What do the Quiet Ones Have to Show Us?
This is dedicated to Marjorie, Grietje, Carmen, Celina, Verna and all the Matriarchs who have crossed over. They love us boldly from the other side.

When we bear witness to a loved one’s departure from this flesh-bound world, this witnessing holds power to catapult us into a typhoon of emotions. It can flatten us. Leave us drowning in what we should now do with all this love held in place by that one particular person. In those fresh-loss moments, it seems that this love is non-transferable.
However, it behooves us and benefits the world when we shift our questioning of loss from, “why did this person have to go?” to, “what did they pour into me that I loved so singularly? What did the fingerprint of their service to the world look like? And how can I unfold that further in their absence?”
Some people thrum with life, rooting out the next adventure, the newest thrill like a truffle pig on a mushroom. These world warriors show their gleaming faces against the backdrop of a snowy mountain peak on Instagram, and they inspire us. They command the stage of TED and remind us of our own bravery. And they display their exceptionality on the book of Faces to set a new bar for inner and outer striving. I adore these spiritually acrobatic individuals, and at times, join their ranks.
But what of the quiet ones? Those set before us as gifts wrapped in tender skin and quietly glowing with the adoration of life’s simplicity. I’ve come to know that these soft speakers and gentle livers are the glue that binds the big fast, colourful chunks of our lives together. These are the ones who offer to ground us when we suffer altitude sickness. They provide spiritual electrolytes as we pour out our sweat trying to make the world a bigger better place.
These are the individuals without whom we could not live a larger than life existence.
Marjorie was one who lived for 98 years in the quiet glue. She was a completely unassuming oasis. She was not my grandmother, not by blood at least. She was one of many senior women who slid onto the string of my life like pearls of wisdom.
A Seventh Day Adventist, Marjory was a vegetarian by faith not by trend for over seven decades. She was no bigger than a gnome with eyes of sea blue. She loved her God, her family, and did not understand overweight people. We all have our judgmental glitches, right?
Yoga, exercise, movement was our connection. She needed, I provided. Mostly we chatted like two old hens. In retrospect, her quiet beige apartment, adorned with violets lovingly tended as if works of art, was a vortex of the serenity. A quietude borne out of moderation. Each visit gave me sixty minutes to drop out of the surging city, my carefully manicured schedule to talk about birds, grand and great grand babies, and how much she still missed her hubby after all these years. I often wondered if I should pay her for the soothing of her voice, her words I tucked away as treasure, the oxygen she fed my sometimes weary heart.
These weekly visits came to an end after three years of unwaning conversation.
It was a Wednesday afternoon when I punched her apartment number — 212 — into the intercom for the last time. Something ran through my arm. A thick jolt of dread.
I waited for her sweet “hello?” and wondered why my lungs felt stuffed with cotton. I closed my eyes that Wednesday afternoon and found myself praying for that single word — hello — as if it were the word of god. She did not answer.
“You looking for Mrs Mathews?” I turned to see a humped elderly gentleman, his checked slippers on the wrong feet.
“Yes,” The stiffening dread in my arms went straight to my tongue and slowed my question. “Is. She. Alright?”
“A stroke.” His abrupt tone and obscure words rocked me back.
It was several sad and arduous weeks before her exit. She was made to break her vow. She was forced to eat meat. Her dignity withered. Her bones grew closer and closer to her bluing skin. Many afternoons I sat at her bedside and watched the pulses all over her body as her mortal sheath became transparent and her watery eyes periodically fluttered open as if checking to see if she were still in this world. In those moments, she stared at me like I was an angel. I tried to be for her sake.
The day she passed into the mystery, the mystery steered me. I was not planning on visiting that day. I had too much to do. Banking. Paperwork. Groceries. All the urgencies that take precedence over the dying. I don’t recall turning left instead of right, driving to the hospice instead of the bank. I don’t remember walking down the hall to her room, her portal. Her loving family embraced me as we passed in the doorway.
“We’re going for coffee; she’ll be glad you’re here,” they said.
I couldn’t get to her fast enough. I felt as though my oasis was drying up before me.
Her eyes journeyed side to side behind her silky lids. She was scanning a new horizon, I think. I placed my hand into hers and remembered, as a child, holding the skeleton of a baby bird I’d found at the foot of a maple tree.
I leaned in. Placed my lips to her ear.
“You can go now; they’re out for coffee. I’ll take good care of your violets.”
The whisper of her last breath, that part of us that is God, Source, the highest Self, caressed my forehead on its way by. It was uncomplicated, elegant, and quiet, just as she had been in life.
When I am still and rooted in my Self, I feel that touch of simple breath between my eye brows. It’s there as a gentle reminder to rest from time to time as I run after my biggest life. It is a nudge to appreciate the quiet people for the oasis they are. And to look for opportunities to be that resting place for others, even if it means just sitting a while and talking about birds, love and flowers.

