Life is funny. I’m on a cruise in the Caribbean right now. Yeah, like azure waters, warm ocean spray, lovely, happy cruisers, and I’m a mess. Well, not exactly a mess, but the waves this ship keeps riding feel like wet, rolling metaphors. My mother is thousands of miles away, in England, on her own journey–possibly out the door of life. She is literally riding her own waves, of nausea, the ups and downs of each day, the physical imbalance caused by the tumor in her cerebellum. I check my email religiously to get updates from my stepfather, who is cooking for her and watching as his daily life contracts into a nursing home drama. We are open enough to indulge in what we call “tumor humor”: I wrote yesterday “You’re not missing much, Mum. We’re hitting some rough seas, and everyone is complaining of nausea and walking around like they have brain tumors!”

Meanwhile, my little sister had a baby yesterday!! A boy!!! The first boy in two generations of my family. Boy-without-name apparently looks like a rugby player, and came bouncing into world in four hours, weighing 9lbs. 8oz. so the rather delicate names his parents had contemplated pre-natally have been thrown out as they search the collective unconscious for his rightful moniker. Maybe “Yang” will do.

Between this wane and wax of the lifeforce, I am teaching classes about yin and yang–how appropriate–with a thousand other people interested in food, health and living the big life. Marilu Henner is here, rapidly becoming a personal hero–she is a truly hip chick living a truly big life. I am meeting all sorts of people who have used macrobiotics to bring themselves back from the brink of death and destruction–breast cancer, Crohn’s disease, lymphoma, bladder cancer, fibroid tumors–all gone. Those amazing stories are difficult to ignore. And I’m so grateful to be reminded of the power of food. Whether this gentle path of whole grains ushers my mother onto twenty more years of life, or makes her Big Transition smoother and kinder, it doesn’t matter. It is a sane, humane and loving choice.

I said before that I am a mess. That’s not true. In fact, I think I’m amazed at how un-messy I am right now. I definitely wish I were with my sister, and my mother–and those aches are real–but I’m struck by just how gentle the waves of life can be when I treat my body well. I could pick up a cup of coffee now, or some sugar, and create a huge drama, driving home to my consciousness the big messages “THIS IS SO HORRIBLE!! YOUR MOTHER MAY BE DYING! YOU ARE MISERABLE!” And those substances would create a very real, chemical misery for a few days. But I’m not. I keep thinking: “Everyone loses their mother at some point. It’s natural. It’s in God’s plan” and because it’s in God’s plan, I’m treating this experience with reverence, like a birth. Maybe it’s meant to be gentle. Maybe it’s okay to have a mother one day and not the next. Maybe God isn’t going to come along and smash my head against a wall–like a doppio soy cappuccino would. Maybe She is holding us all right now, to make this as sweet and gentle as possible for my whole family. Yes, there are tears, and very real pain, but not misery. Misery, I’m seeing, is a human invention.
I think, when we die, we make the journey from the visible, material world back to the infinite, invisible one. And in that respect, our spirits expand, like a gas. So my mother’s spirit–an unbelievably gentle, non-judgmental, generous spirit–will be released into the great expansive realm of spirits in the ether. And then it won’t matter that I’m on a cruise ship in the middle of nowhere wishing I were near her, because she will be here, all around me–in the ocean spray, in the clouds, and in the warm, pumping heart of that baby boy.

Chew life well,
Jessica

Update: I heard this morning that my darling mother has been hospitalized. I just got off the ship and am flying to London tonight.

Please send good vibes.

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