help and have been applying those methods for my companion’s sake. With their comorbid conditions, the oncologist determined they were too weak to withstand chemotherapy. The plant medicines, which Mom taught as being put here by God as help for all diseases, have indeed helped tremendously. Since July, my friend’s quality of life and life expectancy have improved by admission of their oncologist; lab results, scans, and outward appearance are normalizing and by their own observation, things are looking up. The cancer is receding without chemotherapy. There will come a time to publish that story, but this is not it. For now, I will sign off in gratitude for Mom’s help with this. She believed wholly in the unseen energies to heal, whether by vibration or subtle chemical makeup. Maybe the plant medicines for my friend are just a vehicle of hope while Creator and Mom do the real work of healing. Nonetheless, I am grateful for those hidden GPS-style guides, even if I do not yet have the high-tech plug-ins to visualize the process and understand the steps. Peace, respect, and belonging to you all.