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Riding to the country and back yesterday with one of New Orleans’ prominent musicians reminded me of how rich and wonderful is our life here in New Orleans. Deacon John was regaling us with musical history (The College Inn in Thibodeaux) as well as musician jokes (what is the difference between a drummer and an extra large pizza? The pizza can feed a family of four) and also musical awe (“I played with Bo Diddley!”).

A dear friend had come in for my mom’s memorial and on Friday I picked her up at the airport and we headed straight for the Quarter where we treated ourselves to foot massages at the new reflexology place on Decatur Street, then we walked into the Marigny to Three Muses and had delicious tapas and listened to the Pfister Sisters. We wanted to get home before T put T2 to bed but we stopped into the Spotted Cat to hear Washboard Chaz and while I was perched there watching Chaz strum up and down the washboard I thought, “yes, indeed, this is the good life.”

After my mom’s ceremony on Saturday, where Deacon John sang graveside, Any Day Now, Someone to Watch Over Me, and finally Many Rivers to Cross, everyone packed up and was heading to lunch, but I was putting Tin in his car seat and John came over and sang Nature Boy to us three.

Later, another friend who had missed my mom’s funeral because she was out of town told my out of town friend that I am Patsy’s daughter and I have to say it was my mom’s dream to move from the country to live in New Orleans and, oh what a difference to me.

It has been almost a year since my mother died (11-30-09) and we held a small memorial for her to dedicate her headstone yesterday. Since I started thinking about these things when mom went into the hospital, it’s been an unconventional tying together of different faiths, cultures and traditions and along the way making tradition as we went along. But that is fitting for a woman who embodied an unconventional life. My mom wanted to be buried in her family cemetery but in the Jewish faith and so yesterday, at the almost one year mark when Jews traditionally hold an unveiling of the headstone, we drove across the lake to honor my mother. My friend and artist Kim Frohsin sketched the angel and dog that guard my mother’s grave. Near the headstone is place the angel my grandpa’s wife left on her unmarked grave a month after she was buried.

We asked Deacon John to come sing a few songs in memory of my mom. He sang a heart rending rendition of Any Day Now to start our ceremony on an afternoon where the leaves were turning amber, crimson and ochre. A day that reminded me of my mom and my travels to see my grandmother over the many years, over the many Thanksgivings, over the many autumns when the camellia tree in front of Mama’s house would be burgeoning with pink flowers and the air would be crisp just like it was yesterday.

Across the Causeway, Deacon John had been reminiscing about his own mother who passed at 74 years of age and though she died in 1984, you’d have thought by the way he spoke that it was just yesterday. I was thinking of the times I have cross that bridge, to see my family, for my grandmother’s funeral, when I learned my father had died, to bury my mother, and now not quite a year later, to mark the first year anniversary of her death. The bridge of sighs.

As I said yesterday, I don’t know how many women at 50 years of age lose their mother and become a mother all in the same week, but for me the journey has been profound.

To my mother, who was as beautiful, ephemeral and memorable as a lovely song.

We were driving across the lake yesterday when T got a text that there is a boil your water advisory in the city. Apparently on Friday night a power outage caused a drop in water pressure at the water purification plant and so as a precaution the city issued this warning. Although it is supposed to have been restored rather quickly the delay is they need to test the water extensively before we can safely assume it is okay to drink or brush our teeth with.

Fresh water into your house is something we just come to expect. We went and bought two cases of bottled water. We haven’t had bottled water in this house in a while as we moved completely over to a Brita system and never looked back. And since Hurricane Season is not officially over until the end of November, it’s probably smart to keep some water around since we drank our emergency supply when the water was shut off several times over the last month as they have been digging up Orleans Avenue for months now and keep hitting those old terracotta pipes underground.

I was driving across the lake yesterday with Deacon John and he said happiness is composed of three things: 1) having something to do, 2) having someone to love, and 3) having something to look forward to.

I was speaking to a friend today who is in the throes of trying to decided whether to go back to her ex of ten years. I said well you need to evaluate what the deal breakers were in that relationship and put those on the table (I said E had told me this a long while ago and it was the right thing to do even though my deal breakers were deal breakers). She said one is that he doesn’t respect her belief system and calls her stupid and I muttered under my breath, “Oh, very familiar with that one.” The fact is she believes in ghosts. When she described her last encounter with a ghost it gave me pause because when I was in Orlando, I woke in the early morning aware that a woman had me in her clutches – I was in that twilight between sleep and wakefullness and the sky was just starting to lighten, and I could tell this spirit, woman, creature was spooning me from behind and had me tight in her grip and I was paralyzed with fear, and couldn’t shout, couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything.

Later, as I was showering and getting ready for the conference, I wondered if that might have been my mother. Just like when she was in the hospital and I climbed up in her bed with her and held her close, perhaps she had been granted a moment to come down and climb in bed with me and hold me. And because I’m human I was terrified because I don’t understand these things. And perhaps all she wanted was to feel me close much like I wanted to feel her close when she was failing.

It’s possible is all I offer up and if anyone wants to call me stupid or dismiss this as absurd, that’s their problem. I’m not here to defile your beliefs, but I do mind when you defile mine.

I told her to rethink the reasons she wants to get back together. Maybe that last ghost who came to haunt her had a message for her.

The Fringe festival arrived in New Orleans and it is mind blowing to view the schedule of events happening around town, not to mention, excuse me, but yes there is a Gumbo Festival going on in Treme I heard on WWOZ – good grief, do we not lack for things to do around here? Jon Cleary is also playing solo piano at DBA and that is a show that shouldn’t be missed but today, after having yet another check up on my overall health, I’m not feeling too well.

There are bugs flying all over the place and it could be that in checking my innards, I exposed myself to one of them, and now I’m feeling a little peaked and a lot shut down and so I’ve been remiss in blogging along with many other things on my to do list today. But I can tell you this, out here on the fringe, in New Orleans, even staying home can be an event….

I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy. -Rabindranath Tagore, philosopher, author, songwriter, painter, educator, composer, Nobel laureate (1861-1941).

My cyber friend underwent a cancer scare and stayed away from her writing for a time, but she came back to it, bit by bit. I always think that you have to keep writing every day and through it all will come the nuggets, with the daily practice of your craft. As the saying goes the fool who persist in her folly, grows wise. Or as Flannery O’Connor said, you need to develop the habit of art. Today my friend’s blog entry had one such nugget as she wrote about a dream she had recently had about Brad and Angelina, and here was her nugget:

If sleep is the golden thread that ties health and body together, then dreams must certainly be the movies our souls provide for enjoyment.

I love that line and am grateful that she continues her writing. It puts me in mind of the book I just read called Cognitive Surplus, that people will do work for payment other than monetary compensation, in this case for gold.

I showed up at meditation today after a long day that started at the hospital and Aaron wasn’t there to lead the class instead we had a sub and at first, I was saying “harumph” under my breath but it turned out to be this fabulous journey into compassion. For 20 minutes we picked someone who we wanted to heal and remove their troubles, and I picked my sister who must hurt so much physically and mentally that she hurts others. So we took a journey where we sat in front of the person and we looked at them but they couldn’t see us and we saw them in their pain and we reached inside and through breathing brought out the black hardened thing inside of them that is causing the pain and we brought it into ourselves and shattered it with the light within.

Wow – what a meditation! It was fabulous. When I got home a friend had sent me a link to the Happiness Project and I zero’d in on this entry.

I went in today for my CT scan to have one more test run on my ticker. I swear sometimes the cure is worse than the disease as lying on the plank with my hands above my head, an IV in one arm and a blood pressure cuff on the other arm, as a mechanical voice told me to breath and quit breathing, and then a flush of iodine injected into me which made my whole body have a warm blood rush and then “open your mouth” and a nitroglycerine tablet inserted under my tongue – “this might cause a headache” – “breathe slowly” – good lord, by the time the whole event was over I must have chanted om ganapatye ganapatye om nom ganapatye at least a million times.

This all started with the approach of my mother’s one year anniversary of her death and the many myriad associations it brings. My father’s funeral was as someone recently referred to it, “a typical Namer family funeral” where my family went to war with Beth Israel over the size of the headstone that would appear on my father’s grave for the one year anniversary and during the service the torah leapt out on its own inert ability and rolled down to the bima and down into the middle of the shule. My mother’s funeral described by a friend to another was, “Rachel playing Love is My Religion on her iPod while making the crazy sign about her sister who was telling everyone Rachel had murdered her mother and after her older brother had been yelling at her to obey him.” Typical Namer Family Funeral – TNFF.

Naturally during the time my mother was in the hospital neither of them provided any solace to me so it is not without mystery that in looking forward to honoring the memory of my mother on this upcoming one year anniversary, it hasn’t been without trepidation there will be another eruption of discordance and chaos, no peace and no harmony for my observance of this time period. So I’m just trying to ommmm my way into it but it hasn’t been without some delayed anxiety that accrued from my mom being so ill for so long and her passing and now one year hence some long thinking and taking stock of my relationship to this very important woman in my life. A year that has been made more profound as Tin’s arrival in my life coincided with this year of grief.

Joy and grief – they seem to go so hand in hand in my life.

Meanwhile, because of global uncertainty that has plagued the financial markets and the industry I cover, media, the anxiety of being a new mother and a now orphan has also manifested into an irrational fear of the continued ability to take care of my brood, not just me, but to pay my mortgage and keep a roof over my family’s head as I’ve watched others losing their jobs left and right, some jobs they’ve held for more than two decades. So irrational maybe, or maybe not. Fear is fear and always carries some tinge of validity. And I am new to my role as the elder now.

Couple these myriad events with the advent of many home projects and a computer break down that were unexpected (read: not factored into the budget) and you find yourself going WTF! and spending many a sleepless night wistfully remembering that first apartment, the moment in your life where you felt unfettered and free and not carrying the weight of your world on your shoulders. And I recall my father’s words repeated often enough while I was young, “I’m going to get in the car and drive to Mexico!” – this being his default line for how to cope with challenges.

So in comes the heart because as you can see by this little diatribe – it wasn’t enough to have all that but then my heart started speeding up for no reason and taking my breath away and then my brother said, “Heart Attack, Heart Attack, Heart Attack” and so it was with reluctance that I added cardiologist visits and lab work and CT Scans to my ongoing list of things to cope with during this time period.

But today I went for a CT Scan and despite all of the reassurances that everything would be okay by the nurse, I lay there with my arms back up over my head and said, “I am ready to die, but I can’t right now because I have a son, so no funny stuff” – I told this to whoever was listening to my thoughts and then I proceeded to chant my meditation on Ganasha, the remover of obstacles. And after I finished, I went and got some breakfast because it was now 10:30 and I had not eaten since 6:30 PM the night before and I was ravenous.

I sat at Huevos on Bank Street, possibly one of the best places to get breakfast in New Orleans, and I had a breakfast burrito and a cup of full caf English Breakfast (daring that I am) and read the Times Picayune. At one point, I looked up and on the wall was a photograph of Zapata and below it, a quote from this revolutionary, which said:

Prefiero morir de pie, que vivir de rodillas

And I have to say I adopted that as Wednesday’s motto for how to push on through your minor and major obstacles and persevere.

(translation: I’d prefer to die on my feet than live on my knees)