Gifts and Visitations

It’s been just over a month since my dear friend and soul sister Marina died, after a quick and nasty tussle with appendiceal cancer. She visits my consciousness daily, in ways both fleeting and substantial. We talked a lot about the afterlife in her last months. She told me clearly that, when she visits me after her death, she’d make herself known in a way that looks like dragonflies.

The first sighting occurred less than twelve hours after she passed. I was with Bink, walking at one of our favorite Audubon sites. There, a trail unrolls through a little forest before splitting itself in two. To the right, a lovely treed path eventually leads to a small bridged dam, pausing before heading into more woods and on beside a waterfall.

Choice two runs straight ahead at the fork to a wee bridge that cinches a pond on either side. This beckons onto a boardwalk over more water, with an option to follow a path into an almost wildly overgrown bit of land.

It’s a magical place, one that my little family appreciates tremendously. That final Sunday in June was the first time Bink and I had been back since Covid-19 had closed most Audubon trails in mid March. We were delighted to learn of the re-opening, in time to greet the summer growth gracing the land. Across the water, a thick blanket of lily pads hosted frogs napping in the sun. Turtles rested atop rocks protruding from the pond. The air buzzed with insect life.

It was on the boardwalk that the first dragonfly came into my vision. She hung in the air in front of me, sunlight shimmering off her blue-green body. I tried to capture a picture of her, but each time I positioned my iphone she flitted out of the screen.

Soon, I noticed more dragonflies. Different colors and sizes, all dancing and hovering around me and Bink and above the water. Well, I told myself, this is dragonfly heaven! Of course they are here. Doesn’t mean that it’s Marina.

At home a few days later, Superguy pointed wordlessly out the window over our kitchen sink. We have planter boxes and a large pot or two on the deck out there. A lone dragonfly hovered in the thick air between a raised box and the plants thriving in the pot next to it. Thirty seconds, one minute. Maybe two. There she is, I thought. She’s here, he may have said.

Earlier this month, we stayed at a small rental on the Cape for a week. It was a hasty decision we made back in February, pre-Covid. The house we’d rented and loved for years had sold recently, and we were mourning the loss of that sweet yearly week. We’d driven down to the area to look for another option, hoping for something, anything, that would be within a short walk to the beach we love.

We found a cottage and were able to view the inside. It was much smaller than the previous one, paneled in pine that was darkened by age. It was also available for a week this summer! We put a deposit down on the spot.

Marina, whom I’d seen the month before, had not yet been diagnosed with the cancer that would take her life. She’d been tired when I saw her, and only vaguely aware of some indigestion.

When my little family arrived for our July week at the cottage, we went around to the back door to retrieve the hidden key the owner had told us about. There was a metal sculpture on the backside of the house. Hmmm, I thought. Dragonfly? No, it looked more like a butterfly.

We went inside. The small kitchen opened out into an equally compact dining area and living room. There, on a shelf looking out towards the front window, was a colorful square canvas with—you guessed it—a beautiful dragonfly on it. Tears welled up in my eyes.

In the bedroom off the kitchen, the same dark wood covered the walls. Superguy was the one who spotted it first: the sole decoration in that room was a colorful cohort of dragonflies, rendered in metal and nailed to the wall.

A few days after we arrived, my love said,” Hey, did you notice the dragonfly art by the back door?” “Oh, yes,” said I. But I think it’s actually a butterfly. Noooo, he mouthed soundlessly, his silver hair catching the scant light from the back door as he shook his head. We went out to examine it more closely. “See this elongated body? That’s not a butterfly. It’s a dragonfly.” And so it was.

Bink loves to swim. Recently, as she swam in a local lake, her head bowed as she dipped her curious, goggled eyes beneath the surface, M landed lightly on her back. She stayed there for several minutes, not moving.

Another day, a dragonfly appeared on the inside wall of our garage. She just sat there, watching and being watched, for a long time.

I’ve made online connections with others who knew and loved Marina. There have been strings of messages between us, and a tender Zoom memorial service this past weekend. We’re scattered around the globe, yet many of us have had dragonfly sightings in recent weeks.

Sometimes, I hear Marina talking to me. It’s reassurance that all is well, that she is indeed in bliss. There’s more, though.

Marina was an artist. Like many creatives, it took her a long time to truly and firmly believe in her art. It was only in the last two years she was financially able to cut her “real world” work to a minimum and give her deep attention to the gestation and birth of her evolving artwork.

She first knew me as a young poet. At twenty, I was untamed and bohemian. Poetry poured through my fingers when I sat with a journal. Through the years, my visiting time with Marina was often spent making art, with hours of talking and laughing punctuated by periods of absolute, easy silence.

One of the gifts my friend tried to give me over the last few years was what she called the YES, AND. Marina understood the constraints of my life circumstances over the past few decades. Through my descriptions, and the perpetual need to do careful advance planning for our scant visits or even our phone calls, she had a good sense of what is involved with parenting a child who has significant special needs.

She knew that I love my daughter without limits and beyond comprehension, that my commitment to her wellness and growth is lifelong and unwavering.

She also knew how I longed, long to have great expanses of unfettered time to write and paint and make art with beach stones and fully explore the wellspring of creativity that has always been part of my bone structure.

“Don’t starve your soul,” she’d say. “YES, you are an amazing mother. YES, your daughter needs you. AND—make time for the art. You have books inside you and your painting is full of Goddess energy and whimsy and you need to let it out. Don’t let it die.”

Sometimes, I accepted the gift of her words graciously, gave them a nod, then dove right back into the thick stew of my life. A few times, I let her words really penetrate. Paintings would come to life in snatches of time. Poems would press themselves out in pieces on my Mac, waiting patiently to be shepherded into something complete and satisfying.

When Marina extends her energy into my moments now, she knows I feel her offering gifts again. If she were in the flesh, she’d say YES. It’s a full plate. Covid has magnified it all. Bink will always need. AND you need to tend your whole garden, sweetie. The whole damned thing.”

–Melinda Coppola