My mother, Gwen Eisenmann, got her masters degree in creative writing from Antioch College when she was seventy-five. She'd written poetry from a very young age, even had some poems published in books and magazines. She'd kept a daily journal for many years, wrote a gardening column for a local newspaper, articles for a bee keeping magazine, and published a book of her own poetry.
As a young woman, she'd attended the Denver School of Nursing, in part because she could pay for her education through their work/study program. She was a fine nurse, and worked for our family doctor after we children were through elementary school. But writing was her calling, her chosen path of exploration into the farthest reaches of her own being as well as into the vast universe. She wrote to express herself and to make sense of it all, or try to, with grace, beauty, wit and humor.
She was a very free and deep thinker, ahead of her time, always searching for answers to life's great mysteries. She needed to know things. She and my father were avid readers, and we children reaped the benefits of this, being introduced to the wonders of the written word at an early age. We had no TV, we read instead.
My parents took a bible study course, joined a Great Books group and met with friends to discuss what they'd read. But still my mother had questions. How did humans come to be on the earth? Where had we come from? Where were we going? Somehow, somewhere she needed to find answers. So the search continued.
After retirement, my parents moved from Ohio to a remote area of the Missouri Ozarks. There on a seventy acre plot in the Brixey woods, they built a beautiful home and carved out a homestead on a rocky hilltop named Rattail Point. They built gardens, raised chickens, planted fruit trees, kept bees. They made friends with a lively community of young, back-to-the-landers, and mingled with the native Ozarkers, absorbing their lore of the land, charmed by their quaint expressions. They fished and swam in Bryant Creek, explored the hills and hollers, danced to fiddle and banjo music on misty evenings, accompanied by whip-poor-wills and twinkling fireflies.
My mother relished the free time and solitude of her new life because she could write to her heart's content, but sometimes she chafed at the isolation. The driveway was three quarters of a mile long, followed by 20 minutes (when the weather was good) of twisting, narrow dirt road to the black top. No mail delivery at the house; my dad drove out almost every day to the Brixey post office where the postmistress, a retired schoolteacher named Bessie who used to ride her mule to a one room schoolhouse every day, would go behind the counter, push the mail through an open wooden box, enquire about the family and offer you a "cold sody". There was no internet at home, only an ancient hand-me-down computer, huge and ponderous, that chugged and groaned and slowly recorded her writings.
It was not an easy place to settle for the light and airy, butterfly-and-bird-loving spirit that was my mother. The ancient hills of the Ozarks tested the mettle of any who dared disturb its wild and sometimes hostile energies. There were copperheads and pygmy rattlers, brown recluse spiders, hordes of ticks and chiggers, rampant vines, thorns and poison ivy that needed constant hacking to keep them from encroaching on the homestead. But my mother was no pushover. She listened and watched, trying to learn the language of this strange new land. Beauty and poetry flowed from the elemental voices of rocks, vegetation, wind and sky and water, discernable to a sensitive poet. She wrote about her garden, the creatures who visited it, the people she met, the daily drama of life in the woods.
Shortly after their move to Missouri, my parents met an intriguing elderly woman named Rosina. Fiercely independent, with a brilliant mind and a will of iron, Rosina had raised a son and managed a farm all by herself. And she knew things, or seemed to.
Rosina introduced our family to Anthroposophy, a term coined by an Austrian philosopher and seer named Rudolf Steiner. Anthroposophy is a body of ancient wisdom handed down through the ages in mystery schools and small communities. My mother began reading Steiner's books and lectures, soaking up the knowledge like a thirsty sponge. Finally, at last, she'd found what she had longed for all her life. The poetic, imaginative pictures Steiner painted with his words appealed to her artistic nature, the content moved her deeply because it was based on solid, spiritual scientific research by a man who had developed faculties of perception which he claimed lie dormant in all human beings, and which allowed him to read the cosmic script of all events past and present known as the Akasha. His books and lectures delved deeply into the history of the earth, religions, cultural epochs, influences of planets and constellations and the development and destiny of human beings, woven into a panoramic view of time beginning eons before the earth was formed up to the present. For a writer, these new revelations and the thoughts and feelings they evoked were powerful fuel for the creative fire.
Rosina loved Mom's poetry and encouraged her to publish it. She became a close friend, sometimes spending the weekend at the Rattail house. She discussed politics and current events with my father; books, gardening and anthroposophy with my mother. She had moved to a low income apartment in town after selling her farm, which she missed dreadfully. The apartment was like prison to her, but age and health problems had forced her to relocate. At age 80, she was diagnosed with cancer. She refused all treatments and prepared for her death quite happily. Life had grown tiresome and tedious, her body was wearing out and she was eager to move on. She'd read and studied anthroposophy for so long that the thought of dying held no fear for her. It was only a minor ripple in the grand scheme of things. Even as her health failed, she continued to introduce anyone who would listen to spiritual science, including the owner of the nursing home where she now stayed. He was so impressed with her that for a long time after her death he couldn't bring himself to put anyone else in her room.
As the years passed, the Rattail house, with its gardens, wood stove and staircases grew too difficult for my parents to maintain. With heavy hearts, they sold it and built a smaller, one story house nearby on the black top. They had five good years there before my father had a stroke and another move was necessary. This time they moved to a community in New York based on Rudolf Steiner's vision for the care of the elderly. It embraced people of all ages, races and religions, and included a large biodynamic farm, a Waldorf school and, for its members and co-workers, art classes, reading groups, music and drama performances and seasonal festivals throughout the year. Now my mother had much new stimulation for her writing. She started a poetry class which quickly became very popular. Her poems graced mealtimes, weddings, births, funerals and parties in the community.
Though she sorely missed her home and gardens in Missouri, and my father after he passed in 2005, she took full advantage of what the community offered. Story time, movies, art class, reading groups, performances, morning co-worker meetings, processing produce from the fields; Mom always took part. Her little purple cushion would be placed on a chair in the front row before any gathering, to save the best seat.
She astounded the doctors by recovering from not one, but two broken hips on different occasions, plus a cracked tailbone, all in her late 80' and 90's. The doctor insisted she now use a walker, which she hated, pushing it up and down the halls of Hilltop House where she lived as fast as she could, passing up many younger members. "Beep beep, coming through!" For as long as she was able, she walked every morning on the hilly, wooded drives and paths that wound through the Fellowship Community, and when the doctor told her she couldn't walk alone, the co-workers took turns walking with her.
She took from life whatever lessons and treasures it offered, held them close, pondered them deeply, then poured them back out through her writing and through the light and fire of her bright spirit. She passed away on October second, 2018, two days before her 97th birthday. October was always her favorite month.
A few years before her passing, my mother had given my brother and me each a copy of a book entitled "Staying Connected: How to Continue Your Relationships with Those Who Have Died," a selection of talks and meditations by Rudolf Steiner. We had both been students of Anthroposophy for decades, so this book was not a revelation, but it did give us much valuable information and opened new doorways for further study and meditation.
Reading spiritual material is not like reading a book on history or math. Different faculties are required; the heart and feelings must be engaged as well as the mind so the content becomes a living experience, not just an intellectual exercise. I lived with the content of "Staying Connected" for a year or two before it came alive for me in a remarkable way. During a conversation with my brother, he mentioned that he'd been having a powerful urge to write.
"Hmmm," I said, "that's weird, because I have too." To be sure, I'd always loved to write stories, but now, suddenly, I felt an urgent push to write down my deepest thoughts and share them, and my brother Mark felt the same way. We were both certain that our mother's spirit was making its presence felt, inspiring us to act. I began to understand that writing was a tie that connected us, providing a means of communication. Her thoughts are alive in me; I carry them forward, adding my own perspectives and views. In this way I can further not only my own spiritual journey, but my mother's as well, and hopefully inspire others.
Mark began writing poems, I wrote some short articles and a poem for my father. The more we wrote, the easier it became to sense our mother's presence. Her insistent voice would not be stilled.
There are ways of communicating that go beyond the physical senses. The heart knows how to do this, though its messages are usually ignored or overshadowed by the outer world. But practice strengthens the connection. The words flow, the feelings become richly engaged. A turn of phrase, an expression, a sudden lightness of being or of gravity, a surprising thought that pops up unexpectedly all take on new meaning.
Shortly thereafter, other voices began sounding in my brother and me as well, often at the same time without each others' knowing until later when we talked. What a precious gift is the knowledge that I can be of service to those who have passed. It is incredibly comforting, enriching, empowering, uplifting, and deeply sobering to realize that loved ones on the other side of the veil need us as much as we need them. Our relationships continue, albeit in a different form.
There are thousands of accounts of people communicating with the dead. If even one of those accounts is true, it means that human beings do possess organs of perception that can be developed to penetrate the nonphysical world. To begin, one only needs belief and a feeling of reverence. A grounding in spiritual science helps immensely, though it is not essential.
It seems vital to me to talk about these things. Humans still have so much to learn about life and death. About the mysterious power that splinters itself into endless creations, no two alike, yet all related and interconnected. I believe our individuality is eternal, each of us a vital piece in the kaleidoscope of creation. The more we connect with each other, the more beautiful the pattern. My mother's voice inspired me to write this. Her spirit, so strong and giving, is just as alive as it always was and will be.
Methinks
The other day it occurred to me
I don't know who I am.
"Be a strong I" the old sage said,
and I thought "I" am Gwen.
But who is Gwen? She was a baby
her parents named long ago.
"Gwendolyn", said her Welsh grandpa,
and she's someone I should know.
The name is familiar; I've worn it so long
the sound is part of my soul,
so underneath the layers of life
there must be someone whole.
Let's see: there's Gwenny, my mother's child,
the one she taught me to be,
and then there's who I imagined myself
when I was grown and free.
I am a mother, a grey grandmother,
a wife with all the rest,
a nurse, a gardener, an ordinary,
but when is Gwen the best?
"Be a strong I" the old sage said,
and I thought "I" am Gwen
in body and soul, but Gwen is just
a vessel to put an "I" in.
This "I" that thinks me who I am,
then, must indeed be strong
because beneath the layers I find
I've known me all along.
Gwendolyn Eisenmann
