Building a Shrine Part 3: With Bonus Material ;)

I still remember the intensity of that stare. They were in the center of the mall in a roped off circle—the local raptor rescue organization—and the young presenter had a golden eagle on her arm. He was restless and moving and making her nervous… and then he noticed me. Stillness. That stare. So keen and so persistent. No matter how she moved him, he contorted easily with that supernatural sense of balance that all birds have, so he could keep both eyes on me. I glanced down at myself looking to see if perhaps there was some glint on my shirt or pants that might draw such eyes. Nope. He was looking at me.

Building a Shrine Part 2: Nebt-Het Statue Creation

My dilemma was that there is no Veronese bronze Nebt-het (as far as I can tell). Eventually, I decided that my only option was to alter a different Veronese statue and make a Nebt-het of my own. After all, I am a creator’s kid so brining my creative talents to bare in these sort of situations is more or less a duty. (Once again, warning: there are a lot of pictures in the post as I decided to show the creation process)

The Second Day

I cannot think of a time in my life when I was able to easily focus on just one project, one skill, or one curiosity. The world is simply too full of grand ideas that demand to be played with, useful abilities to be gained, and interesting things to be explored. I have a kind of insatiability when it comes to novelty that carries over even into the spiritual part of my life. After all, there are literally hundreds of Names out there. There are enough well known ones to occupy a lifetime of study, and there are more than a few who have very little literature about them and are therefore intriguing in a different way.

Nebt-Het's Birthday Celebration: Grand Opening of New Ancestor Shrine

This is the new ancestor shrine:

It's out in the living room instead of in the "temple" in the back of the apartment where the other shrines are. I figured the ancestors would rather be out where they could see what was going on. :)

I opened it for the first time as part of tonight’s celebration. I think E.M. was pleased with the offerings, which I promised him back when I had to do that bare bone’s libation and prayer to give him the strength he needed to reach my mother’s side before she passed. I could almost feel him smiling at me through his photo. During the prayers I also read the *extensive* list of ancestors I’ve compiled—stretching back five generations on my mother’s side and at least three on my father’s. It felt good to say all those names and realize just how deep and strong my roots are.

My mother was around today as well. Even though she's still barely halfway done with her journey through the duat. I know she’s there, because I keep hearing our song: the one she sang to me as a child and that I sang to her the night she died. Everywhere. On the radio first. Then a friend on Facebook, who barely even knew my mom, posted the lyrics as a status update. It was even playing on the CD test panel in the homegoods section of Walmart today just when I happened to walk by.

Love you mom. :)

As a tribute to her here’s my, slightly altered, version of the song:

“You are my sunshine
My only sunshine
You make me happy
When skys are grey
You’ll never know dear
How much I miss you
But we'll meet again someday”

When I went before Nebt-het and showed her the ancestor shrine and offered her a flower from it…she seemed pleased. I thanked her. From the bottom of my heart—for coming the night my mother passed, for easing my mother’s first step into the other realm, and for comforting me in that moment:

 Friend of the dead: you came for my mother in her hour of need. In my hour of need. You came for the one I loved most. You came and you took her gently with you in her moment of pain and fear and gave her peace. I can never repay my debt to you. But I will honor my ancestors and be a friend to the dead as you are. I can only hope it is sufficient.

Dua Nebt-het!

Gone from my sight...

It is over.

I have not had time to process what I have seen and heard and experienced, but...I did not expect it to be like that. I don't know what I did expect.

Maybe I expected a Hollywood death where my mother would rasp her last words then look skyward to speak no more.

Maybe I expected a death like my grandmother's where my mother would pass silently in her sleep while no one was watching.

Maybe I expected it wouldn't happen at all, that she would miraculously awaken from her comatose state and suddenly recover as she has done so many other times.

I did not expect the wild sounds in her chest and the wide eyes as she struggled to breath. I did not expect the long bone shaking moans or the gurgling and the choking. I did not expect the convulsions in her abdomen or the stiffness in her arms.

The nurse came after my panicked call to the hospice 24-hour line. She looked over my mother calmly even as my mother's ragged breaths heaved and ebbed in tides of what looked, to me, like agony.

"This is normal," the young nurse nodded, "we see this a lot. I know it's probably not as peaceful as you thought it would be, but it's normal."

She went on to explain that my mother's lungs were failing. The noises came from fluid gathering in them. It is distressing to hear, she told me, but normal. We had done everything we could do. We had given her enough morphine, enough sedatives--she was as comfortable as any dying person could be, the nurse assured me.  That made me feel better about what was happening, but it didn't make it any easier to watch as my mother struggled to die.

I prayed. I begged.

Please don't let her keep on like this. Please let her go.

And the spirit of E.M. was there and the other spirits of her family were there--I could feel them. Then peace came over me--wings from the corners of my sight wrapped around me.

Stand at the end of the bed and let me borrow you. 

I had been reading the Raven Kaldera book again when my mother first started her convulsions, so I was in the frame of mind I needed to be in to listen to her speak, to follow her directions.

I did not lose consciousness, but I felt my body stand differently and something shifted in my eyes and hands. There was something other than me radiating from my form and I looked toward my mother and whispered almost silently--so quiet even the nurse who stood next to me didn't hear. I don't recall the words now, but they were words I had no business knowing. I felt my mother leave her body and in the same moment, mine went limber again and the feeling was gone.

The body continued to fight for breath, but the gasps became even and mechanical. Four gasps. Pause. Four gasps. Pause. Four gasps...

"It's just her body now," my father told me as I sat next to him--my father, the man who doesn't believe in spirits, "it's just her body going through the motions."

And so it was. It took a few hours for the last breath to come and when it did, it was a quiet whoosh and then nothing. It was peaceful at the end. The room was empty of both the living and of spirits when I said a quiet goodbye as we waited for them to come and take her body. After she was gone I went to my room and picked up my prayer book. I flipped to the section on Nebt-het and read the prayer aloud. I felt wings again briefly, and then I slept.

Waiting for a Moment

I wait.

She is beyond us—in another world. Her connection to our waking reality is tenuous at best. And there is a point when she has gone too far to come back. A point when there is no hope of her speaking or eating or drinking anymore. It is the point when a decision is made. When they bring out the morphine and the sedatives and sleep becomes life for her—and, eventually, it will become death for her. It is that moment when preventing her from suffering is all that is left to do… but also waiting and watching and getting more drugs for her and talking to her silent body and holding her cooling hand.

I am confident now that she is truly done with this life—she is truly ready to go. There will be no more years, no more months…not even two weeks…

I wait.

It is near.

And the dark lady is in our home now. She waits in the threshold of my mother’s room, guarding the line between our world and hers. And the dog is fearful of that cloaked woman, but I am no longer afraid… because she is not the only presence here. Sometimes I hear their voices briefly—the ones who walked before my mother. There is a man with them now—the ancestor who was almost lost, the one whose name had been forgotten by all but my mother, the one who sent me the tiger to help me find the name again, the one whose Ka I fed that he might walk by day and journey to meet her before the end. He has reached my mother in time.

I wait.

I sit with her in the dark of her room as a summer storm rumbles away into the night. I tell her who the man is and that I have brought him to meet her on the other side. I tell her that I trust him—that I will be okay and that she doesn’t have to worry about anything anymore.

I wait.

The Dark Lady at Our Door

Death does not come in a single instant...it comes in waves. It washes though the house in little torrents of something I can barely describe--it makes the heart pound and quiets the voice. I pace, though there is nowhere to go. I whisper, though I know she can not hear me. My mother is caught in a world beyond. Her eyes are closed and she avoids suffering through sleep.

Last weekend she was fine. Last weekend she walked among the living and laughed and smiled and joked and shared in memories and ate salad. Today, she coughs and wheezes and retches and sleeps. Tomorrow it may change yet again. She might be better once the stronger medicines have time to build in her system. Or she might not.

She complained of a headache. She pointed to the specific place where her head hurt: right under the metal plate that marks where they opened her skull to remove the tumor two years ago. It throbs, she says. There is pressure, she says.

It's probably back, the doctor says.

And there is a lady in a dark cloak standing at our door. She does not knock, and though I know her, I do not let her in. No one else sees her. No one else senses her. No one else knows that she comes to visit whenever the house fills with the mist of the unseen--when my mother slips in and out of our world. The lady is quiet and patient. She comes and goes. And sometimes I fear her and sometimes--when my mother is in severe pain-- I wish she would stay. But I dare not ask her to enter.

Eventually, we need something from the store and I walk past the dark lady like a skittish child. I slip through our doorway and escape into the warm night air where the cicadas buzz and life throngs thick in the summer heat. But as I drive, I play a song over my radio that I know is the voice of that dark lady at our door:

A kite above a graveyard grey
At the end of the line, far far away
A child holding on to the magic of birth and awe


Oh how beautiful it used to be
Just you and me, far beyond the sea
The water scarce in motion, quivering still


At the end of the river, the sun down beams
All the relics of a life long lived
Here weary traveler rest your mind
Sleep the journey from your eyes


Good journey love, time to go
I've checked your teeth and warmed your toes
In the horizon I see them coming for you


The mermaid grace, the forever call
Beauty in spyglass on an old man's porch
The mermaids you turned loose brought back your tears

At the end of the river, the sun down beams
All the relics of a life long lived
Here weary traveler rest your mind
Sleep the journey from your eyes

When I return home, the lady is gone. My mother still sleeps and my father has put the lights of the kitchen on dim. I sit in the half shadows out in the living room, and somewhere behind my eyes, I cry.