One of my best friends died in May of 2004. She died of a very rare form of blood cancer. I put her in the category of one of the wildest women I ever met.
My girlfriends have never been one type but one thing they all have in common is courage, strength, and grit. Some of them are very spiritual, some are seekers of who they are and are brave enough to look at themselves, some aren't, some are extremely liberal, some very conservative, but no matter what they believe, they know how to think and most importantly, laugh. Oh lord, could we laugh. You know, that snorting, pee your pants, can't breathe think you are gonna die kind of laughing. They have challenged me, pissed me off, pushed and pulled me where I didn't want to go, taught me, loved me, and have been very honest with me. It hasn't always been a dainty tea party but what a ride I've been on with them.
Susanne and I called each other pet names like Rozanny Bananny and Suzanny Bananny and Zany for short. Susanne loved to call me Baba Yaga.
Baba Yaga is a fearsome witch with iron teeth who eats kids and leaves their bones surrounding her hut. According to Russian folklore, she was also known as Baba Yaga boney legs. She lives in a hut deep in the forest and has no power over the pure of heart. It is said that a lot of screaming, wailing spirits follow her. She also plays the role of helper and wise woman. The Earth mother, wild and untamed. She is all knowing and all seeing to those who dare to ask and could be very kind. She is the Guardian spirit of the fountain of the waters of life and death. She is a nature spirit bringing wisdom and death of ego and through death.....rebirth. Baba Yaga is the Arch-crone and Goddess of Wisdom and Death.
Susanne was very involved in the metaphysical world and I met her at work in the 1990's. She deliberately interviewed me before deciding to take me on as a friend. She said she needed to find out if I could out smart her.
Susanne was like an art form conversation wise, circling around, meandering, hinting, a dash of bald face truth, retreating into secrecy, back at ya with humor; you had to pay attention. So Susanne decided one day as I was sitting on her couch after she finished one of her colorful descriptions of a particular struggle she was having, said, "you, you are good, you are the one for me". There I was all picked out, her Baba Yaga. I was her witch with iron teeth who flew in the night, the spirits screaming in the deep woods. From my twirling hut with windows that served as eyes, I watched Susanne but I didn't eat her; she was pure of heart. She told me all of her secrets, what tortured her heart, everything she did right and wrong. We witnessed each others sins if you will and we confessed more and more as time went on. We weren't the best of mothers but we weren't the worst either; we tried hard to make up time with our kids but of course they would have no part of it, children don't forget or forgive easily. We helped each other make it all liveable somehow. We didn't eat our young, but we nibbled.
Susanne was a horse lover. She cleaned horses stalls, pitched hay, brushed down the horses and worked in those boarding barns taking care of "rich" people's horses so she could afford the keep on her own horse. Susanne said she liked the smell of horse shit. She didn't know it then but when her feet started going numb, she didn't feel in control of her horse and she lamented when she became afraid. It was the start of her end. She cried and cried that the scent of fear was breaking up her love affair with her horse.
We used to go line dancing at a huge bar full of cowboys and cowgirls. I bought some pointy toed boots and borrowed some of her country western clothes. Susanne was gorgeous, blond, tall, slender, light blue eyes. I would watch how the men stared at her when we went dancing. I asked if she ever noticed but she didn't. She was hell bent on line dancing.
One time I went shopping with her and she was crazy, impulsive, and focused and didn't let anything get in her way and if it did she would mow it down. We were in one of those very small, quiet, upscale type boutique stores, the kind with one lady in it watching your every move but smiling. Susanne saw a blouse she just LOVED so she simply took off the blouse she was wearing and while standing there in her bra calmly put the new one on. I was shocked. The woman working there looked concerned and so I told her my friend had just gotten out of one of those mental places and that she was just fine but having some transition issues. I could hear that Susanne giggling and snorting at how I was trying to save her from being arrested for indecent exposure. I have to hand it to that woman because she was so graceful when Susanne paid for the blouse and I had the giggles so bad, I looked the absolute fool. Of course, Susanne had to look at me quizzically and somehow the whole situation reversed itself and I was the one who looked like she came out of a looney bin.
When I went to see her several months before she died, she was living in her little apartment up in the trees. There was quite a flight of stairs but it reminded you of a tree house and she lived by herself in her wonderfully decorated apartment. She had a real flair for decorating in that shabby chic style. White cottons, light sage greens, the 5 foot mermaid made of some kind of white stone that laid on her side, her tall bed with comforters and eyelet pillow cases, her beautiful silver bracelets and torquoise jewlery laying around. We had a wonderful visit and went to dinner and a play about wild women who were friends and we laughed and laughed and she got exhausted and she told me "I'm afraid to go to sleep, I'm afraid I won't wake up". I massaged her feet with oil until she dosed off.
I talked to her on the phone about 2-3 weeks before she died. She was all pissy because her sister had given away a pork roast that was in her freezer while she was in the hospital. She fractured her pelvis when she fell asleep sitting on the edge of her bed and fell off . We talked for about an hour, something she had not done with me for a long time. Most of the time, depending on her pain, our conversations were very short but this time was meant for us and so she cried about her roast and she told stories about her friends and she grieved about her daughter who committed suicide several months before and so I told her stories and I made her laugh and she told me she loved me and that I was still her Baba Yaga. I was her Arch-Crone, her Goddess of Wisdom and she my wild and untamable friend.
Her sister contacted me a short time later to tell me that Susanny was in the hospital and only had two to three days left to live because her pain was out of control no matter what the Doctor gave her to relieve it. She consciously had to make a decision to be put into a coma so she would not feel the pain while she died. I wrote Susanne a letter from my husband and I saying good-bye which included a Native American poem about transitioning and asked her sister to read it to her for me. (I was caring for my parents and couldn't be there). I try to put myself in her place at being forced to make that kind of decision in that existential but necessary moment.
Her ashes are scattered in the mountains surrounding Sacramento, California. Susanny comes to Baba Yaga during the times I walk on a nature trail. She tells me to look up in the tree tops, she's there, to look up into the clouds, to look up, look up. She's comfortable now and says she can't describe exactly where she's at, that she no longer has a form but becomes form when I think of her. When she first died, I kept seeing her in misery and fear and I asked my friends that have crossed over to help her and they did. This transitioning isn't always a bed of roses and angels and pearly gates and magical mist seems more of a hollywood version. It looks like alot of work dad and that ole flirt is liking her just fine!
My girlfriends have never been one type but one thing they all have in common is courage, strength, and grit. Some of them are very spiritual, some are seekers of who they are and are brave enough to look at themselves, some aren't, some are extremely liberal, some very conservative, but no matter what they believe, they know how to think and most importantly, laugh. Oh lord, could we laugh. You know, that snorting, pee your pants, can't breathe think you are gonna die kind of laughing. They have challenged me, pissed me off, pushed and pulled me where I didn't want to go, taught me, loved me, and have been very honest with me. It hasn't always been a dainty tea party but what a ride I've been on with them.
Susanne and I called each other pet names like Rozanny Bananny and Suzanny Bananny and Zany for short. Susanne loved to call me Baba Yaga.
Baba Yaga is a fearsome witch with iron teeth who eats kids and leaves their bones surrounding her hut. According to Russian folklore, she was also known as Baba Yaga boney legs. She lives in a hut deep in the forest and has no power over the pure of heart. It is said that a lot of screaming, wailing spirits follow her. She also plays the role of helper and wise woman. The Earth mother, wild and untamed. She is all knowing and all seeing to those who dare to ask and could be very kind. She is the Guardian spirit of the fountain of the waters of life and death. She is a nature spirit bringing wisdom and death of ego and through death.....rebirth. Baba Yaga is the Arch-crone and Goddess of Wisdom and Death.
Susanne was very involved in the metaphysical world and I met her at work in the 1990's. She deliberately interviewed me before deciding to take me on as a friend. She said she needed to find out if I could out smart her.
Susanne was like an art form conversation wise, circling around, meandering, hinting, a dash of bald face truth, retreating into secrecy, back at ya with humor; you had to pay attention. So Susanne decided one day as I was sitting on her couch after she finished one of her colorful descriptions of a particular struggle she was having, said, "you, you are good, you are the one for me". There I was all picked out, her Baba Yaga. I was her witch with iron teeth who flew in the night, the spirits screaming in the deep woods. From my twirling hut with windows that served as eyes, I watched Susanne but I didn't eat her; she was pure of heart. She told me all of her secrets, what tortured her heart, everything she did right and wrong. We witnessed each others sins if you will and we confessed more and more as time went on. We weren't the best of mothers but we weren't the worst either; we tried hard to make up time with our kids but of course they would have no part of it, children don't forget or forgive easily. We helped each other make it all liveable somehow. We didn't eat our young, but we nibbled.
Susanne was a horse lover. She cleaned horses stalls, pitched hay, brushed down the horses and worked in those boarding barns taking care of "rich" people's horses so she could afford the keep on her own horse. Susanne said she liked the smell of horse shit. She didn't know it then but when her feet started going numb, she didn't feel in control of her horse and she lamented when she became afraid. It was the start of her end. She cried and cried that the scent of fear was breaking up her love affair with her horse.
We used to go line dancing at a huge bar full of cowboys and cowgirls. I bought some pointy toed boots and borrowed some of her country western clothes. Susanne was gorgeous, blond, tall, slender, light blue eyes. I would watch how the men stared at her when we went dancing. I asked if she ever noticed but she didn't. She was hell bent on line dancing.
One time I went shopping with her and she was crazy, impulsive, and focused and didn't let anything get in her way and if it did she would mow it down. We were in one of those very small, quiet, upscale type boutique stores, the kind with one lady in it watching your every move but smiling. Susanne saw a blouse she just LOVED so she simply took off the blouse she was wearing and while standing there in her bra calmly put the new one on. I was shocked. The woman working there looked concerned and so I told her my friend had just gotten out of one of those mental places and that she was just fine but having some transition issues. I could hear that Susanne giggling and snorting at how I was trying to save her from being arrested for indecent exposure. I have to hand it to that woman because she was so graceful when Susanne paid for the blouse and I had the giggles so bad, I looked the absolute fool. Of course, Susanne had to look at me quizzically and somehow the whole situation reversed itself and I was the one who looked like she came out of a looney bin.
When I went to see her several months before she died, she was living in her little apartment up in the trees. There was quite a flight of stairs but it reminded you of a tree house and she lived by herself in her wonderfully decorated apartment. She had a real flair for decorating in that shabby chic style. White cottons, light sage greens, the 5 foot mermaid made of some kind of white stone that laid on her side, her tall bed with comforters and eyelet pillow cases, her beautiful silver bracelets and torquoise jewlery laying around. We had a wonderful visit and went to dinner and a play about wild women who were friends and we laughed and laughed and she got exhausted and she told me "I'm afraid to go to sleep, I'm afraid I won't wake up". I massaged her feet with oil until she dosed off.
I talked to her on the phone about 2-3 weeks before she died. She was all pissy because her sister had given away a pork roast that was in her freezer while she was in the hospital. She fractured her pelvis when she fell asleep sitting on the edge of her bed and fell off . We talked for about an hour, something she had not done with me for a long time. Most of the time, depending on her pain, our conversations were very short but this time was meant for us and so she cried about her roast and she told stories about her friends and she grieved about her daughter who committed suicide several months before and so I told her stories and I made her laugh and she told me she loved me and that I was still her Baba Yaga. I was her Arch-Crone, her Goddess of Wisdom and she my wild and untamable friend.
Her sister contacted me a short time later to tell me that Susanny was in the hospital and only had two to three days left to live because her pain was out of control no matter what the Doctor gave her to relieve it. She consciously had to make a decision to be put into a coma so she would not feel the pain while she died. I wrote Susanne a letter from my husband and I saying good-bye which included a Native American poem about transitioning and asked her sister to read it to her for me. (I was caring for my parents and couldn't be there). I try to put myself in her place at being forced to make that kind of decision in that existential but necessary moment.
Her ashes are scattered in the mountains surrounding Sacramento, California. Susanny comes to Baba Yaga during the times I walk on a nature trail. She tells me to look up in the tree tops, she's there, to look up into the clouds, to look up, look up. She's comfortable now and says she can't describe exactly where she's at, that she no longer has a form but becomes form when I think of her. When she first died, I kept seeing her in misery and fear and I asked my friends that have crossed over to help her and they did. This transitioning isn't always a bed of roses and angels and pearly gates and magical mist seems more of a hollywood version. It looks like alot of work dad and that ole flirt is liking her just fine!
Suzanny
What if you had
not disappeared
into the sterile
sheets
What if you had
flipped out of
your shell shock
and donned
a curly health crown
What if you
had stolen the show
with those glinty
eyes and that
huge slit of a smile
What if God
could twitter
would she
tell me?
2010 Rozanna Landavazo
flipped out of
your shell shock
and donned
a curly health crown
What if you
had stolen the show
with those glinty
eyes and that
huge slit of a smile
What if God
could twitter
would she
tell me?
2010 Rozanna Landavazo
I feel like I knew her. I love your honesty. You should write a book.
ReplyDeletelove the story, comes across as very honest, covered a lot of territory yet it still flowed, kept my interest. Adding the photo of you two adds much.
ReplyDeleteHermosa amistad que vivirá por siempre en tu memoria y en la de quienes la hemos leído.
ReplyDeleteUn abrazo.
Thank you Maria and thank you for keeping my friend in your thoughts. A hug to you too.
ReplyDeleteFrom Maria:Beautiful friendship that will live forever in your memory and in that of whom we have read it.
A hug.