COMMUNION

by Alan Lowen

I received an email, quite long and written in German, so I set it aside to read when I had time. My German is limited, and reading is a slow process. I only found it again a week later when I was in Berlin, the day before beginning a new weekend workshop there. The email was from Justus, husband of Margareta - sweet couple about my age who had attended a few of my workshops over the years. He was meticulous about the date of our last meeting. It was at The Art of Being’s Field of Love festival in England. “On June 15th, 2004,” he wrote, “you unforgettably celebrated our silver wedding anniversary.” Four days later they were home again, celebrating the event in their village with eighty guests and family members: “It was simply fabulous.”

He went on to tell me how everything had changed on June 21st the following year, when Margareta had a heart-attack and was diagnosed with cancer. Now she was in her final weeks of life. He was emailing me to tell me how much it would mean to her to see me once more, that she could not come to me, and could I take two or three hours to come with him to visit her at their home outside Berlin? It seemed, as I read the email, that I had read it too late to grant his wish, but even before he answered my phone call that evening, I knew I had to go. “Can you pick me up at 11.30am and have me back around 2.30 in the afternoon so I can get ready for the workshop?” There was no question.

Margareta knew nothing about it. Justus went ahead of me, peering round her bedroom door: “There’s someone here to see you.” When I stepped into her bedroom, her expression was a sweet mix of amazement and joy. “Alan, Alan, Alan!” she cried, happy like a child. She seemed vibrantly alive, no matter the medical apparatus attached to her body. She told me that she had been thinking of me just the previous day, sad that she would never see me again. And here I was!

I felt as happy as she was. There was something in her tender acceptance of her fate that was not only exquisite, but bathed us all – me, Justus, the nurse and another close friend – in a lightness that could have been heralding birth rather than death. I stayed half an hour, sitting on the bed stroking Margareta’s hand, hugging, chatting with her about the good times and awed by the gracious and humorous presence with which she referred to her imminent exodus. There came a moment when I could sense that she was tiring, and we shared a goodbye that was happy-sad beyond words. Her bliss was with us I all the way back to Berlin. When he dropped me off, I gave Justus a CD of a meditation I had created called Prayer to the Beloved that I knew Margareta would enjoy hearing. In a mysterious way she was with me, a kind of graceful and inspiring presence, throughout my new workshop, which happened to be about surrender and was called Happy Anyway! Margareta was its perfect manifestation.

Three days later, on Monday afternoon, I received an email from Justus. “Margareta has gone home. Without much suffering, she left her body thirty minutes ago. The Prayer to the Beloved guided her.”

Thank you, Margareta, from all of us! Shine on! In your way of leaving, I number you among the great teachers of my life.

Alan Lowen