Altaring Time

Another sudden departure, another unexpected loss has happened in our world. My Aunt Teri, my Godmother, who I called my Fairy Godmother because she came to my aid instantly with her fierce love and bold generosity so many times, died on September 27, 2023. 

Aunt Teri, I miss you. I love you. You always greeted me with kisses and hugs. Despite your petite five-foot stature, your energy was enormous and unfiltered, and it filled the room. You were one of my biggest advocates. You loved me fiercely and unconditionally. Your generosity, care, and love for me from the time I was born were never in doubt. I know Edmond was among many to greet you, showing you the way perhaps, maybe he was even your pilot. You loved him immediately, and he loved you. Thank you for all of it. I love you. I miss you. Your absence has left a gargantuan hole in our family system.

It is hard not to feel left behind again. Another Dear One is no longer here. She was a wife, partner, mother, sister, daughter, grandmother, aunt, and friend to so many. She was a great-aunt to my children who called her The Great Aunt Teri. She was ordered and planned, and had so many projects and plates spinning, most could not keep up with her. 

The last time I saw her, we were on the way home from a baseball tournament in Destin—a place she used to take me in the summertime when I was a child. We stayed the night in her welcoming, comfortable home in Lafayette, and before we left, she sent us off with crawfish pies to eat for our first Father’s Day without Edmond.

Some of my earliest childhood memories are of time with her at her home and on trips to Destin, playing on the white sand beaches along the Emerald Coast of Florida. I remember laying in the sun on my stomach on my uncle’s catamaran peering into the crystal clear waters at the fish and sea life below. Those same waters are where I went after my divorce. I stayed at my aunt and uncle’s condo on the beach that first Thanksgiving and birthday as a single parent of three young children. She offered whatever she had whenever I needed it—even when I did not know what I needed.

Her home was a respite for me in my struggle of living away for the first time when I was a student at LSU. At her house, I did my laundry, swam, and spent time with my young cousin. I knew I could show up and would feel the welcome whenever I needed it. Her home and generosity got me through a really tough time so many times.  

Today, I breathe slowly and gently into the tender spots that hurt with this loss. 

It is the first thing I do with my clients; I breathe with them. Remembering to breathe again after an intense loss is critical. Breathing is our first act of surrender, a softening into what is. Breathing starts time again, unfreezing us from the trauma, pulling us into the present moment and releasing us from the regrets of the past and an anticipated daunting future that we cannot yet fathom. 

At first, the intentional breath is a way of joining our body again. In a circular pattern, inhaling through our nose to the count of four and exhaling out of our mouths to the count of five, we exert our agency enabling some regulation for our bodies. We have a choice to breathe in a particular way. Allowing the breath to lead, even for a few breaths in the beginning, is the entryway to the territory of anticipated pain, a pain that is terrifying to contemplate in its depth and breadth. Breath eventually leads us through the pain itself. It is our partner on the path, our current and flow, a vapor of our essence that ebbs and flows like a tide that moves a few feet forward only to retreat again, backtracking over the new territory. These breath waves gently, cautiously take us a little further on the path with each extended exhale.

Trying to control anything when we are in a crisis is natural, normal, and entirely human. In reality, there is so very little we control, but finding a few things helps us orient and find the ground beneath us. It is helpful to identify what we can and cannot control so that we can participate in this deeply painful and important grief experience. 

And, it is also normal, natural, and entirely human to lose control, letting emotions flood our systems and spill over into the messiness that is grief. Sometimes we might even make space for this kind of release. Making the space is within our control. We can return to intentionally breathing in a particular pattern to help regulate overwhelming emotions. Breathing is a powerful experience in the midst of panic, anxiety, sorrow, or anger. 

After we breathe, the second thing I ask of my clients is to create an altar. The altar is a physical manifestation of both the loss and the comforts. Some altars are on a table, shelf, mantel, or even on a car’s dash shelf. Altars are big and ornate as well as small and simple. But all of these intentional spaces hold meaning and resource. 

Some people declutter and rearrange their living rooms and bedrooms, I altar and re-altar. Nearly every place in my home, car, and studio are altared. I even have a wooden mobile altar I created from a jewelry box that opens up into three tiers. Feathers, demitasse cups, stones, bones, tiny charms, dried flowers, candles, insect exoskeletons, and various found objects sit upon colorful cloths or in bowls, plates, and boxes. Each little item matters and is an offering and a comfort to me. I arrange and rearrange them, add to them.

One of my altars in my studio-office holds dried flowers from an orchid given to us after Edmond died. On this same ceramic plate that E and I bought from a pottery studio in Ouray two summers ago, are a heart shaped rock and a cicada skeleton Edmond found and gave to me before he died. He found the rock on the land where we live and the green cicada at the bottom of the pool. He knew how much I would love them both, and I did and do, especially now. 

Aunt Teri, Fairy Godmother, you were quick and nimble. You had an energizing and rapid vibration. You had a fast mind and were generally ten steps ahead of the rest of us. I can still hear your giggle-laugh, your clear, crisp words in your South-Louisiana accent. Yesterday, the day you departed the Earth plane, I felt an incredible stillness come over me. It was a weighted comfort that was quiet and tranquil, and it was with me all day and even through the night. All of us on both sides of the veil waited in reverence as you took your time, perhaps for the first time, you went slowly and deliberately, as you entered the realm of the ancestors. As you crossed over, I hope you enjoyed the sweetness of Time—all of it, the time you spent here with us and the time you are in now. We love you. We miss you.

I don’t yet know what will show up on my altars in veneration of my Aunt Teri. I only know it will arrive, show up, and have a privileged spot. She will find a way to send me a love note, I am sure of it. These precious spaces where object becomes ritual open me to the realm of timelessness, the in-between, the liminality where we can commune with those who have transitioned to a place beyond their bodies. Altars keep a stillness in time, not frozen, but still. These spaces we create have a vibration and energy that invites us into a conversation longing to be had. Touching precious objects that are a memory between my loved one and me or a found object from a day after their departure continues the conversation, altering time bringing us both into the present moment of a liminal state. I am grateful for yesterday’s strange and comforting stillness. I am grateful for that gift in the midst of another enormous loss for so many.

Edmond, please come see me soon, in dreams. I miss you, and the changing daylight of the next season is hard to be in without you. I breathe in this cooler air. I placed a remnant of my day, another feather found, on an altar. Time feels still, suspended, altered. Let’s meet in this space between. I love you. I miss you.