Mom passed at 11:01 on November 2nd, 2011 amongst a beautiful circle of family and love. She had just listened to her dear Windy on the phone, and heard voice messages from her grandsons Pele and Noah before she took her last breaths and was freed from all of her pain and the burden of her broken body. James Taylor's "You've got a friend" was playing on the stereo. RJ played The Beatles' "In my Life" and I played IZ's "Somewhere over the Rainbow" just before that. Candles were lit all around.      
     Surrounding her in a cocoon of held hands were her mother, her sisters Carol and Liz, her brother Paul, her unofficially adopted daughter, Dawna, myself and her son RJ. We all told her we loved her. We all prayed, reminisced, sang, cried, rejoiced, hugged and thanked her for being such an amazing presence in our lives. We should all be so blessed to have such a special crossing over from this life. 
     Much appreciation again to all who have donated funds, sent memories and emotional support. We all worked together to hold the space she deserved as she embarked on her next great adventure. As she would declare, "Towanda!!!!"

Here is a Buddhist saying that she shared with me as a child:

Yesterday is a memory, tomorrow is
a mystery and today is a gift,
which is why it is called the present.
What the caterpillar perceives is the end;
to the butterfly is just the beginning.
Everything that has a beginning has an ending.
Make your peace with that and all will be well

     She lived this as truth.  When she became ill, she told us all that she had been preparing for her passing her whole life through her own collected spirituality.  She was not afraid, even though she fought hard for survival, though I believe that was mostly for the sake of her loved ones who had grown so attached to her.  But she was not afraid, she told me, because she had lived an amazing life.  She had followed her dreams; She had sought out her adventures and then some. 

     I was so lucky to have her as my mother, and not just because she read us countless stories every night, creating a love of learning and imagination, which she modeled by herself being a life-long learner, which she cultivated by turning our preschool home into a Montessori school full of puppet shows and bed sheet tents, and our own original plays and productions.  We were lucky that she shared her innate gift for storytelling and imagination and swimming with our children, her grandchildren, who are forever better for having their Tutu. 
     
     We were so lucky, and not just because she gave us back rubs every night in grade school, telling us about her dream to become a massage therapist …we were lucky because we watched her follow that dream.  We watched her work double time, putting herself through massage school at night after my brother and I had graduated high school, after working so hard to give us what we wanted and needed to follow OUR dreams and then following HER own dream, building a massage practice while still working 80 accounts in wine and spirits sales by day.  And this was before cell phones, when she had to drive hundreds of miles a week between accounts with a pager and a roll of quarters to use at pay phones along the way.  (Does anyone remember pay phones?)

      So she gave us a strong work ethic, inspired us to actualize what we imagine for ourselves, and she imparted an important lesson to me “It’s not just about what you want to be when you grow up…It’s also about what you want to be when your kids grow up, because your life goes on and you must continually decide what to do with it and how to make the most of your days.”

Another favorite saying of hers is the Siva Kalpa Sanskrit verse:

BOM SHANKAR BHOLENATH!!!!

Which means “Awaken ye self oblivious gods and goddesses to the divinity within.”  She taught me by example to pursue my potential and to see myself as a divine creation, infinite with potential.

     The first time she lived in Hawaii she was 20 and she sold her 57 Chevy truck for a one way ticket.  She stayed for a year, and longed to go back the rest of her life.  In the meantime, she took full advantage of the cultural awakenings of the 1960’s, listening to the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin.  She toured with the Greatful Dead, and even they fell in love with her, as she was given permanent silk backstage passes to hang out with the group.  She travelled from snowy Lake Tahoe with her good friend Karen and with dreams of the sunny Florida Keys, stopping to experience Mardi Gras in New Orleans along the way, and upon her arrival, she rode everywhere on a bicycle, and crocheted bikinis to make money.  She has an awesome story of being lost at sea for 5 days in a hurricane during that time, which I’m sure many of you have heard.  I never got tired of that story, and of hearing how she kissed the sand when their boat finally beached itself near Texas.  She was iconic to me, like a character in an epic movie, who had endless stories of travels through Europe, Australia, Bali, Mexico, and of course, Hawaii. 

      She spent her last decade in that beautiful place, her happy place, North Shore Kauai, where her soul was ever nourished, where she swam with dolphins, went scuba diving and whale watching, boogie boarded, kayaked, body surfed, hiked to waterfalls, studied hula, and all the while built a thriving practice in massage, learning and developing new modalities every year, and bringing peace and healing literally to thousands of people that she touched.  She shared her island with me and my son, helping me to take care of him while I myself went to massage school and discovered the intoxicating beauty that is Kauai.  She shared her island with Rj and his family, sharing her love of the ocean with Noah.  She shared her island with those of us lucky enough to visit and have the best kamaaina tour guide around.  She was not afraid of dying, she said, because she had truly lived her life…she hadn’t just dreamed of living in the islands, of practicing massage, she had done it.  And she had done it well.

     Marsha Newman was born on August 14th, 1950 in a Quonset hut on a Edwards’s air force base in the Mojave Desert inCalifornia.  Her father, Tom Newman, called her his Desert Rose.  Her mother, Betty Newman, shared with us her birth story, as it was indicative of the person she would become:

 "She didn’t cry when she was born.  She opened her eyes with an awareness unusual for a newborn.  She looked around the room in amazement and curiosity and nurses from other rooms even gathered to see this beautiful and wise baby girl."

     Marsha was one of 5 children (siblings: Robert Newman, Carol Lyles, Paul Newman, and Liz Garner), and she was the oldest daughter, with a budding adventurous spirit.  She read books voraciously, sometimes almost in the dark after she was supposed to be in bed, to which she attributed her need for glasses.  This reading cultivated in her a passion for writing and one of her legacies to us is the memoirs and poetry she has left behind.  I’d like to share some of her accounts of childhood, in her own words from her Journals:

 “In 1951 we moved to England on a huge ocean liner.  There are family movies of me in a stroller in front of Buckingham palace and I remember riding giant tortoises at the London Zoo.  In 1954 we took another giant ocean liner back to the states and all I remember is getting seasick for a day and throwing up on a beautiful doll that my dad had given me that had elastic on the hands and feet so I could dance with it.  Luckily, we were able to fix her back up.  In 1954 we moved to California and I remember our first TV which was black and white and I remember Howdy Doody and the Mickey Mouse club and the great neighborhood plays that we used to put on.  In 1957 we moved toTexas and I remember sand storms blowing so hard that we couldn’t walk to school across the desert with our skirts on…we would try to squat and cover our legs.  During that time I had my tonsils taken out and they let me take them home from the hospital in a jar and we charged the neighborhood kids 10 cents to look at them until my mom found out and threw them away. My brother and sister and I played army and gave fake 21 gun salutes to dead lizards which we then buried.  In 1960 we moved to San Francisco where I fell in love with the ocean…I remember when I was in high school, I would ride the city buses with my friend and pretend that we were tourists who spoke only French.”

     She became involved in her high school drama club and played in "Death of a Salesman" when she was 17.  She always carried that penchant for drama, as I remember her reciting Hamlet’s soliloquy to me while we cooked her infamous tortellini alfredo in our kitchen when I was a young girl.  She would start out small, and quickly become absorbed in the lines, holding her wooden spoon like a scepter and finish with a bow.  I was always in awe of the power of her delivery.  I suppose that was partly what made her so convincing and successful in sales, and also why she was such a magnetic and interesting person to be around.   There was never a dull moment with her.  She lived her life like an adventure, each day was a gift.  She explored many religions, cultivating an organic spirituality and teaching my brother and me to respect all faiths and to seek wisdom in all places.  She would point out angels in clouds, and studied deities and sacred texts from all over the world.