LILLIAN
The Ancient Crone pays an unexpected visit during a singing gig at a nursing home. A striking, unforgettable experience as I “sang over the bones” of this dying woman.
Next on my list of residents to visit in the nursing home was a woman named “Lillian.” I’d arrived early to make my rounds. The activities director had made a list of those persons she thought would especially benefit from my musical healing songs. Lillian was in room 312 in bed “C” in the subacute ward, but when I entered her room, beds “A” and “B” were vacant. Bed “C” was by the window, but the curtain was drawn, hiding the view of the world outdoors. The room was dim.
Although nothing especially had been said about Lillian to me beforehand, I could tell she was dying. A veritable bag of bones, she sat bent down in her wheel chair beside her bed. A nasty looking mess of freshly vomited food lay in a puddle on the bedding, spilling beside her lunch tray. I quickly looked away and back to the sick old woman before me: “Would you like for me to sing a special song for you?” I inquired. She nodded a wisp of approval, eyes cast down, hopelessly attached to a face and neck unable to rise to the occasion.
“I’ll be loving you, Always”….I began, crooning gently, “with a love that’s true, Always.”
Lillian clucked an approval, mouthing the word “Always” each time we came around to it.
“Days may not be fair, Always….but that’s when I’ll be there, Always..I swayed rhythmically back and forth as I sang to Lillian, doing my best to bathe her in soothing sounds, giving her a “sound bath.” I was standing quite close beside her chair, but as I was standing up, I towered above her, and our eyes were not meeting.
I hunkered down, in front of her now, catching her eyes for the final refrain: “Not for just an hour, not for just a day, not for just a year — but Always.”
We stared curiously at one another, eyeballs to eyeballs. Lillian’s were huge, rather vacant, dark with secret stories she had no way to tell me about. Against the severe hollows of her cheeks, her eyes seemed rather ghastly to behold.
I started another song — one that just popped up from somewhere inside of me. “Let me call you Sweetheart,” I sang hopefully, searching for Lillian inside those bug eyes, “I’m in love with you…”
I adjusted my gaze so that I could take in her whole face and head. Thick white hairs launched recklessly out of her chin, and tufts of gray hair broke out all over the top of her head. This was a woman who had aged hard, with rough, raggedy edges. Fascinated, I sang on through my observations: “Let me hear you whisper that you love me, too.”
Lillian craned her head, turning her eyes, bulging sockets and all, and seemed to find me there, crouched before her with my guitar on my knees, singing this love song to her, to us, both of us.
“Keep the love light burning, in your eyes so blue…”
Shivers ran along my spine, as always happens when I am taking in Something Bigger than myself. Here I was, singing a love song to a hag — an archetypal hag. But “hag” comes from the Greek word for “sacred grove,” for “holy.”
“Let me call you Sweetheart…” I shivered again, as I understood somewhere deep inside of me — in a place only the music Knew, that with Lillian’s silent help, I was singing for myself as well. We both had become Crone: ancient song, timeless text. In one breath the Scorned and Forgotten One arose between us, and in the next, the Wise Woman. What a strange and wondrous duet, this song of honoring, of remembering, of singing over the bones, refleshing us each back to life, even as She, singing from within me, also sat before me, in the guise of Lillian, wasting away, dying.
My Song continued to come and I could do nothing but serve its purposes until, mysteriously as it had begun, I arrived at its end , and to my time with Lillian: “I’m in love with you…” My voice trailed off into silence.
I patted Lillian’s hand, thanked her and left to make my rounds. “I’ll be back in two weeks,” I told her, not knowing if she understood, or heard me, or what. Yet certain our souls had touched each other in a fashion that I surely would always carry with me.
Two weeks later on Monday morning, I came to make my rounds. Reporting in to the activity director’s office, as I always do, I asked if she had any particular instructions for my visit that day. There was difficult news for me: Lillian had died a few days before. We observed a moment of silence, words too cumbersome and awkward to try.
In memoriam, Lillian’s astonishing, frightful, beautiful face, her high, frail cheekbones and those enormous eyes are forever impressed upon me. Through them I was able to Witness the visage of the Crone, to see my own Ancient face. We sang of Life, and we sang of Death, and knew that Love was all we had. And was all we needed.
“Let me call you Sweetheart, I’m in love with You.”
