I have not yet arrived.  In England that is. Metaphorically too!  Right now I am in Cape Town after the Truck trip through Zambia, Botswana and Nambia.  And it was just the most incredible journey which I hope to write about soon. However journeys take many forms and sometimes one gets a ride on the unexpected train of life.  Right now, my mom in law is dying and so this is all that matters right now.

I love my momli, as I call her. She has always been just the best mom in law to me.  She has taught me a great deal about patience even though I am still crap at it. She has been there for me at all times during the phases of my life. She makes people laugh and has a kind word for everyone always. Even now - ravaged by cancer she has time and kindness for others. Once, after a day of gut wrenching pain and discomfort she told me that she thought of others in her position. ‘ How do they cope all alone? I am so sad this happens in our world…’ Her inherent goodness of being is unaffected by dying. In fact her being has become amplified and Divine in the true sense of the word, even as her body is reduced to skeletal bones and a pain that is currently kept in check by large doses of morphine.

I am so sad that she is going soon, but this is just my sadness playing out it’s tune.  Momli, on the other hande is in a full blown fragrant acceptance about her imminent death. ‘When I pop my socks….’   she says and then proceeds to inform us about what is important in one’s life.  Not to fight over trivial matters , to hold to the truth at all times, to stay together as a family.  It is all the more touching because she does this with such love and despite hardly even being able to drink water to slake her thirst and to be able to speak as her mouth is so dry, despite our puny efforts to rinse and swab it.  Morphine has not affected her lucidity.

All her children are here from various places in the world. My son and daughter are also here. We flew them in on a rushed flight from the UK to be with their granny.

We don’t deny her process even though sometimes we go home and cry and wish she could be here forever. We acknowledge that death is close, that it is not seperate from life.

Actually,  we are blessed. When death is slow, even though it cracks one’s heart open in the most awful way and thrashes it on rocks, there is time to express one’s love, to throw what is not needed out of the junkbox of one’s being, to reach a here-now way of being and acceptance. To say the final goodbyes and give back rubs, hugs and kisses.  We redefine what truly matters.   Every minute she is here is precious. Her children and grand children are just beautiful with her. Her room is a shrine of love and peace.

She told me a few days ago that a very big angel came and sat beside her. ‘I have no fear anymore’ she said. Bless her. In my life she has been my very big angel and so knowing how comforting this is and that her angel is beside her all the way, I let my darling momli go in terms of the wishing she could remain.

In between the waiting we went to the beach yesterday. Walking has a way of being a clearing house too and we needed to look out over the ocean, to feel wet sand under our feet, to breathe in fresh salt air a little.  I found a gorgeous chunk of top grade ambergris, white, and scented with sea, musk and leather. I had been hoping I might be lucky enough to find some as my learning of perfumes continues and there it was!  An alchemy. White ambergris lying on white sand! I had to look several times at it before it sunk in that I was actually looking at a chunk of the real mcoy.

Ambergris originates from the sperm whales gut. Some call it whale vomit, which it is in it’s first form upon the ocean. After this people lose the plot and baulk at the idea of it.  Yes, indeed, it is foul smelling in this new form, but later as it floats in the sea it undergoes transformation. Baked in the silent hot sun and sterilised by many tens of years of salt water, the smell becomes a bouquet of it’s environmental journey.  In a perfume it performs magic, shifting the ordinary to the extra-ordinary.  It is the amplifier of all that is beautiful. Even  that which is not so beautiful in a perfume has no choice but to reveal it’s innate (if hitherto hidden)beauty in the presence of ambergris. It benefits all the other fragrances in a blend, bridging them together, softening edges, breathing a new dimension into them. Dissolved from it’s original solid form it is all the more potent and tangible. Nothing is lost …only refined, redefined and amplified.

Finding a chunk of this incredible rare substance on my first visit to the beach in South Africa  is pretty amazing and great good fortune.  It is also a very apt and potent metaphor for what I currently experience in this capsule of time I am living in.  For me it represents some of the essence of momli.  It is funny how in my life, usually at times I am soul searching,  nature often throws me a full blown gift and metaphor to mull on.

For now we just sit in the global waiting room of earthly departure. Soon momli will be with John her beloved husband, soon she will not be in a broken body. Death is not all bad.