Lessons from Saint Lucia: Transforming in Loss
I set off for Saint Lucia this summer, to help my friend in a time of great challenge and change. Her mother Virginia Jean had passed in November over a few short months following an initial stroke that left her unable to care for herself. Virginia Jean’s memories were all throughout her house.
She kept a clean, beautiful home, sitting in the middle of the rainforest in Soufriere, Saint Lucia. The home started with a dream as a young girl, and was manifested into reality in her adulthood.
As my friend sat on her mother’s white tiled veranda, she feared not following her mother’s wishes. Virginia Jean stored 4 sets of burgundy curtains, three coffee makers, 6 sets of crystal, the list of anything anyone ever needed was there… stored away for a rainy day. She never saw her home as anything other than a refuge, a place to invite friends and family, and a place to hang her china collections and the many plagues of Jesus on the cross and the last supper. A place for Bernadette and her children to enjoy and come home to.
Indeed Saint Lucia is a place one can call home. The streets welcomed this white woman with friendly smiles, meals at their houses, and evening sits on the porch. The sunsets included lit up mountainsides, the sounds of frogs and the canopy of birds alive putting the island to rest. Morning yoga, meditation and hikes throughout the town were highlighted to a new generation, bringing spirit alive in the porches and streets that Virginia Jean once walked.
Bernadette remained present, alive, and in the spirit of her mom. Putting down the bounds of things that were collected, and replacing them with creative spirit, newborn steps to her mom’s balcony, and infusing her dreams and vision to carry out the spirit of Virginia Jean in new form.
Jennifer Degen
September 8, 2022
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