A message to my dear friend Sharon Parish on her 50th birthday
Dear Sharon,
I’d put the date of your 50th birthday party on my calendar early this year, planning to be with you in Austin on October 28—your special day. Since that didn’t come to pass, I’m writing today to let you know of your significance in my life and how important you continue to be. I’m writing to express my love for you and my gratitude for your impact on who I am today. For though you are no longer here in your physical form, you remain a potent force for me and for so many others whose lives you’ve touched.
I remember my first experience of you at the initial Way of a Warrior (WOW) in Dahlonega, Georgia in 1988. Late in the week of this intensive week-long workshop, you and I were paired in an exercise during which we were to look one another in the eyes for what seemed like an eternity. As I continued to gaze at you I felt an extraordinary connection, an overpowering sense of love that I clumsily endeavored to relate to you as we shared our experience during the last part of the exercise. You thought that my sexual energy somehow tainted the experience, and maybe it did. But I know from that time on, your dynamic and spirited presence was imbedded into my being and remains there today.
I continued to return to WOW almost every summer after that, in part because of something Ann McMaster had said: “I want to live the other 51 weeks of my life like this week at WOW.” The level of truthtelling, the bold support offered and received, the joy of knowing you’re exactly where you want to be doing exactly what you want to be doing. All of this and more. Yet, part of what drew me there was you—your way of being, your way of leading, your way of just being you.
Then in 1992 I visited Austin and spent a long weekend with you and Tom and Stanley and Justin. I was in the process of making a conscious choice about where I wanted to live after the end of my marriage with Deb. From my home in Arlington, Texas, I considered Portland, Asheville (not yet) and Austin. And after my weekend in Austin, my choice was made. I moved a few weeks later and became a surrogate member of your family in which dinner and Star Trek became a Saturday night ritual.
I joined you in making Austin a vital More To Life community, volunteering to work with the inmates at Bastrop FCI, the nearby federal prison, enrolling folks in WOW and organizing the Great Texas Campouts. And we traveled to workshops in Houston together and sometimes even slept in the same bed though nothing sexual ever took place between us. Nonetheless, I developed a crush on you, knowing full well that my love would be unrequited. Yet this was a time in which I was getting clear about who I was and what I really wanted in my life. So one thing became readily apparent: I wanted a relationship with a woman with your attributes—your openheartedness, your sense of humor, your way of being with people, your undeniability, your generosity, your willingness, your adventurousness, your spirituality, your wisdom and, yes, your physical beauty.
A few years later this woman came into my life in the form of Shonnie Lavender, my lovely life partner, who in so many ways reminds me of you. And why shouldn’t she? You provided the model on which I put my focus. And, magnanimously, the Universe responded.
Though we didn’t see much of each other after Shonnie and I moved to Asheville in 1997, you and Lily visited us for a few days in 2003, and each of you left a memento on our wall we invite visitors to write on. Truthfully I was hoping for something a bit more personal than “Deep in the heart of Texas, we all stand with you” but I’m glad to have that along with your angelic photo with Lily at her birth that Justin gave me recently.
And a photo of you and Brad Brown hangs on the wall of my office—the section reserved for mentors and spiritual teachers. You’re in good company, dear—Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Mack Mulkey (my dad), John Hoover, Mae McCarthy (my great-grandmother) and Bandit (my cat).
While you are no longer with us in your physical presence, you live on in so many of us. You live on in me, in the man I’ve become because of my time with you, because of your encouragement to be who I’m really meant to be, because of your gentle nudges when you noticed I was off the path, because of your love for me regardless of how I showed up.
I remember the shock of hearing about your heart failure on May 16th (actually I didn’t learn of it until the 17th). And as you hung on for a couple of weeks, the first thing I did each day was go to the blog Tom had created for you to find out how you were doing. I placed a photo of you on my altar. I prayed. I sent healing energy to you. I visualized you suddenly waking up and acting as if nothing had really happened. But ironically, the heart of the most openhearted woman I have known had failed her, as if she had worked that organ of her body so often and so completely that it just gave out.
I felt my heart breaking as I said goodbye to you at the funeral home in Austin on June 4. I cried the tears I’d been holding back. I let go of the notion that somehow this was all a bad dream. I felt the regret of the words I wished I’d spoken, things I wished I’d done. And I don’t know if you hear these words today or not—I don’t pretend to understand what happens to us when we leave our bodily form. But if you can, just know that I love you, I cherish my memories of the times with you and I carry you in my heart . . . now and throughout my life.
Happy 50th birthday, sweet Sharon, wherever you are.
Saturday, October 28th, 2006No Comments »
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