This morning I dreamed we gave Cameron
a $90,000 Rolex
with a broken watch band
that we’d found somewhere
and counted as our lottery win,
our ticket forward.
Yet we handed it over to Cameron
so he could marry his girl
and have his own future.
I don’t think the dream’s about dollars, though.
It could be about time.
About the 90,000 hours he’s missed of his own
this-time-around life.
Or the 90,000 beats of my heart,
within not one of which he’s been absent.
Or the 90,000 bits of bone and ash
still waiting to be scattered.
Or the exponential expanse of time
he’s now experiencing.
All the time,
not just in the world,
but in the Universe
to live in love and freedom.
Or the energy of nine, which is endings
and the magnified energy of zero,
which is eternity,
infinity,
and the real truth of his passing.
There was a day I would have handed over $90,000
or 9 times $90,000
to buy his happiness.
But happiness is an inside job,
not to be bought, but created
day by day,
heartbeat by heartbeat,
tick by tick of this $90,000 Rolex we call life.
He taught me that
through the grief of his leaving.
in memory of
Cameron David Perkins
4/2/1978 ~ 5/3/2004
My latest art project is a series of illustrations for a spiritual fairy tale I’ve written. The story itself was inspired by a dream from many years ago and a phrase that has rattled around in my brain ever since, begging me to unravel its mysteries, to understand its meaning.
In my long ago dream, I have lost my four-month-old baby and I am beside myself with grief. At the memorial service for the child it comes to me that I will create the “Deep Water Leaf Society” and that will alleviate my grief and create healing for many others as well. When I woke, still disturbed by the deep feeling of grief the dream expressed, I was puzzled. My children were all growing up; I had no more “babies”. And I wondered what in the world a “deep water leaf” might be, much less a society of them.
Fast forward several years – seven, to be exact – and I did lose a child, my eldest son who was 26. During my deep grief, I spent a lot of time revisiting my old journals and filling many new ones with my journey to healing. Along the way, I found the record of this deep water leaf dream and it resonated deeply.
My son, Cameron, was born in April. Suddenly “four-month-old” became a metaphor for this child of mine, born in the fourth month, who I now grieved so deeply for. The dream seemed to hold a prescription for healing. In time, I wrote my first book partly as a chronicle of my own healing journey and partly as a self-help roadmap for others who were grieving. I titled it The Deep Water Leaf Society in honor of the dream.
But I still wondered, what IS a deep water leaf? Inklings of the answer had come through in the book I’d written, but there was more mystery yet to be unraveled. The question continued to rattle around in the back of my mind.
Over the years since Cameron’s death and the publication of the first book, my dreams and meditations have slowly been answering that question. In my new book, Fallen, I explore the answer in the form of a fairy tale or fable about the first Deep Water Leaf.
In it, my protagonist Alora falls from the Dreaming Tree into the strange new land of Lake Sojourn where she struggles to remember who she is. Will she continue to drift on the surface, always at the mercy of the elements? Or will she find the courage to face her fears, dive deep and reclaim her true power?
No spoilers here. You’ll have to read it to find out. 😉
Several of the original illustrations – 11 x 14 watercolor and colored pencil on bristol – will be on display in the Southwest Visual Art League’s INSPIRED! Art Show this November in downtown Mesa, Arizona.