Life, Death, and Leaving: The Next Step on the Journey

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Some of the neighbors got together the other night to support our friend who is planning a service for her husband who died last week. We’ve known Scott since we moved here nearly 25 years ago. His death was a shock and a great sadness. His passing coincides for us with our decision to leave our home here in the country and to move into town.

When we first moved to our home in the hills it was motivated by a recent near-death experience. We had been living in Marin County and while jogging home one day after dropping my car off for repairs, I had a sudden surge of adrenaline and my head felt like it was about to explode. When I finally was able to make it home and saw my doctor, he was perplexed about what might have caused the symptoms. Following numerous tests, it was determined that I had a rare kind of adrenal tumor that releases so much adrenaline into the system, it usually blows out a blood vessel in the brain and death is immediate.

That’s exactly how I felt, though I was lucky to be in good shape so I didn’t die, had the surgery, and recovered well. I asked my doctors why I had developed a tumor. Their Western-medicine answer was that “you were probably born with the potential and it just happened.” That didn’t satisfy me so I consulted the best specialist I knew. His name is Guntar and he’s been my inner healer for many years. I’ve found that our inner wisdom often provides answers that are not always available from modern medicine. I’ve used Guntar to help me deal with my depression, my bipolar illness, and my stresses, though I also use Western medicine as well. A combination of both usually gets me through a medical emergency to a more healthy balance.

I’d used Western medicine to remove the adrenal tumor. How I wanted to use my inner wisdom from Guntar to get a better handle on why it occurred and what I could do to prevent future problems. In the meditative consultation with Guntar I asked why I had gotten an adrenal tumor. He told me that I needed to slow down my life. I told him, “I have slowed down my life. I was born in New York City and that was a very speedy place. We then moved to a little house in the San Fernando Valley, which was a lot slower than New York. After that we moved to ‘mellow’ Marin.”

In the consultation Guntar smiled at my response and his answer shook me to my roots. “You have slowed down a bit, it’s true,” he told me. “On the stress scale you’ve gone down from 100 to about 88. But where you need to be is a 9.”

“A 9,” I protested, incredulously. “I would have to change my whole life.”

“Yes!” Guntar concluded.

Well, a big part of that change was our decision to move to Shimmins Ridge outside of Willits. For the first year I did very little. I learned about the rhythms of the land, the animals, the trees, the flowers. I learned about generators and chain saws (I had naively thought I didn’t need those loud machines. I would cut down my firewood with a bow saw. It didn’t take my cutting too many trees to decide a chain saw might be helpful).

My men’s group from Marin came up and helped me fix up a little cabin on the property for my office and installed a wood stove so I wouldn’t freeze in winter.

This land has been good to me. I’ve healed more than the physical. My emotional life has also improved. The depression, irritability and anger, which had plagued my relationship for so long, healed during the years we’ve been in the hills. (To be honest, seeing a good psychiatrist helped as well).

Now it’s time to sell our place and move into town. I feel a great deal of gratitude for our 24 years on Shimmins Ridge. At times in the last few weeks I’ve had waves of grief at leaving our land. But I’ve also felt waves of joy to recognize that it’s time to pass on the land to a younger couple who can also be nourished by this wonderful place and begin the next step on our journey.

What experiences have you had in moving from one place to the next? Place has always been important in our lives and we’re looking forward to finding our perfect place in Willits.