A Matriarch in a Bathrobe In The Morning Light of Fall

A True Shero

While my husband went out to get us coffee, I took a walk, and came upon the cutest Irish old lady, who was out in her light blue bathrobe, getting the paper, which she nabbed with her walker. “I slept in!” she said to me as I greeted her warmly. “That’s good, right?” I said something about “As long as you’re listening to your body, it’s good.”

This amazing older woman is an everyday miracle. She is well into her eighties, has survived the loss of her husband and chemo within a few years, and is still bubbling with joy for life itself. This Irish lady is the mother of a woman who lives down the street - one of the friends I've mentioned with whom I can have an ugly cry if necessary. One of that friend’s children has autism and once gave me the best hug ever at Halloween the year before the pandemic. I gave out crystals, and he happened to choose one that was not in the basket but on display. I gave him my favoritest crystal - and at first when I told him it was my favorite, he told me he couldn’t take it if it was my favorite, but I told him I really, really, truly really felt good for him to have it and he received it with so much joy. His sister, with her fiery red hair, asked what was for her and I found inside a rose quarts tree. Years later she invited me up to see the art she was doing in her bedroom, and I saw that she still had it. Their father is one of those sensitive men who quietly goes about being a good man, supports the family working from home, bikes his kids places and goes for walks with his wife. The matriarch of this family, this old Irish lady, is the queen of gratitude. On this azure sky day, opened up her arms wide, expressing such ebullient child-like wonder at the fall day, and announced as though the day itself where worthy of the Christ-light, which it is, “Isn’t it beautiful? All we can do is just ENJOY IT!”

The picture above is the floral version of my friend the Irish Old Lady, and this fall day is absolutely full of light and color, trees glowing in their wisdom, without a care other than to be fully themselves into it is their time for return to the earth. Some are still green, some have crumpled to brown, others are reds, auburns and yellows. Light is shining on us and glimmering gloriously off trees and their lustrous leaves. I told my older friend about the squirrel, Stubs (also known as Stubby and Scruffy,) who has been hanging around the block, thoroughly making the most of life, in spite of having lost its tail. As my older friend, this brilliant Irish Matriarch got her paper, I told her she might have to re-write it to put in all the good news, because they’re not going to write it. “I know,” she said. “I like the sports.”

This living embodiment of gratitude isn’t shy about enjoying the little things. She enjoys a good drink with her daughter on Saint Patty’s day and requests her daughter to bring her donuts from church. Her daughter shared me with me once that her mother has no fear of death, it’s just something she accepts as an inevitable eventual, but nothing to get in the way of life.

As

Lori Ann Bloomfield

points on her latest on channeling, life is really just a continuum, in or out of the body.

What does it mean to live with full bodied gratitude, yet without clinging to physicality as the be-all-end all?