The ones who mirror the light
Claiming companions in times of change
I am writing this at the end of August on an Amtrak train. I’m traveling along the western banks of the Mississippi, returning from Milwaukee, where I joined friends and family in grief and in celebrating the life of my friend, Cecilia, who unexpectedly joined the ancestors last week.
I am remembering one of the speakers in the service saying Cecilia opened her heart to everyone as family – and how almost every hand in the room raised to the question, “How many of you think of yourself as part of Cecilia’s family?”
Today, it’s still hard to believe that my bigger-than-life friend, who treated us all like family, is gone from this world. And I know that, in a significant sense, she is not. Gone, that is. For what beloved ancestor ever is?
Ancestor: from Latin antecedere, from ante ‘before’ + cedere ‘go’. Not just those we are descended from by blood or those who were our elders, but also those whose lives shaped ours and who went before us, at any age.
This month, as we focus on the thresholding skill “Claiming Companions,” I want to call in especially those companions, living or passed on, who are with us in spirit, accompanying us across time and geography. Those we carry in heart and memory.
Traveling home today, my pool of ancestor companions has just grown bigger by one – and one whose company I am grateful to carry with me as I live through change. Because not only did Cecilia treat everyone as family, she also brightened the world with her hearty and frequent laughter. She was a lifelong public servant devoted to helping others and getting things done. So much so, that decades ago, she was dubbed “Queen of Milwaukee” for the way she reigned over the city’s needs, especially the mundane and sometimes the magnificent. And though she was neither boastful nor imperious in life, she is now wearing the crown in our memories.
I’m guessing you might have a Cecilia (likely by some other name) in your heart, too. Someone still living, or passed on, who treated you like family. Someone whose laughter lifted your spirits. Maybe someone who was often helping others, or someone who knew how to get things done. Someone whose life shaped you in ways large or small, making you more resilient, more creative, more loving, more light filled – more ready for change.
James Baldwin once described love as “the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light.” That’s what Cecilia did. Isn’t it what our best companions do, especially in times of change, when we might need a little more light to guide our way?
Who do you know, or know of, whose love mirrors and magnifies your light and the light of others, while sharing their own light as well? How might you carry their light and their love with you as you live through change – personal and shared? How might their companionship, in body or spirit, illuminate your way through shadowy times, perhaps spreading light on the path for others as well?
Take good care,
Karen