Compounded
The medicine of loss
Listen to this article:
Maybe it was the third day of soaking in hot spring water.
Or the weight of so many deaths and so much world chaos piling on my heart. Or the full moon eclipse, the turning of the stars, or my recent Saturn return. Or being with a friend who asks deep, slow, penetrating questions.
But I split open.
Ripe fruit, cracking at the center, tears pouring out.
I’ve been waiting for the grief to spill out, but I thought it would be for my recent losses: Kevin, Julia, BillieLee.
Instead, I found myself crying and longing for my friend and elder Will Taegel, who died in June 2022.
Sarah held me in her arms as I cried for Will, feeling the physical hole in my being from his loss. My mind tried to make sense of the tears: He has been dead for so long! How can you still miss him this much? But the heart doesn’t have a timeline on grief, or a measure of who or how it loves. Will is both a part of me with his smile and presence, and simultaneously a vacancy inside of me, a yearning.
When we met Will and I lived in the same small town of Wimberley, Texas. For a couple of years friends kept telling both of us we needed to meet each other. Then one day we were both asked to do ceremony for a local sacred place: Jacob’s Well, a deep spring water well connected to miles of underground caves and aquifer.
Will, who was supposed to start the ceremony with a prayer, was running late. The organizers asked me if I would step in and begin the ceremony. I was standing on one side of Jacob’s Well (on the rocks on the right side of the picture above) and I started a chant with the group which was gathered in a circle.
I had my eyes closed, chanting loudly so everyone could hear me, when I felt something approaching.
I remember opening my eyes and thinking; who is that?!?
There was a force, a pressure against my skin, an awareness I couldn’t name.
And then Will emerged from the trees, standing across from me, smiling.
“There you are!!!!” My heart rejoiced. I felt a reconnection, a remembrance, a relief so strong I laughed and smiled at him.
We chanted together then, singing across Jacob’s Well. Then I nodded and he understood to pick up the ceremony.
Over the next decade Will and his wife Judith and I taught together.
It was an always an easy flow, a heart-connected respect for each other’s teachings and communities. They cheerleaded me, they held me through difficult times, they loved me as fully and unconditionally as I loved them. They were true, grounded, loving spiritual elders.
We lost Judith from breast cancer in the fall of 2021.
My last meal with Will came not too long after Judith’s death. He was tender and exhausted, grieving and still fully present with me through his pain.
A week later he was diagnosed with spinal cancer.
Here are our last texts to each other. I was in Teotihuacan, Mexico where we had taught together many many times. He had been “camping out by the big door” as he called it, knowing that he was close to dying. He was in excruciating pain at the end. And yet. The clarity. The love. The connection. We had spent years metaphorically walking with the angel of death together during our Day of the Dead retreats in Mexico. Now we were walking together separated by distance, but compounded together.
Will died three days later, June 26, 2022.
Starting in June 2022, Jacob’s Well stopped flowing.
Compounded medicines are created by combining various ingredients to create a customized blend.
Even though Will is no longer on this physical plane, he is still within me, his medicine compounded and blended with my other teachers and experiences. By allowing myself to fully grieve for him I’ve found a new space in my body, a softness that is allowing his medicine and teachings to move more readily through my system.
What also feels compounded, more potent, is his love, and my love for him. When I was avoiding feeling the loss, the flow slowed. Now I feel the waters of loss and love flowing together; longing and sorrow, laughter and his smile all blending and spilling over. As I grieve and love Will, there will be more space to turn toward the recent losses of BillieLee, and Kevin, and his mama Julia. And more opening to feel my past losses and loves, like my dad, who died in 2007.
Compounded grief, compounded love; we are all a rare blend of those who we have loved and lost. May our medicine become more potent with each passing as we carry the memory and wisdom from the ones who crossed before us.
And another gift: Here is a video I just discovered of Will and me teaching in 2011!
And a question for you: how have you memorialized someone you have lost? I’m wondering how to honor Kevin and BillieLee, who were both incredible artists. One vision is to create cabins up on the land in their honor, named after them and with their artwork, words, and pictures so people could physically spend time surrounded by their art and gifts. I’m also doing research around creating a memorial pathway with images on smooth round rocks of those who have died in our community; both humans and companions.
Share any thoughts, or simply the name and a memory below of someone you have loved and lost…
P.S. How are you processing current events? Where could you use more support? What is hurting your heart, and what is healing your heart? I’d love to know. You can always add something in the comments, or reply to the email to message me directly.
Soooo powerful. I never met Wil, but thanks to you, now I feel like I did and do...love the videos of you two teaching. and what a wild synchronicity about the water drying up...we must keep the flow (I can't be reminded of this enough!)
Grief is the deep well of love. I often dive into it to meet those who are on the other side of the veil.