MAYA: Ms. Angelou If You Please.

A Soul that has Blessed ~
A Soul that found Peace ~ 
A Soul that will Rise ~
Leila B. Athill

Two days before her passing I'd picked up a post on FB regarding her illness. Immediately, I prayed for her, for her family.  I wasn't overly saddened or grief strickened because I knew that with her age that she'd lived a full and accomplished life.  Somewhere deep in my spirit I accepted that this may very well be "her time".

I'm sure that with her can do spirit, even at her age, that there must have been a list, whether written down or in her heart and mind of other things she'd like to do, places she'd like to visit and as such this was coupled with the occasional reminiscing as she looks over her past and the forks and roads taken that brought her to where she was in life.

In my own reminiscing, I was humbled.  Humbled that as I waded out into the unknown at this time in my life that my spirit had captured and held on to her piece of poetry - "Still I'll Rise".  A series of photos I took in December 2013 are shared in an FB album entitled "Still I'll Rise".  This album débuted on the birthday of a truly exceptional woman who I tend to butt heads with at times - my own mother :) (I've been assured by a dear pastor that this is normal woman's territory).  The first photo catalogued embodied so much of our life together; strength, agility, gentleness, playfulness and a love for the ocean - its calm, its swells, its tides and the healing it brings just to be near it.  As I struck pose after pose, twirling my sarong, amidst the encouraging words of the photographer, I recalled my mother's lessons in not only tying a sarong but using and wearing it effortlessly and somewhere, somehow this transcended into going forward carrying my trials and tribulations effortlessly.  In an instant the words that settled on my heart were "Still I'll Rise", just as she continues to do and as Maya has done.

Maya Angelou's "I Know Why the Caged Birds Sing" was somewhere on my high school's reading list along with the popular Shakespeare Series. However, it wasn't until later through my older sister's passion for her literature that I was truly turned on to her work.  If I wasn't reading I was writing or otherwise creatively engaged and the latter plus a disruptive marriage and children squeezed out time spent with my beloved authors.  So there is much much more of her work that is still to be devoured by me.

It was during a phone conversation with a friend that I learned of her passing; my response "what?"  He continued "Maya Angelou passed".  It sank in - I sighed and recounted that it was just two days ago that I learned she was unwell.

Now I've pondered the parallels, the shifts, the coincidence that as she was going out ... I was coming in, coming in to my own.  Owning me.  Owning and Embracing all of me and this sure takes some courage.  It is surreal that despite the physical distances and the unlikelihood that we would ever meet another just how connected in life we are. It's also poignant that when we meet someone, a stranger, who later becomes a friend, we learn of their culture and how similar it is to ours, we come away feeling as though they grew up on our street.  I feel somehow our spirits collided.  It brings me back to wondering about our souls' journeys as we sleep and dream.

Many years ago while in the USA, I dreamed that a boyfriend had an accident.  I called one of his close friends who was also in the USA asking him to call home to find out as I was really a bit terrified to find out myself - you know, that feeling where you scare yourself.  Sometime later he called back and to this day - pretty much 20 years later - I remember his exact words, "Leila, if at all you should ever dream anything about me, don't tell me!" 

So yes, in my own way I feel connected to her.  Connected to this woman of courage who looked within herself and to God to achieve beauty out of the ashes of life.  To me,
Maya Angelou's life is one of those that I would hasten to say came full circle.  It's one of the interesting little tidbits I note or come away with when someone dies - how close their death was time-lined to their birth.  It is how I later introduced the wording sunrise / sunset (instead of birth / death) on funeral stationery I produced - symbolising the individual's day's work is done.

When I look at her face I see the faces of the women of my family and of the older women outside my family that I've become knitted to and how they all share this same face - a face that is open, speaks love, acceptance, forgiveness, grace and strength all at the same time.  I look at photos of my mother, my grandmother and I exclaimed aloud.  My sons who were present agreed and added yes that's Aunt Pauline's face too - my maternal grandmother's first cousin who fills the role of their every day hands-on doting grandmother.

The impact is profound and the truth is that there's so much on this plain that transcends our human understanding.  We born, we die.  However, in between that, we must take courage as Maya did and live.