I’m not really sure why we say rest in peace. My understanding of life post-body is that there is lots of work to do. It’s not like one big, long sleep. The people who say I’ll sleep when I’m dead should probably actually take a nap now because a lot of the work begins when we slip the flesh suit and take flight.
My former mother-in-law, Peggy Eyre, died yesterday. She was iconic.
Peggy was flawless in presentation: hair, nails, make-up, clothing and jewelry impeccable at all times. She ate a very, very low calorie diet, which may have contributed to her longevity. Cottage cheese, little nibbles, some protein, coffee in the morning and a cocktail at night (though not in her later years).
For a tiny person she had a deep, husky voice with a Waspy lilt that that both terrified and delighted me. It meant I have been places dear, I know things.
When I was marrying her son in 2002 we planned a beachy backyard wedding. Both of us married once already, we had no interest in the usual wedding-y foof. We threw a great party for our friends, which I highly recommend as the starting-point mindset for every wedding. I wanted to wear vintage Pucci, a designer whose wildly colorful dresses were de rigueur for the Palm Beach and Capri set. Though I was neither of those, I wanted to have some fun with my bridal costuming.
“Oh Melissa,” Peggy said, with a slight hint of ennui, “you can’t wear Pucci, I’m wearing Pucci.”
It went down in the record book a one of the ten best lines of my life: my fiancé’s mother told me what I was not going to wear on my wedding day. Which could have been problematic for a lot of women, and I was a little pissed that I wasn’t going to be wearing a cool dress (I settled for a vintage cream halter thingy with inlaid lily of the valley, my favorite flower), but Peggy looked terrific that night, of course. The who wore it best war was a non-starter with Peggy Eyre.
That little pre-wedding moment taught me a lot about being a woman in this world: take no guff, was what she was saying; I have seniority here and I’m using it.
Indeed, though Peggy was diminutive in stature she was enormous in personality. She didn’t say a lot, but when she did it meant something.
She was very smart, well-read, well-traveled and she loved sports. She followed hockey, tennis and baseball religiously. She was outfitted for every occasion, in a way that could have been clownish for anyone else. With Peggy it was so great that you wanted to be in on it, too.
I mean, who wouldn’t … for the Fourth?
You should! was what her attire said.
Peggy lived in New York City and refused to leave, even as her health dwindled (though never her vitality), even when all her friends were dying. Her love for the city was unwavering. It didn’t occur to her to leave after 9/11; it didn’t occur to her to leave when she lost her vision, when she couldn’t walk much, when her world got smaller and smaller. She stayed in her beloved big city until her last breath.
Last night I kept looking to the sky for some sort of sign. I imagined that Peggy’s spirit would manifest as something huge, colorful, like the rainbow that appeared the other morning. Maybe that was her, on her way from her hospital bed.
I feel that feeling, that void feeling when someone amazing dies. Peggy was so tiny, but her departure will leave a gaping hole in this world. I didn’t see much of her in her later years, her son and I having been long divorced by then. For a while I wrote letters to her, but then I got distracted and maybe lazy and that stopped, too. I regret that now, of course.
What I have heard and read is that when we die the first part of the process is a kind of life review during which we see how we affected all the people in our lives. We don’t just blast through all the things we did, in rewind, we see how our choices and actions (and inaction) made other people feel.
In other words, we’re on the receiving end of ourself.
Oof.
We are greeted by loved ones who help us get used to the new condition. Some adapt right away, testing all the new possibilities. Some cling like crazy to the life they had on earth, some take their time figuring it out. I’ve described it for some as “like being in a dryer … they’re kind of tumbling around, not sure where they are yet.”
We reunite with our soul grouping, which may or may not be people we hung out with here. Whatever the case, we’re psyched when we see them.
Then comes a time of study. Literally. Learning, preparing for the next go-round. First a review of what we were supposed to learn in the most recent lifetime and a how it went truth session. Then the masters step in and the teachings begin.
There truly is no rest for the weary when we die.
I laugh, howl (usually silently), when people tell me they think it’s lights-out when we die. But listen, everyone is entitled to believe anything they want to believe. I always think of that great line in The Count of Monte Cristo when the two guys in that horrible jail, built into a mountain on an island, are having a conversation. The old wise guy is talking to the young man who has been wrongly imprisoned.
“When you get out of here,” the wise one says, “do not try to get revenge. God will take care of that.”
“I don’t believe in God,” the angry young guy snarls.
“That doesn’t matter,” the old dude says, “God believes in you.”
It’s like that. What happens after we die is not dependent upon your belief or non-belief. It already is.
One of the most glaring things about life after we leave here is that we come to see the folly of our ways as consumers, materialists. We get to see how gross and dumb it all is, how the focus is so often on all the wrong things.
Peggy, I think, knew how to create balance. She loved her bling and she wore old blue jeans. She and my mother talked on the phone on a very regular basis; she didn’t carry a grudge around the dissolution of my marriage to her son. She lived a privileged life and she was kind to everyone, no matter what their stature, job or skin color.
That’s what life is about, really, the and.
I’ll bet Peggy is out there somewhere now, a little bowl of nibbles and one of her beloved dogs nearby. She’s probably watching tennis or hanging around one of her many amazing granddaughters. I hope she shows up to help me with my wardrobe soon. She gave a bunch of her Pucci to my daughter, Coco, not long ago. Maybe I’ll borrow one for church this Sunday. 😉
Peggy was a woman of poise and design. She knew the elegance of New York City, how to dress, carry herself, and she puts me to shame. How elegant Peggy was. May she know eternal Bliss as only she can experiece. It is so nice to know of someone who knew herself and how to live her life, her way. Peggy has started her Journey.
Wonderful intimate image of this woman, happiness seems constant.