Martha Ann

Martha Ann’s young ghost spoke.

“My dog licks decomposing leaves off my fingers. People working over me manifest degrees of abject seriousness creating and validating their existence.”

A child whispers, “I need help.” Others listen with the heart-mind of a child, receive and write. 

“After Vietnam my older brother spent a month with me in Colorado before going to West Germany to work as a military newspaper editor and finish putting in his time. I'd come down with a cold that winter. Father wrote letters to him about my condition, how my energy dropped, how I became weak. He took me to the doctors and they made their diagnosis.

“I had a rare form of AML leukemia and started chemotherapy treatment. I needed bone marrow transplants. The prognosis was maybe five years for a complete remission. My mental attitude was strong and positive. They tried every experimental drug on the market. I lived long enough to enjoy one last Christmas when my pain was a sickness leaving my fragile body.

“Through this I stayed in school, in Girl Scouts and kept riding horses. I am far away. My long blond hair flies in the wind. I am the wind of strong intense discipline. My back is straight in the saddle. My blue eyes penetrate fear approaching a jump.

                                                                                                                                                       “Long before I died I started collecting horses. A smart witty precocious thirteen year old girl, I left home at an early age, went up to my neighbor’s to be with the horses. This is how my love started - my collection of stuffed horses in brown, white, black evolved into carved wood figures and clay models. Horses were my passion. I dreamed horses.

“I leave the stable leading the pinto by the leather reins. I am dressed in tall black boots, riding pants, stiff white shirt buttoned at my frail neck. Only I know I am sick. I am dying. It is my secret. I am in heaven. I speak magic words, a secret dialogue. You can tell by the horse’s response they understand me. I ride my horse in green pastures under blue sky. My face is serene.

“My sickness was a long slow meandering journey. I maintained my external optimism, smiling, laughing doing excellent in school. I knew I was sick.”

“She was a warrior girl,” said my brother. “Horses gave her comfort. She knew the freedom, the release, the passion. She rode every day after school. Weekends were spent grooming, laughing, and loving her relationship with horses. Her spirit on the horses was clear. She had no fear.”

“The drugs made my long blond hair fall out and I wore a wig. I tolerated all the inane questions and insinuations from classmates. I maintained my self respect and dignity.

“Dad, what happens when they run out of experimental drugs?” I asked one night at dinner.

He had no answer.
“My heart gave out three days after Christmas, 1972.”
"My brother received the expected phone call at at a military Field Station north of Kassel."

“Martha is gone,” said my father’s cracking voice.
“What happened?”
“I went to Children’s Hospital on my lunch hour, and she was lying there and she looked so beautiful yet so weak and she said, ‘Dad, hold me. I feel I’m going to faint,’ I did and then her heart stopped. It just wore her out.”

My brother cried. “I’m so sorry dad. I’ll get a flight out.”
“You will always remember her as a happy little girl,” he said.

Angels welcomed Martha Ann, gave her shelter and guided her onward. She never saw fourteen of anything. She never went to high school or college, fell in love, made love, worked, lived, traveled abroad, or explored future worlds.

She experienced infinite joy inside the deep dark passages of her vibrant trembling spirit. Her life was all wrapped up in one tight package with an expiration date.

She danced in wild remote mountains, climbing higher, smelling wild Columbine flowers, fixing them in her hair, spreading meals in spring meadows below clouds. Cold winter became her domain, her life, her now. Her childlike wonder and spirit energies soared over time’s river in her labyrinth. She evolved on her path of light, love, life and perfection, a human on a spiritual path, a spiritual being.

On her brief sojourn in the river of time she demonstrated tolerance, charity, integrity, kindness, trust, tranquility, dignity, harmony, compassion, and truth. Martha Ann validated her authenticity and hurled her thunderbolt.

I, meanwhile, return to my curious childlike nature, where I make a play, a la’ab.

Martha Ann remains an angel of light. Her Jinn is fire emanating life and consciousness. Fire consumes fear and ignorance.

My memory of her is a meditation on the physical process of identifying with higher energies through form, sensation, perception, sense impressions, and consciousness.

Meditation in the cosmic dance dissolves the self.

A Century is Nothing