Essays, Chapbooks, Contests...Etcetera
FAY L. LOOMIS:
Writer, Poet & Lecturer
Writer, Poet & Lecturer
Amour Toujours
By Fay Loomis
On Wednesday, March 27, 2013, I went to see a matinee of the French film Amour at the Rosendale Theater, 24 minutes from my house in upstate New York.
I disappeared into Georges and Anne’s story of ageless love and timeless death, drowning in the grief of my husband Evarts' passing ten years before. I remembered the depletion from weeks of caretaking, the ocean of love that carried us through unknown waters.
His breaths became more strained that last night, and I placed drops of water in Evarts’ mouth and oiled his cracked lips. As daylight crept up behind the San Jacinto Mountains, I took a walk to refresh myself in the cool desert air.
When I opened the door and looked across the room, I knew he had gone. I stood by the hospital bed, and he gave out one last breath, one last goodbye. Just then the sun burst over his beloved Tahquitz Peak. A shaft of silver light fell on his forehead, creating a glow on his face, before passing down his body and out his feet.
Slipping into a spontaneous ritual, I lit a white candle and played Mozart’s Requiem, while bathing his body. My hands found the texts which would help perform simple last rites from Christian, Buddhist, and Tibetan traditions.
The film scene where Georges laid out Anne, flowers strewn about her beautifully dressed body, completed the time warp back to Evarts’ passing.
I had no recollection of leaving the theater, until I was jerked from this reverie by the sight of a car at a stoplight. I knew I was going to barrel into it and kill someone. I slammed on the brakes, veered to the right, and heard a loud noise, as the car hit something and stopped, inches from a concrete lamp post.
I sat for a moment, caught between the two worlds, before getting out of my car and discovering that the right tire had exploded upon hitting the curb. The rim of the tire made a loud clunking sound, as I pulled into a parking lot, another reminder that I had come back into the present moment.
I could have joined Evarts in that space without time. Perhaps that was my unconscious wish. I am glad I decided to stay, because I have gone beyond where I thought I could go, just as Evarts encouraged me to do when he was alive.
I had met Evarts when I went to Meadowlark, his holistic medical retreat center in California, after returning from two months in Indonesia, inexplicably ill. After a consultation, he invited me to see his homeopathic pharmacy. We walked down the path, arms around each other’s waists, as if we had forever known one another.
A year later we walked down a rocky mountain path into a cathedral of trees where we were married. We lectured, wrote, and counselled on holistic medicine for the last twelve years of his life—something I never imagined I could or would do.
Evarts was my rock. After he died, I was adrift. The near-collision invited me to once more be inspired by the way he leaned courageously into life and graciously embraced death when the invitation arrived. I was able to open up to words from former Secretary-General of the United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld, a philosophy that Evarts often shared. “For all that has been, thanks. For all that is to come, yes!”
On Wednesday, March 27, 2013, I went to see a matinee of the French film Amour at the Rosendale Theater, 24 minutes from my house in upstate New York.
I disappeared into Georges and Anne’s story of ageless love and timeless death, drowning in the grief of my husband Evarts' passing ten years before. I remembered the depletion from weeks of caretaking, the ocean of love that carried us through unknown waters.
His breaths became more strained that last night, and I placed drops of water in Evarts’ mouth and oiled his cracked lips. As daylight crept up behind the San Jacinto Mountains, I took a walk to refresh myself in the cool desert air.
When I opened the door and looked across the room, I knew he had gone. I stood by the hospital bed, and he gave out one last breath, one last goodbye. Just then the sun burst over his beloved Tahquitz Peak. A shaft of silver light fell on his forehead, creating a glow on his face, before passing down his body and out his feet.
Slipping into a spontaneous ritual, I lit a white candle and played Mozart’s Requiem, while bathing his body. My hands found the texts which would help perform simple last rites from Christian, Buddhist, and Tibetan traditions.
The film scene where Georges laid out Anne, flowers strewn about her beautifully dressed body, completed the time warp back to Evarts’ passing.
I had no recollection of leaving the theater, until I was jerked from this reverie by the sight of a car at a stoplight. I knew I was going to barrel into it and kill someone. I slammed on the brakes, veered to the right, and heard a loud noise, as the car hit something and stopped, inches from a concrete lamp post.
I sat for a moment, caught between the two worlds, before getting out of my car and discovering that the right tire had exploded upon hitting the curb. The rim of the tire made a loud clunking sound, as I pulled into a parking lot, another reminder that I had come back into the present moment.
I could have joined Evarts in that space without time. Perhaps that was my unconscious wish. I am glad I decided to stay, because I have gone beyond where I thought I could go, just as Evarts encouraged me to do when he was alive.
I had met Evarts when I went to Meadowlark, his holistic medical retreat center in California, after returning from two months in Indonesia, inexplicably ill. After a consultation, he invited me to see his homeopathic pharmacy. We walked down the path, arms around each other’s waists, as if we had forever known one another.
A year later we walked down a rocky mountain path into a cathedral of trees where we were married. We lectured, wrote, and counselled on holistic medicine for the last twelve years of his life—something I never imagined I could or would do.
Evarts was my rock. After he died, I was adrift. The near-collision invited me to once more be inspired by the way he leaned courageously into life and graciously embraced death when the invitation arrived. I was able to open up to words from former Secretary-General of the United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld, a philosophy that Evarts often shared. “For all that has been, thanks. For all that is to come, yes!”
Fay L. Loomis lives in the woods in Kerhonkson, New York. She moved from California to the area after the death of her husband Evarts G. Loomis, M.D., the Father of Holistic Medicine.
Evarts and Fay lectured, wrote, and counseled together, travelling in the US, UK, Europe, and India. While in India, they were asked to serve on the advisory boards for the Indian Holistic Medical Society and the Indian Board of Alternative Medicine.
Evarts and Fay lectured, wrote, and counseled together, travelling in the US, UK, Europe, and India. While in India, they were asked to serve on the advisory boards for the Indian Holistic Medical Society and the Indian Board of Alternative Medicine.
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Fay and two women initiated the Holistic Health Community which has been offering free health days, lectures and other events in the Mid-Hudson Region for the past nine years. A year later, she started the Mid-Hudson Fuel Buying Co-op which has surpassed 1500 members. Both endeavors were inspired by the Transition Movement.
Slowed down by a stroke and the pandemic, Fay spent the winter glued to her computer. Payoff: acceptance of nearly a dozen pieces of poetry and prose in the first three months of 2021. Last summer, she once more walked on a private gravel road, with the aid of strategically placed chairs. Prior to the stroke she trekked daily (six-tenths of a mile round trip) to pick up her mail. She made it once to the mailbox and hopes to repeat that feat this year. A member of the Stone Ridge Library Writers and Rat’s Ass Review Workshop, Fay’s pieces appear or are forthcoming in Peacock Journal, Postcard Poems and Prose, Watershed Review, River Poets Journal, Breath and Shadow, The Closed Eye Open, Love Me, Love My Belly, Rat’s Ass Review, Ruminate Magazine, HerStry, Burrow, Amethyst Review, Covid and Poetry Project, Al-Khemica Poetica, Bluepepper, and Sledgehammer Lit. |
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