Sirens for Gabby
The last time I entered a Catholic church was 20 years ago. I was a tourist, travelling through Mexico. It was a hot Christmas night. The church was large with a tall cathedral ceiling, very old, and loaded with parishioners. What struck me most was that it had been built on a site where an ancient Mayan temple stood many years before.
After the Mayans were subjugated by conquistadors and their temple levelled, a few of the original stone blocks were incorporated into the church’s design. On one of the blocks you could clearly see a Mayan depiction of an other than human entity etched into the stone.
I didn’t know whether the integration of these ancient blocks into the church was a sign of dominance, or was done purely for utilitarian purposes. Nonetheless, this strange amalgamation of the ancient Maya with Catholicism stuck with me.
Now, here it is twenty years later, and I find myself in a Catholic church again. This one is in the little mountain town where I live. It has big white pillars out front and inside everything you’d expect - wooden pews, statues of various Saints, and a large crucifix in the centre.
I am not here to worship, nor am I Catholic. My purpose here is to attend a funeral service for one of my clients - the third person I have worked with who has passed away over the course of a month.
Her name was Gabby
In the time that I knew her she had moved closer to Catholicism, yet still maintained a strong connection with her First Nation’s heritage and spirituality. We talked about her relationship to the various Saints and Angels, and Gabby told me she called on their protective or restorative qualities when she faced personal challenges.
For her, there was no conflict between her First Nations spirituality and Catholicism.
“There are many paths to The Creator,” she once said to me.
When I asked her how she reconciled the brutality of the Catholic Church toward First Nations people in the name of Jesus, particularly through the residential school system, she made no excuses for it. She believed that anything could be corrupted in the hands of men.
Gabby had endured a lot of hardship in her three and a half decades of life. Sometimes she was really angry about her situation. She saw the Colonial system as the root cause of her suffering, and felt the Government health institutions had no spiritual intelligence, especially when it came to Indigenous people, and therefore couldn’t facilitate a true experience of healing for them (especially in the realm of mental health).
Sometimes when she showed up at my office and things were really rough, she and I would go outside and sit on a patch of bare Earth to talk. There we would centre and ground ourselves. She had cheap cigarettes manufactured “on the Rez,” and we often used the tobacco as a cleansing smudge against negative energies.
I saw her regularly and we would talk on the phone or text quite a bit. She wasn’t shy to ask for support or advocacy, and was good at utilizing whatever supports were available, even if they were inadequate. Other times Gabby would connect just to say that she was praying for me. Although I am not a Christian, I do have a spiritual life. I appreciated being in Gabby’s prayers and welcomed positive intentions being sent my way.
I thought about the smudges we did together as the priest swung the incense thurible over Gabby’s plywood casket. A thick aroma of Frankincense and Myrrh filled the space as wisps of smoke ascended toward the Saints stationed up near the ceiling. I closed my eyes and visualized Gabby’s own ascent, from her Earthly struggles, rising with those diaphanous wisps back to source - back to her ancestors.
So many images of her came up in my mind.
I thought of Gabby’s generosity. She had a big heart and a beaming sunshine smile. One time I saw her passing out bottled water and apples to homeless people on a sweltering summer day. She paid for these supplies out of her small disability check. Another time she dropped off a box of baked goods for me at the office. In her backpack she carried a notebook filled with affirmations and prayers - positive mantras that she wanted to commit to memory, as well as a scrapbook with photos of her child, whom she referred to as Little Bear.
As I sat there on the wooden pew while the priest recited a prayer that I could not quite follow, I reflected on the last time I had seen Gabby. We met on the street because she no longer felt comfortable at my office - it was too triggering there, she said. This wasn’t uncommon for clients trying to overcome their substance use issues. When attempting to free yourself from drug dependency, being around harm reduction supplies can make it very difficult to resist drug cravings, or so I have been told.
When I saw Gabby, she was in a bad way. Really on the edge, and frustrated.
“Every single organization in this town has failed me and my child,” she said, with tears falling.
I couldn’t argue with her. I didn’t want to - I only wanted to speak to her heart and hopefully help her come back to centre. Gabby and I didn’t find that place that we had found so often before with the smudge, on the Earth. Not even close. She took off down the street in a storm - angry, her brow furrowed.
The following afternoon I received a text from her. It was an apology for what she called her “meltdown,” the previous day.
“No need to apologize,” I replied, and I let her know I was in her corner.
I have a morning practice that I am dedicated to. It involves both meditation and movement. Even if I feel bad, I still do it, waking up before dawn, lighting the candle, clearing the energetic space, and then I breathe and meditate.
My routine is timed so that when the Sun rises, I am into the movement part of the practice. My intention is to meet the dawning light consciously, with my mind, body, and breath. Each new day grants me another opportunity to bear witness to the full range of experience - to all that it has to offer, both the beauty and adversity, while also giving me yet another chance to evolve and grow. It is an important ritual for me that must take place during those precious hours of the early morning. It’s something I am devoted to, and it is one of the primary ways that I stay focused and on my path.
I mention this because Gabby popped into my morning practice. It was less than 24 hours after the exchange of texts we had the day before, where she apologized for her meltdown. As I sat in the candle light, before my altar, she came into my awareness. It wasn’t any kind of mental picture of her, or any particular memory, just Gabby’s energetic signature. I let it stay there for a while because there was a certain urgency to to it that was quite strong. I prayed for Gabby, both for her protection, and that she would find peace.
And then I let any attachment to those thoughts and feelings go…
Gabby lived just a few blocks down from me. I pass by her place every day on my way to work. I had heard sirens earlier in the night. They were close by. These days, whenever I hear sirens, I always have a twinge of uncomfortable wonder about whether they are headed for one of my clients having an overdose. A few colleagues who also work in the overdose crisis express having similar feelings whenever they hear the sound of ambulances or firetrucks. It has become a terrible foreboding for many of us in this field, wondering who among the people we serve has died. But when I heard the sirens earlier that evening, in the near distance close to my home, of all the people I work with, I never imagined they would be headed for Gabby.
