A Honeycomb Brimming with Life, Tender and Precious

Last updated on: February 7, 2016 at 6:00 am by Nancy Raines

A Honeycomb Brimming with Life, Tender and Precious 2016-02-05T11:56:52-05:00 Nancy Raines

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An enormous honeycomb. That’s what it looked like: an impossibly complex layering of humming activity, knitted together inside a freestanding structure. But instead of curling bands of delicious nectar, each hexagonal niche contained a scene from Cathy’s life: splashing in the waters of Glen Lake as a child; meeting her husband, losing our mother to cancer, raising her daughters.

Not that I could see any of this very well. The buzzing matrix lay in a deep valley and, each time I inclined forward to get a better view, some invisible barrier nudged me back. That was all right. I didn’t need to see detail. My gaze was riveted by something else far more piercing in it stillness: the figure of my sister on a rocky promontory, high above the canyon, looking down into the honeycomb.

Long and tall she stood: motionless, intent, transfixed, unreachable. What was she thinking as she watched the tender dramas of her recent life? Was she nostalgic? Did she wish she were back here still? Did she feel good about her life? Did she miss us as we missed her?

Cathy had died the day before, lifting up into a full moon out of a ravaged and no longer habitable body. Meditating, I had hoped to sense her spirit. Instead, through the devices of some benevolent force, I was in this intermediary place, watching my beloved sister enact what appeared to be an afterlife ritual. I “heard” that she was blissful, now joined with her “greater soul” and, in her “soul’s journey,” not to be disturbed. Indeed, as I hovered, marveling, she seemed unaware of my presence.

But there was more. Suddenly, like a hawk rising on the waves of a thermal, a feeling rose out of the valley, an effulgence of sensation puffing up, declaring itself in one word: happiness. My belly relaxed and a current of calm filtered through me. I took a deep breath. Yes, that felt right, even though I didn’t fully understand its meaning. Had Cathy’s life reverberated happiness? Was this the quality she had embodied or sought? Or did it point to the influence she had on those around her?

There was no time to consider. Knowing that the vision would end soon, I deeply inhaled the precious image before me, and was able to sense now Cathy’s deep satisfaction with a life well lived, of enormous love given and received, of beauty and grace created again and again.

Back in my body seconds later, I blinked open my eyes to a cloudy cold day. Beyond the joy of having seen Cathy and witnessed this mystifying event, I was struck by the poignant reality: Cathy was now outside of her life, separate from all the events and people that had made up her daily existence just days before. She would eventually move away from that valley, leaving behind the glowing honeycomb bursting with love, laughter, tears, accidents, discoveries, and family dinners. That life, the one in which she had been my cherished older sister, that life for her was done and gone.

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