Blog 16th June

Julie, Patricia

I don’t want to be morbid or pessimistic but in the last eight months two friends have died and it’s beginning to hit me with increasingly harsher slaps that our time here on this beautiful, troubled planet runs out far too quickly, usually when we are just getting an inkling of what it’s all about. If we are lucky enough to reach our eighties or nineties, the last five or ten years gather a terrifying speed as if the world can’t wait to kick us into another dimension.

But that was not the case of Julie who died at the age of 58 with her brain still bubbling over with all the plans and projects she was going to carry out at a reasonably leisurely pace. Julie was angry at dying, at the cancer that consumed her body in eight months, but until the very end she tried to believe she would overcome it. Julie was a psychologist and mindfulness teacher. Her weekly mindfulness class, which I attended, was followed by my Spanish class in her Learning Centre. She was one of the first students to do the Spanish course Learn Spanish Without Really Trying created by Cecilie Gamst Berg and edited and taught by me. The book is of course dedicated to Julie.

I only knew Julie for just over a year, but in that year she became a true friend. Her integrity, empathy, intelligence and enthusiasm were a gift. She couldn’t have imagined how much her fleeting presence in my life helped me to overcome doubts, laziness and insecurities. She offered to become my ‘accountability buddy’, which meant I was obliged to finish a chapter of the book I was writing (Letters to Mallorca) by a certain date so she could read it. In those classes we laughed a lot, and everything seemed easier and lighter. Till illness really took hold. Then her mindfulness techniques were used to keep despair at bay. She knew what was important and what was not worth wasting energy on. She knew the importance of being kind, of love, of helping one another.

Patricia died in March at the age of ninety-one. In the nearly four years that I knew her, she became a kind of spiritual mentor. This sounds very lofty, but Patricia had her feet well on the ground of her home in Binissalem. I would visit her every Monday there. After she had read the Murli, a sacred text, we would talk, have tea and biscuits and inspect her garden. Those Mondays with Patricia set me up for the week. It wasn’t only the advice she gave or her very interesting conversation. Patricia had presence. You felt good just being in the lightness of that presence. Her face had a luminosity I’ve seen in very few people. She got up at four am every day to meditate, was a strict vegetarian and followed the principles of Raj Yoga which she had taught many years. She had many things in common with Julie: honesty, kindness, a generous heart, intelligence and a great sense of humour. Whenever I was annoyed with someone, she would always say: ‘Send them good wishes’. That sentence will stay with me till I die.  She encouraged me to keep writing, to not dither and waste time, to use the gifts we are blessed with. Since Patricia died, I sometimes feel disorientated. There is a loneliness when beloved people die. Who can fill that gap? When I slouch on my sofa wondering what to do with my life, I can hear her gentle voice telling me that time is running out, not to waste what is left.

I feel privileged and honoured to have known them both.

For Julie and Patricia is the following poem which comes from my book Poems of Joy and Melancholy.

NAKED

No more stories

No fancy theories

No social traps

Nor false gurus.

Just let go

Of what’s not me

And what’s not you.

Divine sculptor

Carve out pride

Tap away fear,

So all that’s left

Is pure naked me 

Mirroring you,

A triple flame

Burning to ashes

Hard earned fiction,

So all that’s left is

Love.

Let go of chatter

And elusive silence

May stay a while.

Blow away illusions

With your gentle breath,

So I may play

Light as a child.

Open my tired eyes softly

To see heaven creep in

And crumble the stones

Of ancient walls

Where wild roses

Push through the cracks.