Farmer Joy

In the fall of 2005 I was a fresh, eager would-be volunteer headed to southern Mexico. I was moved and touched by the barefoot children begging for money, and the old indigenous women selling handcrafted goods. But mostly what moved me was the Zapatista movement. I knew very little about it, but I knew they were a group of indigenous people who had staged an armed uprising in Mexico in 1994. They marched into five cities with sticks and guns, and demanded that the government stop stealing their land and abusing their people. Their story is complex and long, but the uprising gained them worldwide fame and since then they have continued their struggle peacefully, developing their own schools, clinics, health care system, and participatory democracy form of government. I wanted to learn more about them, and was sure that I could do something to help them.

I landed in the streets of San Cristóbal de las Casas, a small town nestled in the mountains in the rugged state of Chiapas. It’s sort of a popular hub for young, naive volunteers seeking Zapatistas. I saw a man selling Zapatista books in the main plaza. He was surrounded by beautifully painted hand-made banners covered with Zapatista images and slogans. I talked to him, and he had a radiant energy and enthusiasm for the movement. He also was extremely patient with my questions. So I asked him, “What could I possibly do, as a foreigner, to help your movement?” He thought for a moment, looked at me intensely, and said, “Go home. Take what you learn and organize there.”

Four and a half years later, in the mountains of Virginia, I am truly beginning to see what he meant.

I’m living at Light Morning, an intentional community where people share land and resources with the aim to create a mindful, loving consciousness toward the earth and each other. We live what you might call simple lives. We use wood to heat our homes and cook. We grow, preserve, and store much of our own food, and we use meager amounts of water from our well. It reminds me much of how the indigenous people of Mexico live. Why would we choose to live this way?

Many of us are realizing that our modern lifestyle is not sustainable, whether it’s guzzling depleting fossil fuels to get just about anywhere, devastating our surroundings with toxic chemicals for the products we consume, or buying fruits and vegetables imported from thousands of miles away and harvested by poorly-paid laborers. Our lifestyle is fueling wars, increasing disparity, exploiting millions of people in poverty, and ravaging the planet. At Light Morning we want to explore an alternative to that lifestyle. We want to be more sustainable, and part of that sustainability is providing more of our own needs ourselves. This is knowledge that the Zapatistas and many other indigenous people have managed to preserve and maintain to some extent. To me, this is the key to living a life that’s kinder, more loving, and respectful to all of our brothers and sisters worldwide.

Back in Mexico, I intuitively sensed that I needed to change my life in some way, but I wasn’t quite sure how yet. After the man at the Zapatista table told me to go home, I stayed. I couldn’t go home until I learned something. Eventually I found an organization called Chiapas Media Project that taught workshops in Zapatista communities about how to produce video documentaries. They had organized at the Zapatistas’ request, since the Zapatistas had the desire to make documentaries from their own perspective. I had background in video, so I taught workshops.

At many of the workshops, the Zapatistas thanked me for sharing my knowledge, and were impressed that I knew so much about cameras, computers, and editing software. I really don’t know that much in my opinion, but praise like that tends to build up your ego a little bit. At times I felt like an altruistic genius. But that didn’t last long.

At one of the workshops there was no gas stove. We were expected to cook with a fire. I had never done this before, but I had some experience with campfires, so I figured I wouldn’t have much of a problem being able to heat up something during the one-hour lunch break. The cooking area consisted of a few open fire pits under a simple shelter. It was a very damp day, and the wind was blowing hard. After a half hour of trying to light a fire, and failing, a community member graciously helped me. Actually, he just started the fire for me. But minutes later I had managed to completely kill the fire, and had to start all over again. After toiling for another hour, I gave up and ate some tomatoes on a piece of bread. I returned to the workshop a half hour late, dirty with black ash, my hunger only slightly aleviated, and feeling totally defeated.

My students laughed at me. “What happened to you?” they asked. I threw up my arms up in exasperation. “I couldn’t make a fire!” I exclaimed. They giggled. “You couldn’t make a fire?” This struck them as extremely silly – the helpless gringa who can’t even cook with a fire. All at once I realized that for all my college education, my video editing experience, and my knowledge of cameras and computers, they knew far more than I did about very practical things: growing food, building a house, and cooking with fire. We in the dominant culture of modernity, high-consumption, and gadgetery, have become totally dependent on all our machines, televisions, microwaves, refrigerators, and grocery stores in order to survive. This is a very vulnerable position to be in. In the United States, if the electric is cut off, we get on the phone and panic until somebody fixes it. In Mexico, many communities already live without electricity. And the poor people who do have electricity have first-hand knowledge on how to jury-rig the wires themselves if something goes wrong.

This was a deeply humbling moment for me. There I was, a grown woman teaching people how to make video documentaries, yet in an indigenous community I would be about as useful as a two-year-old. But what was even more humbling and troubling than that was the fact that I was so dependent on a system that’s completely destructive and unsustainable. If we really want to treat all human beings, other living things, and the planet with respect and dignity, shouldn’t we be trying to change that around?

I thought about sustainability a lot since that day. I kept teaching, but I also starting really learning. I observed how the Zapatistas work communally. My culture is based on competition, but their culture is based on cooperation. The Zapatistas have five government centers, each surrounded by a number of communities. The government centers have health clinics, schools, communications centers with internet access, and a Zapatista government office that deals with local decisions and disputes. Since our U.S. health care is in total turmoil, let’s use the Zapatista health system as a great example of their cooperative culture.

Each community chooses a person to be a “health promoter.” This person acts as a sort of general doctor to the community. Since sexual equality has gained more headway in Zapatista communities than in other indigenous communities (and I would also argue more than in modern Mexican culture itself in many ways), the health promoter can be male or female. She goes to the government center to take health workshops to learn about medicine, first aid, and general health care. She also learns how to harvest, process, and treat people with local medicinal herbs so that they are not so dependent on expensive pharmaceutical drugs. Then this is the part that impresses me the most: the health promoter is not a paid position. It’s a volunteer position. This person still has to take care of her family, house, income, and crops. What’s the incentive to take on all this extra work?

The community pitches in to help the health promoter with her chores. On weeks that she is off learning, they help tend her crops, take care of her family, and with any other needs. In return, they have somebody living in their community who can care for their basic medical needs. She goes from house to house making sure the other community members are healthy, and they go to her if they feel sick or have an accident. If it’s a serious condition that she can’t treat, the community transports the person to the government center where there is more advanced care at the clinic, and – surprise – this care is also free of charge. The people in the clinics work for free, the people who teach the workshops work for free, the health promoter works for free, and the community helps out their promoter for free. All the work is done with the intent to benefit and contribute to the whole community.

The Zapatista educational and government systems work the same way. Teachers and government officers are not paid. Each person is elected by the community. A government council makes decisions, rather than one person, and that council, which is made up of men and women, regularly rotates so that everybody gets a chance to serve, and nobody accumulates any kind of power or status.

As I watch my own culture with its competitive, status-driven, cash-intensive, exploitative nature, I couldn’t be more convinced that this combination of group cooperation and living close to the land is exactly what we human beings need to adopt for our very survival as a species. Of course, the Zapatista system has its own set of complexities and problems. They are still dependent on the cash-intensive economy for automobile transportation, cooking oil, rice, and other goods they don’t produce themselves. And much of their money comes from family members who have migrated to places like the United States to send their money back home. However, they have also developed their own community businesses, making coffee, hand-made shoes, honey, and other goods. They seem to be a lot further along the path of sustainability than we are back here.

Ivan Illich, an Austrian philosopher and author who was critical of Western-style institutions and who was a strong supporter of the Mexican indigenous people, once gave a biting speech to an organization of U.S. student volunteers who were about to spend the summer of 1968 doing aid projects in Mexico. He told them, “By definition, you cannot help being ultimately vacationing salesmen for the middle class ‘American way of Life,’ since that is really the only life you know…. I am here to tell you, if possible to convince you, and hopefully, to stop you, from pretentiously imposing yourself on Mexicans… I am here to entreat you to use your money, your status and your education to travel in Latin America. Come to look, come to climb our mountains, to enjoy our flowers. Come to study. But do not come to help.”

I see where he’s coming from as I witness hundreds of U.S. Americans and Europeans crowding into Chiapas to help the poor Mexicans. They all have good intentions. But many of us think that the poor Mexicans need to “develop,” since their country has that awful biased label that we all use – an “under-developed” country. And we think that this development requires a television, a two-car garage, and a flush toilet in every home. However, exporting our own way of life, with its massive appetite for wreaking havoc across the planet, is not going to help any of us. Instead, I think it’s the other way around. We are under-developed in sustainability and cooperation, and we have a lot to learn from those cultures that are more developed in these areas, like that of the Zapatistas.

So, belatedly, I decided to follow the Zapatista man’s (and Ivan Illich’s) advice, and go home. After four years of teaching and learning from the Zapatistas, I flew back to the U.S. for good. The United States is my country, and this is where I can make the most effective, positive impact to change my culture for the better.

I was thrilled to learn that there is a movement to build cooperative communities in the United States. I now find myself in one of those communities – Light Morning – and I’m happy to be seeking that kinder, more loving alternative.

Here we are truly “under-developed” in a lot of ways. We are working on re-learning all that knowledge that our great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers had. Since we cook and heat with wood, how do we harvest the wood from the land so that the forest stays healthy and sustains for future generations? How do we harvest enough wood to keep us going throughout the year, especially during the cold winter?

Since we grow much of our own food, which crops are most productive, which are best for this climate, which are most nutritious, and which ones are best for which season? When do we plant each crop? How do we make sure the soil is healthy and productive for years to come? How do we protect those plants from weeds without poisoning the land? How do we store crops to last through the winter? And where do we get healthy seeds from in the first place? For a so-called simple lifestyle, it sure is complex. And it’s hard to rediscover this lost knowledge.

In Chiapas, the Zapatistas are fighting for the preservation of this very knowledge. In Mexico and all over the world, indigenous groups are under enormous pressure to walk away from their subsistence lifestyles and join the folks who strive for a two-car garage, a television, and a flush toilet. However, most of the people who strive for those luxuries only wind up losing their land, their autonomy, and their community, while they work for meager wages in some sweatshop assembling athletic shoes for wealthy teenagers, barely making enough to feed themselves. A tiny percentage of the world population consumes the vast majority of its resources, while the majority live like that sweatshop worker. We need to do better than that – not just out of compassion, but out of necessity.

At Light Morning we’ve done away with the two-car garage, the television, and the flush toilet. We have an organic garden, we compost our waste, and we get by comfortably using a fraction of the water and fuel that folks in the “modern” world use. We hope to share knowledge and goods with local gardeners, farmers, and other neighbors. And we hope to keep learning a lot more. It’s only a modest beginning. We’re re-learning how to live sustainably, and it’s a long, winding road that we’ve barely begun to tread. I thank my Zapatista brothers and sisters for pushing me onto that road. I wish them luck in their struggle, as I begin my own journey here in the mountains of Virginia.

I renounced my friendship with him. When he and my mom got back together a few weeks later, I regarded him with cold indifference. I even gave away the dulcimer. He feared my presence, and I hated his. I would never have guessed that one day he would be like a dear uncle to me, and that I would have one of the most profound experiences of my life with him.

Eventually Mike and my mom broke up for good and lost touch. They moved on. My mom dated other men, and Mike eventually married somebody. He was just a bitter memory for me, and that bitterness slowly faded. Years later, my mom ran into him again, and they became friends. By then I was a little more mature and in my twenties, so I no longer hated him or even resented him. But he still feared me, so my mom and I decided to play a prank on him.

My mom made plans to meet him at a small cafe. What she didn’t tell him was that I was coming too. My mom and I arrived early and sat at separate tables while we waited for him to arrive. When he walked in I recognized him. His mustache had faded to gray, and he had lost some hair on his head. He was a little chubbier, but still had the same smiling eyes and sad eyebrows that slanted downwards on each side, making him look like a gentle, kind soul. I watched him sit and talk to my mom for a few minutes, completely oblivious to me several feet away.

Finally I strolled over casually and said, “Hi, Mom.” Mike glanced at me and quickly became silent. His eyes darted around nervously. I sat down with them and smiled. “Don’t worry, Mike. I don’t hate you anymore,” I said laughing. He relaxed a little bit. Then we sat and caught up for a half hour or so.

My mom and Mike remained good friends for years. I would see Mike on and off, and enjoy his silly little musings about Bob the Wonder Dog (his wiener dog that he successfully personified into cartoon-character status for us), alien abductions (with which he had an odd obsession for years), outer space and science fiction and physics, and life in general. Mike had a goofy sense of humor and an expansive imagination. He was sharp and witty, and could provide the most amusing commentary for any situation. He made us laugh endlessly. He called my mom “Shelly,” a nickname of hers that few others had used, and eventually started calling me “Sweet Potato,” a nickname that my mom gave me. The funny thing was how he said it – casually as if it were in fact my real name. “Hi, Sweet Potato. How’s Mexico? Any more digestive problems?” Sometimes he would just call me “Sweety.”

Mike was also a “glass-is-half-empty” kind of guy. He was terribly impatient and skeptical. He would shoot down any idea that was remotely idealistic and complain endlessly if something didn’t fit his standards. Sometimes I sarcastically called him my little ray of sunshine. Somehow, even when Mike complained about things he was funny. We would just laugh at his witty commentary, and tease him about his whiney, nasal voice. Sometimes that would irritate him, but he always forgave us.

In recent years Mike’s health went downhill. After a couple of car accidents he had back and neck problems, and later he had some kind of nerve and muscle problem where he would suddenly lose control of his muscles and shudder or fall. He also had terrible headaches. Numerous doctors were baffled about his condition. Some had no idea what it was, and others hypothesized things ranging from MS to Lou Gherig’s disease, one giving him only six months to live. At least one doctor thought he might gradually lose control of his muscles and nerves until he would be paralyzed. Mike talked a lot about his fear of being incapacitated. He said that he would never want to live in a state where he could no longer take care of himself; he would rather die. He feared he wouldn’t have the courage or even the ability to kill himself if it got to that point. Sometimes he got depressed and had suicidal thoughts. This was a very stressful time, and in the midst of this Mike went through a very painful divorce.

There’s a lot more to Mike’s story that I couldn’t possibly cover in one essay, or even in a book. He lived a whole childhood, adolescence, and first marriage before I even met him. He had a whole second marriage in the space where my mom and I lost touch with him. There was a lot of tragedy and sadness in his life. He had a difficult childhood with an abusive, alcoholic father. He had a son from his first marriage that he never had a close relationship with. I can’t explain Mike’s choices or apologize for any pain he might have caused. Mike made the kinds of mistakes that human beings make. Mike always meant well, and wanted to make up for his mistakes. He didn’t always know how to do it. Personally, I think he was obsessed with alien abductions because he really wished he could be whisked up to another planet, where he could flee the troubles of this one.

During this difficult period of his divorce and his declining health Mike stayed at my mom’s apartment one summer. He had nowhere to go, since he had lost his home in the divorce and was figuring out what to do. He was especially sick that summer, and was usually in constant pain and very moody. I visited them for a couple weeks. Things were tense between him and my mom. They were crowded in her little apartment together, and they really got on each other’s nerves. But we still managed to have a lot of fun, drinking beer and sharing silly stories. My mom helped him set up a profile on a dating website. On his profile he insisted on writing bizarre stories about alien abductions, or strange ramblings about outer space. This was disastrous for his dating career, but nevertheless made us laugh a lot.

After my visit I sent Mike an email. I told him that back when I was a teenager I gave away that beautiful dulcimer he made me, and I was really sorry about that. But I wanted to let him know how much I appreciated that beautiful gift anyway. He didn’t email me back about that, which didn’t surprise me. Mike was a sweetheart, but wasn’t good at sharing his sentimental feelings. I was just satisfied that I got that off my chest, and I knew he must have appreciated the gesture.

That same year he sold most of his belongings in an estate sale. Since he had lost his home in the divorce, he had no place to keep his things he had accumulated over the years. He was a talented carpenter and builder, and had hundreds of things he had made with his hands – tables, dulcimers, model airplanes, and other things. All of it was put on sale, and in one heartbreaking afternoon he watched strangers pick through his most personal items, pay money, and take them away.

There was one thing he didn’t sell. He set aside the first dulcimer he ever made and gave it to my mom. He told her that it was for me. “It’s not the prettiest one,” he said, “but it has the best sound.” Later when I visited my mom she gave it to me and told me the story. That was Mike’s belated reply to my email. He always spoke better with actions rather than words when it came to sentimental things.

The divorce had wiped Mike out financially, he wasn’t able to work anymore, and now he was on disability for his health condition. He also didn’t know which doctors to believe or trust, and thought that he really might die in a matter of months. Luckily he still had his 401k money, and a steady, if meager, stream of income through his disability. So after living in a mobile home in Michigan for a while, he decided to take off and do some of the things he had always wanted to do. Already in his 50’s, he embarked on a new life.

Mike wanted to live somewhere warm. He moved to a nudist trailer park in Arizona. He thought he would spend many days basking naked in the sun and watching hot babes swim in a clear blue pool. Unfortunately, the trailer park was not what he expected. There were primarily older couples, and the desert was surprisingly chilly most days. My mom and I chatted with him online so we could see each other on our webcams. When he popped up on that tiny screen, in that tiny little trailer, it looked like a pretty grim, lonely setting. But he would smile big, so happy to see us. He would say something like, “Shelly, you look so pretty today.” When he would see me, he would say, “Oh, look. There’s Sweety!” And then he would whine about the old, naked, wrinkly couples while we laughed and laughed.

Shortly after that I suggested that he come live in Mexico near me. I had been living in southern Mexico in the mountains of Chiapas for a few years during the fall, winter, and spring. Granted, I wasn’t in a warm, tropical part of Mexico, but he could still live there pretty cheap, have new experiences, and hang out with me. He decided to give it a try.

I remember meeting him in the Mexico City airport. He was sitting at an airport bar and drinking a beer with a wide grin on his face. He was so excited to be somewhere new, to try to shed his worries, and to have a fresh beginning. I reserved the apartment next to me for him, and we were neighbors for a few months in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas.

Mike had the biggest heart, and that heart went out to everybody he met. He always wanted to buy drinks for me and my friends and give money to the poor people on the street. He was heartbroken seeing the poor kids selling candy, or the old women barefoot on the streets, selling handmade crafts or begging for change. He bought all he could from poor vendors, even when he didn’t want what they were selling. He would take random drunk men to the local cantina and pay for their tequila. Sometimes it was just that ridiculous – drunks living on the street taking advantage of Mike for free beer and tequila. I became protective of Mike, and urged him to curb some of that spending. But giving made him happy. I think it made him feel good to be able to make somebody else happy, even if it was a group of drunks for only one fleeting afternoon. My friends enjoyed his kindess and eccentricities.

This was the time that I saw Mike at his best. He was happy, glowing, and vibrant. He would walk with a cane but hardly ever needed it. Sometimes he even got up and danced. During this time he was rarely in pain. We walked together everywhere, to bars, cafes, restaurants, and parties. Some people were confused and thought he may be my older husband. It got cumbersome to explain my rather complicated relationship with him, so finally I just told people he was my uncle. And that’s how he became Uncle Mike.

Mike and I went to the beach, saw the jungle and the Mayan ruins, and shared many meals, glasses of wine, and beers together. My favorite memories, however, were the most mundane ones. Every morning he would walk out his door and stroll down the hall past my apartment making up a song out of my name in Spanish, “Alegría, alegría, alegría…” I would open my door and invite him in for coffee and oatmeal. He always sang silly songs when he was in a good mood. In Mexico, he would sing, “The ants go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah…” then make up goofy little rhymes for each verse. One of my favorite things to do was to watch him strum a guitar and improvise ridiculous songs. He always made me and my friends laugh.

But Mike was also very lonely in Mexico. He couldn’t speak Spanish, so he had a hard time striking up conversations with strangers. Being a very affectionate person, he also wanted a girlfriend very badly, and the cultural and language barriers made that even more difficult on top of his unusual personality. Also, San Cristóbal wasn’t exactly the warm climate he was seeking. Being in the mountains, it got pretty chilly at night, and homes don’t have central heating. So we would spend many of our evenings shivering under layers of clothes or under blankets.

One week he decided he was going to leave. My friends and I told him not to go, but he had his mind made up. He booked a plane ticket and packed up all his things. His last night there I stayed up and talked with him late into the night until I could barely keep my eyes open. I wanted to enjoy every last moment I had with him. The next morning I hugged him goodbye and watched the taxi take him away. I thought about how I would probably never hear Mike singing “Alegría” in the hallway again, and cried.

After Mexico Mike lived in Jamaica for a while, and then Florida. In 2008 he bought a house down in Fort Myers, Florida, and was finally settling down somewhere for good. He invited my mom and me to visit him any time, and we finally decided to come visit him at the end of 2009, right after Christmas. However, a tragic turn of events would alter those plans.

On Tuesday, December 15, Mike was riding his scooter. One of his recent hobbies was target shooting, and he regularly went to a shooting range about a half hour away from his house. He was on his way back from there. He was probably feeling especially energized and happy. He knew my mom would be there in about a week to visit for three months. He knew I was coming for a week or so too. He had just bought new beds for the extra bedrooms in his house and fitted them with brand new sheets. He had the rooms freshly painted.

That day I was at my mom’s house in Michigan for the holidays. We received a call that Mike was in critical condition in the hospital. He had crashed on his scooter. We later learned that his rear tire had blown out because it could not handle the weight of the guns that he had stored in a makeshift container he had built on the back of the scooter.

The next few days are a blur to me. My mom and I were frantic. Mike was way down in Florida, far away from us and far away from any of his family. I flew down two days later with his 87-year-old mother, Prim, who hadn’t flown in a plane in decades, and my mom drove down. Mike’s son also came down for a few days, hoping to help and to have some kind of resolution in his estranged relationship with his father. I only met Mike’s son briefly, and can’t even begin to know the complexities of that situation, but I hope that he was able to somehow make peace with his dad. Mike also has a twin sister and a brother who were very concerned. Neither of them were able to fly down for many complicated reasons. However, they kept close contact with us, helping in any other way they could.

The following week was a nightmare. He was unconscious with brain damage, some broken ribs, a broken collar bone, and a punctured lung. The doctors told us he could have survived the broken bones and the punctured lung, but the brain damage made his future very uncertain. He had been wearing a helmet, but the impact was just too powerful. They had him hooked up to a ventilator and heavily sedated to keep his intracranial pressure down, which could have further damaged his brain. Day after day we watched and waited. We sat with him and softly said enouraging, loving things to him. I wanted to bring my guitar in and sing to him, but the nurses said that would be too much stimulation, so I would have to wait.

On the fifth day his pressure went up and wouldn’t stay down. They told us now we couldn’t talk to him or touch him at all, since that could further increase his pressure and be damaging to him. All we could do was sit and watch and wait.

On the following Wednesday, December 23, the trauma physician gave us heartbreaking news. He said the brain damage was so extensive that there was little to no hope of recovery, and if he did recover he would never be able to bathe himself, feed himself, or go to the bathroom by himself. He would require 24-hour care for the rest of his life, and he may not ever speak or recognize us. We all looked at each other, and knew deep in our hearts that Mike would never want to live that way. So we were faced with the most difficult decision any of us ever had to make. We knew we had to let him go.

That was hard enough for me and my mom to think about, but I can’t imagine how hard that was for Prim. It’s absolutely unreal, unfair, and unnatural for a parent to see a child die. Prim looked completely helpless and defeated that day. I wanted so badly to take away her pain, but there was nothing any of us could do.

At 11:15am the nurses started the morphine drip to relieve his pain, and took him off the ventilator. Mike’s mom was too heartbroken to be in the room, so she went downstairs to be outside in the breeze. My mom and I took turns sitting with her, and then sitting with him during those final hours, talking to him and just being with him. They removed all the tubes and things from his face and neck. A nurse even put a flowery quilt over him. And then it was as if he was just sleeping. He was calm and peaceful, his eyes were closed, and he was snoring.

It’s really uncertain whether or not unconscious or brain damaged patients can hear us, or how aware they are of our presence. The doctor told us that he may be able to hear us, but also that the parts of his brain that were damaged would affect his ability to understand speech. As I spoke to him I thought about this and wondered what his experience was.

Was it like being asleep? Was he dreaming? Could he feel my hand holding his? Could he hear my voice? If so, could he recognize it? Could he understand the words I was telling him? After a while, I was only sure of one solid thing. I believe that the spirit can feel the spirit. Whatever level of awareness we are in, we can all feel love. So mostly what I did was just sit there and love him. I just watched him and focused all my love on him.

Those hours were some of the hardest hours of my life. It’s a helpless feeling to sit there and watch your loved one die, and know there’s nothing you can do about it. There’s nothing you can do about it, because you know that’s what’s best for him. You know he would never want to depend on life support, or live like a vegetable. Your heart screams out. You would do anything at all to change it.

You start to doubt your decision. You try to think ways around this awful predicament. You want to turn back in time. You want to be able to run down there the day of the accident and grab him and stop him from getting on that scooter… And then you’re resigned to the fact that what’s done is done. He already left on the scooter, and he already had the accident. He already has the brain damage. And you heard what the doctor said – little to no chance of recovery. And no hope that he would ever be free and independent and able to live on his own terms. The heartbreaking fact was that Mike was already gone. With the extent of brain damage he suffered, he would never be the Mike we knew again. And he would never be able to live how he had wanted to live. Your mind covers these facts over and over again, but your heart doesn’t want to accept them.

I feared what his final moment would be like. Would it be painful and dramatic? Would he have to struggle for his last breath? The nurse insisted that it would be peaceful, and that the morphine was keeping him out of pain. My mom and I held his hands, stroked his arms or his face, talked or sat silently, and just waited.

His left eye was sealed shut from being a little swollen and crusted with blood from the accident, but sometimes his right eye would open slightly. I would lean over and look into the eye, but it was blank. It was the blank look of somebody who was dreaming, or elsewhere in some way. It looked just like when the nurses would lift his eyelids to check his pupils, just staring and empty. Was Mike in there?

Around 5:30pm my mom left to drive Prim back to the house. Prim was exhausted and needed to be somewhere comfortable. As I sat in the room alone with Mike, I thought about how I had wanted to sing to him. Music is one of the most basic levels of communication. If Mike couldn’t understand words, he might at least be soothed by a simple melody, especially if it were one he knew. I didn’t have my guitar, but I could still sing. I remembered one simple melody, so I sang it…

“The ants go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah…”

I don’t know how the real song goes, or even how Mike sang it exactly. So I made up my own rhymes. I made up silly rhymes, or rhymes of love… “The ants go marching two by two, I’m so glad I’m here with you… “

I sang slowly and softly and watched his face. Sometimes his heart would slow down, or his eye would open slightly. Was he listening? I thought he must hear me on some level, so I just kept singing that song over and over again, making up new rhymes and repeating old ones. I held his hand and stroked his arm. I started to lose a sense of time. It was just me and Mike and the song.

And then, as easily as one would blink, he just stopped. His breathing stopped and his heart stopped, all at once. There was no struggle, no pain, and no drama. One moment he was there, and the next moment he was gone. I stopped mid-song in a strange state of shock. I was shocked at how easy and peaceful it was. And then I was overcome with emotion. He was really gone. Yet, I felt he was there too.

When people have near-death experiences, many of them report seeing themselves from above. Many of them remember details of things in the room that they would have no way of witnessing with their eyes or from their perspective in the hospital bed. I felt maybe at that moment Mike could see me too. Maybe he was looking down at me looking at him. Maybe he was saying goodbye to me, saying goodbye to him.

I leaned over and whispered in his ear, “I love you, Mike.” And then I laid against him and hugged him. He was still warm. I cried.

Some people believe our loveds ones go to heaven, and then watch over us from there. Others believe in reincarnation, but that there is a transitional period, and maybe during that transitional period our loved ones are in another realm of existence, still watching over us in some way. I believe it’s probably some combination of these things, yet more complicated than we will ever grasp. Either way, I like to imagine that Mike saw me there, and that he also saw my mom at the house with Prim. He saw her drive back to the hospital to pick me up. He saw us all together for the next two weeks, mourning his loss, laughing at happy memories, and crying.

He saw us sleeping in the beds he had bought and made up for us, in the freshly painted rooms he was preparing for us. He saw us sitting together on his swinging chair in front of the house, sipping coffee and talking. He saw us lovingly go through his things. He saw Prim wearing his baseball cap and sweatshirt. He saw my mom and I crack silly jokes to keep Prim from crying. He saw Prim laughing loudly at his kitchen table.

We all want Mike back more badly than ever. But I guess it was just his time to go. Maybe he would have only suffered more. Maybe his mysterious disease would have debilitated him and made him miserable and in pain for years. Maybe he had reached some point of awareness and was ready to move on. Maybe this was his spirit picking a particular time to leave, in a particular manner that would bring us all together to be with him when he left.

Mike left peacefully without pain. He left behind many happy, funny, and touching memories. I remember him singing to me so many times. I will never forget singing to him as he made his grand exit. I will never forget the precious time I spent with him throughout my life, during that final week, and then with his mother during those trying weeks. I feel now as if his mother is my own grandmother, just like I feel like he is my uncle. His spirit lives on in our hearts, and now we will continue to celebrate his life together.

Throughout human history gardeners and farmers have grown and saved their own seed. Generation after generation, seeds were selected from the plants that produced the tastiest, most tender vegetables and fruits. Seeds were also selected from the plants that were able to survive local pests, diseases, and droughts. Those vegetables and fruits were the result of decades and centuries of careful work, and were specifically tailored to match the local conditions and needs of the people who ate them.

Since everything has become more commercialized, most gardeners and farmers buy their seeds from seed companies. Seed companies increasingly sell seeds that are tailored for large mechanized factory farms. These seeds are bred to produce plants that look pretty and are durable so that they can be shipped long distances. Anyone who has eaten apples fresh from a local organic farmer’s orchard knows that in comparison, the taste and texture of supermarket apples resembles something like dry cardboard.

The apple is just one small example of the result of food grown for profit instead of for quality, flavor, and sustainability. It’s a seemingly harmless example; most of us are used to apples that taste like cardboard, so no problem, right? However, seeds are at the heart of our control over our food supply. Most of the seeds that companies sell are hybrid plants that don’t produce good seed themselves. So growers are increasingly more dependent on buying their seeds from companies each year. Do we really want our food supply in the hands of corporations that put maximum profit over all other considerations?

This was the idea in the back of my head when I first heard about Acorn Community. It’s a small intentional community in Virginia that runs its own seed business, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. Their business, however, specializes in heirloom seeds. These are the seed varieties that our grandparents, great grandparents, and great great grandparents have grown and preserved over the years. These are those local, hardy varieties that are rapidly disappearing due to their lack of profitability in the commercial seed market. These are the varieties that we may depend on if one day we can’t depend on large seed corporations for our food supply.

I first arrived at Acorn Community on a Saturday afternoon, and I was sick with some kind of bad cold. I dragged my bags to my room and had barely enough energy to eat and then go straight to bed. The following day I was still sick and exhausted. Normally when I’m living alone in this situation I dread having to cook, clean, wash dishes, and do all the daily routines that are required if you are going to be able to eat and function. However, at Acorn all of that changed.

I slept in and woke up to a full Sunday brunch that somebody else had cooked. I ate scrambled eggs, potatoes, and soysage. Then somebody did my dishes and cleaned up the mess while I wandered back to my room to rest. I dedicated the whole day to relaxing and getting better, while hot, filling meals were prepared for me, and everything was miraculously cleaned up. Being sick at Acorn was almost as good as being sick and pampered at my mom’s house. I was off to a good start.

At both Twin Oaks and Acorn, people are scheduled to do many of the daily tasks like cooking, doing the dishes, and cleaning up. People take turns doing these jobs, and if someone is sick it’s usually not difficult to find a sympathetic person (or somebody who needs the hours) to take the shift. Therefore, on my sick day at Acorn the people who were already scheduled to cover their shifts took care of all my grunt work for me. It was my job to simply get better. And I did!

Acorn Community is just a few miles away from Twin Oaks. There are about 20 members, and a handful to a dozen interns, visitors, and friends are usually staying there at any given time. It is an income sharing egalitarian community like Twin Oaks, and was actually started by a group of Twin Oakers and others in 1994. Twin Oaks was full with a two year waiting list at the time, so it seemed like a logical step. The founding members bought a nearby abandoned farm with a generous loan from Twin Oaks. During the first few years Acorn subsisted with a tinnery crafts business and by making hammocks for Twin Oaks. Now that Twin Oaks is having financial trouble with its hammocks business, Acorn is returning the favor to its parent community by farming some of its seed work to Twin Oaks. I like this example of communities working together to support each other through difficult times.

During the three weeks I stayed at Acorn, I participated in the garden work, cooking, cleaning, hanging out, and learning about seeds. It was fascinating to witness a glimpse of how seeds are grown, processed, and saved. It was also intriguing to see how a small community handles a business. Acorn bought the seed business in the late nineties, and they’ve done a great job of continuing and expanding the company so that it successfully sustains the community.

Since Southern Exposure is owned and run by a community, it’s a worker-owned cooperative. The community members are both the employees and the owners, and they make all their business decisions together by consensus. Being an incoming sharing community, no one member makes a higher wage than another, or is forced to work longer hours than the others. All the members benefit equally from the income made by the business.

If this seems strange to you, think of a small family business. In a family business often all the family members work and are involved in the decision-making. They also all share the income, rather than only one member keeping the income all to himself. Community living involves the same concept, except that it extends the nuclear family boundary to include a wider range of people. It’s a new kind of family, and it really makes sense if your goals include living more sustainably and more economically.

Acorn feels more like a close-knit family than Twin Oaks because of the simple fact that it is smaller. Community-wide meetings are held every week where all members discuss day-to-day matters, proposals, and pressing issues. I like this level of intimacy. The meetings were usually quite energetic and productive. Meeting face-to-face seemed to help a lot when things got controversial or tense. It’s much easier to empathize with somebody when you are looking that person in the eye.

Acorn also felt more relaxed and leniant. For one thing, it was a lot easier cooking for 20 or 30 people than it was cooking for 100 at Twin Oaks, and the shared meals felt a little more intimate. The schedule is more relaxed too. Like Twin Oaks, members are still required to work 42 hours a week, but they are not given specific schedules or required to report their hours. A schedule is filled in for the weekly cooking, cleaning, washing the dishes, and other daily chores. But as far as gardening, maintenance, and the seed business are concerned people are generally trusted to work on what needs doing, and put in their 42 hours a week.

On the one hand, I liked how I was freer to choose what I was going to do from day to day, and it allows for each person to schedule according to his or her own needs. Some people were up working by seven in the morning, while others didn’t wake up until noon and preferred to work in the evenings. On the other hand I can see this system being difficult when people are not putting in their expected workload, or if hours need to be budgeted more efficiently. There is no system to track how many hours are being spent on specific projects. Either way, it seems to work well for Acorn.

Acorners also grow much of their own food, like green beans, carrots, sweet potatoes, and tomatoes. I was there during sweet potato harvesting season, a very exciting time for the sweet potato-lover that I am. We harvested several different varieties, and I was forced to sadly wait while the delicious potatoes were curing in a dry, hot room. While I waited, I had a fantastic time getting to know the people who had so generously prepared my meals and cleaned up after me that first day I arrived. There was plenty of opportunity for good conversation while we were gardening, cooking, processing seeds, or just hanging out. At Acorn there is a diverse array of lifestyles, ages, and personalities, and people for the most part seem to be very open and tolerant of others.

When it was time to go, the sweet potatoes had almost finished curing. I was sad to not be able to sample the different varieties. I suppose that just means I’ll have to go back sometime. I’m very grateful for the time I spent at Acorn, and am looking forward to maintaining contact with the people there. I now have dreams of growing seeds myself in the future, and I have a feeling that this will not be my last visit to Acorn.