Another first cousin, Eddie, forwarded me the news of his death. It was Sunday. I am driver-less on Sundays and Mondays. How can I go see him? So Eddie picked me up. When we got there Digo was still in the morgue and the chapel was not ready. We waited a long time. I began to tell his children stories about our grandfather and grandmother, how they lived and died. Eddie took his grandchildren and went to look at Digo at the morgue. He returned to say that he had gotten so thin, much thinner than the Digo we knew. Indeed he looked like a total stranger in the coffin. I love him anyway and am very moved by his death. They cremated him on Tuesday night. I could not go because I had a class.
Good-bye, Digo, I will see you soon, I whisper to him as I, from the privacy of my home, pray for his eternal rest. I can see he is happy to have crossed over. He is happy, I am not, cannot stop thinking about how he died three years after his stroke. Strokes and heart attacks are gifts of the Gonzalez family. Almost everyone I know who has died has died of a heart attack. Here one minute, gone the next. Digo recovered somewhat from the first one but then he got pneumonia and that brought him down, made him bed-ridden, gave him all manner of difficulties and then he died from his second heart attack. I cannot help but wonder if this will be my fate too.
Are you bothered by any of these issues? My husband passed away and I cannot live without a husband. Oh Lord, please, send me a husband to replace the one I just lost. You must be a Hera, the archetypal wife. Who cares about a husband? I only care about my children. You can hurt my husband but don’t hurt my child. Ah, that sounds like a Demeter, who loved only her daughter Persephone. I am sweet and shy and don’t want to choose between my mother and my husband. I love both, you know. Hello, Persephone, I am so glad to meet you.
I don’t want to stay in the city. I like to live in the boondocks, hunt in my forest accompanied by my ladies and my hounds, says the virgin goddess Artemis. What? In the forest? I like to stay in the city and govern intelligently like my father, answers another virgin goddess, Athena. I am the fire in your home, she whispers, I love staying at home alone and making things warm and beautiful. This is Hestia speaking. I am the best among all of you, haughtily claims Aphrodite, the alchemical goddess.
What am I talking about? I think it is called archetypal psychology. You take tests, then you score them. Then you listen to the stories of these Greek goddesses and you see how much they duplicate your feelings. You see the Greeks created gods after themselves – the more imperfect, the more god-like. So you can see all their traits. The Christians created God according to their ideals, so He is perfect, no basis for comparison. Besides it would be irreverent. You cannot compare yourself to God. You do not even come close so surely you will lose. But you can compare yourself to the Greek gods and goddesses and it is fun.
Which archetype are you? Believe it or not, I am Hestia, the fire in the home, faceless, formless, but present in your hearth, warming it with my flames. I am also strongly Artemis the Greek goddess of the Hunt or the Roman goddess Diana. Those are my two dominant goddesses. I learned that at the basic Jung seminar where I also learned to interpret my dreams, make masks, engage in all manner of creative activities. I learned about fairy tales and life’s secrets that they hold. I learned to create my own fairy tale then, so many years ago. It was magical.
I first took this basic seminar in 1991, fourteen years ago. Through the muck and mire of what my life has become, I cannot wait to take it again. So I am taking the next one on November 26 at the Ricco-Renzo Gallery. I think out there may be three or more people who would like to take it too. If you do, please contact Sophie Sim-Bate at 0917-5276279 as soon as possible. I am so sorry, I can’t wait for the Jung seminar to bail me out of my woes. Now let me return to the muck and mire of my regrettable life. Let me go back to my horrible week.