The Last Time That Life As I Know It Was Ending

Remembering Mom, Maui, and the Mayan Calendar

In the early Fall of 2012, a strange thing happened to me. I had a vision — my first and (so far) only experience with such a thing. I wasn’t in meditation, I wasn’t in a shamanic journey, I was just sitting on my deck enjoying the day and suddenly He was right there, in my mind’s eye — a clearly Hawaiian personage, standing on a black sand beach, beckoning to me. He didn’t speak, but somehow I knew what his message was. It completely freaked me out!

On December 21, 2012, the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, otherwise known as the Mayan calendar, was coming to the end of its 5,126-year-long cycle. There were various ideas about what that might mean, from an apocalyptic end of the world, to simply a good time for introspection and self-renewal. I didn’t really think that Armageddon was at hand, but it did turn out to signal some major changes in my life, taking me into a deeper relationship with myself.

And then, just as now, my mom was right there with me, front and center at a time when life as I’d always known it was changing forever. This time my life is changing because she is near the end of her time on this earth. Oh, and we’re in the middle of a worldwide pandemic. The Winter Solstice of 2012 was more of an internal reorganization, but I do think the synchronicity is interesting.

I don’t think the world is literally ending now either, but I’m definitely in for some major changes as my last surviving parent and the last member of my immediate family gets ready to transition. Other changes related to the crisis are probably in the works as well although it’s too early to tell what they might be on a lasting basis.

It’s not easy to explain how I knew what the figure in my vision was telling me, but I just did. We had lived in Hawaii when I was a child and the inherent magic of the place never left me, but still, this very vivid and clear beckoning was like nothing I had ever expected or experienced before and it was both beautiful and completely disconcerting!

I’d just completed my shamanic apprenticeship, and I was no stranger to non-ordinary reality, but this was a completely different kind of weird. After I stopped crying and calmed down, I did some research and further feeling into it and figured out where I was supposed to go. The black sand beaches that I knew of in Hawaii were on the big island, but I was actually being directed to Maui, to Hana — someplace I’d never been before.

When I told my husband, James, he took it pretty well, all things considered. He could see that I had experienced something — something that shook me up and was very real to me, even if it didn’t make perfect sense to him. There’d been some other interesting experiences along my shamanic path, so this wasn’t completely out of context, but still, it was of a whole new scope and scale.

“You’re going all the way to Hawaii (we lived on the East Coast at the time). Right before Christmas. By yourself?”

All I could say was that this was what I thought I was being asked to do and it felt like I should listen. James told me that if that was what I wanted, he would support me, and I started looking for an Airbnb to stay in because the only hotel in Hana is a 5-star luxury resort. I finally found a little one-room cabin up in the hills, on a property that was owned by a flower plantation. It was both lovely and reasonable. Now I just needed to find an affordable flight.

When I mentioned in passing to my mom that I was going to Maui on something that felt a bit like a spiritual pilgrimage, she surprised me by asking if she could come along. She’d loved living in Hawaii as well, and we hadn’t done a mother-daughter trip in a while. I didn’t feel like I could tell her no, even though I had envisioned this as a solo endeavor, but when I sat with it a while and asked for guidance, it actually felt really right to have her come along.

We met in the Dallas airport where our flights were connecting for the final leg to Maui. It was a long 8-hour flight from there and when we landed, there was a rainbow showing itself above the distant mountains. It felt like coming home in some way, even though neither of us had ever been there before. At the last minute, we decided to upgrade to a convertible and that night we had dinner in a wonderful seafood restaurant that seemed like it was in the middle of a sugar cane field.

We spent the night in a motel in Kahalui, near the airport, so that we’d be well-rested for the long drive to Hana in the morning. The drive is only 52 miles, but much of it takes place on a road so twisted and winding that the speed limit is often 20 miles an hour most of the way. You must cross 59 bridges, 46 of which are only one lane. It’s one of the most beautiful and famous drives in the world, but you definitely want to be alert for it.

The next day it rained off and on during the drive to Hana, but we had on hats and the windscreen was aerodynamically designed so that we could still drive with the top down and not really get wet. We never regretted that we’d gotten the convertible. It’s was the kind of trip that they are made for. Hana is a small town that is not so much a destination as it is a mid-point for a beautiful scenic drive. Most people arrive in Hana, only to grab a quick bite to eat before making the drive back north to the more developed part of the island, but we were there to stay, for 3 nights.

I’d heard that the tourist trap burger joint was bad, so we made our own breakfasts and dinners in our tiny kitchen, and ate lunch from food trucks and roadside cafes — things like fresh fish tacos and authentic Thai food. I love seafood, and I ate a lot of it while I was there. But other than our mid-day forays to find lunch and poke around the town and nearby beaches a little bit, the rest of the time was spent sitting on our covered lanai, just soaking up the ambiance and relaxing.

My mom is a watercolor painter and a pretty good one at that. She’d brought some supplies and one day we both painted this tree. Mine was terrible, but it didn’t matter. It was the doing that was enjoyable and not the end result. The rest of the time we read, meditated, listened to music, and just enjoyed not having to do anything on a particular time-table. I taught my mom how to journey and we slept 11 hours every night because we didn’t know how to work the TV. It was heaven!

On the morning of the 21st, I didn’t really know what to expect or what I should do. Would I be able to discern any difference? I meditated on the lanai and the solstice came and went without noticeable event. The next day, we packed up the convertible and headed north to the airport to catch our flight home. Nothing on the outside had changed much but inside me, everything had changed — not so much because of the Solstice itself, but because of the trip and the pace of life that we’d had. On the one hand, I wanted to see my husband and son and was looking forward to sharing Christmas with them. On the other hand, I didn’t want to go home or back to my hectic life at all. I cried all the way from the airport as I drove myself home.

My son, who was 14 at the time, had been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum at age 2. At about 15 months, he had suddenly regressed from a seemingly typically developing kid to one who was very different — one who had a lot of sensitivities and issues that he had never had before. I spent the next several years taking him to therapies and appointments and generally just trying to get a handle on things. Of course, this had eased some by the time he was 14, but what I learned on the trip to Maui was that I was seriously depleted, none-the-less.

I did not have an easy re-entry back into my regular life. I wanted nothing more than to sit quietly by myself for hours listening to the stream in our hillside retreat, and barring that, I just needed a place to get away and have some privacy and some time to myself. My mom had been the ideal travel companion, happy to entertain herself a lot of the time and easy to get along with. I felt the loss of that autonomy and ease when I came home. Suddenly I had a special needs child to care for, pets who needed my attention, a growing life coaching practice, dinner to get on the table for the family and a host of other responsibilities that I hadn’t had while I was away.

After a bumpy couple of weeks, I got the idea to have a little structure built along the side of the house, almost like a playhouse for an adult, a no-frills, mini-SheShed. There was really only enough room for me to sit inside, but it was enough, and I used it year-round when I needed some time away. I continued to look for other ways as well to give myself more of what I needed to have more balance in my life. I had never stopped loving my family, but eventually, I learned to love the life I had once again.

Fast forward to the present, and the world feels very surreal. We don’t know exactly what the weeks and months ahead are going to be like as far as food availability, continued shutdowns and restrictions, or other changes to regular life related to the pandemic. It’s also surreal because my mom is slowing down. It will probably be several months or maybe even many months or a year, but she is nearing the end of her life.

We’ve just decided that she is going to come move in with me. Ostensibly it’s just for a month, but we both know that isn’t really what’s going to happen. At this stage, it’s OK to temper reality with some minor delusions to help soften some of the harshness of the truth. She’s facing a lot of this head-on so it’s OK with me to fudge a little bit on the details.

When I asked James if she could come he said, “Yes, I think that’s a good idea.” He knows it’s going to change our lives dramatically, at least for the foreseeable future, but that in many ways, it will make things easier for me to not have her be 1,300 miles away in ever-declining health. As far as I can tell, he’s just about the best husband in the whole world!

Two years ago she came for a visit and stayed for 3 months, due to a health crisis that occurred while she was at my house. At that time, I was happy to help but also happy to have her go home again. By the time she left, I was exhausted. It’s going to be an adjustment, but at least this time around, I’m only working for myself and can make my own schedule, and James is semi-retired and at home as well. It’s still going to be a challenge and an opportunity for me to pay attention to my own needs in the middle of caring for hers, but I’m still grateful for that opportunity.

I don’t have a place to build a “small house” on my property, but the weather is getting nice enough to spend lots of time out on the porch. Our son still lives with us, but he spends the day out and about with an aid (or at her house for right now), and although it’s still high-intensity parenting at times, things are better than they’ve ever been. As an introvert, I need lots of alone time to recharge, and I know that I need to be more intentional about that then I’ve been recently, so now will be the perfect time to do so.

Life as I’ve known it is ending, and although that is both sad and also just a part of life, it is another good time for self-reflection, deeper meditation, and introspection. The world isn’t literally ending, just as it wasn’t in 2012, but the things that I have gone through and am likely to go through probably will affect the way that I live my life and who I am within that world, and so in some ways, life as I’ve known it is coming to an end. Both times, my mother has been an integral part of that and from those endings, new beginnings arise. This time will be no different.