At 4:44am, on 4/11/11, Monica Wilson passed beyond the veils. Monica was the great, majestic friend who showed me her Han Dynasty jades and told me the story of her life and tragedy in the Chinese Court more than 2000 years ago ... and I knew this was a story that was mine, too, and I had to write it as a novel.
She touched thousands of people in the Pacific Northwest with her energy and charisma; she steered her complicated, extended family as matriarch and anchor of passionate good sense; she bore and raised four exceptional human beings, helping each of them understand their exceptional past lives; she guided children of the Sakya Monastery sangha through the beginnings of Dharma practice in Buddhist Sunday School.
She read cards and astrology charts for a huge clientele, helping people find balance and hope, while divining the World's Changes in their struggles. She was a glutton for information (oh, Gemini!) and snacked on conspiracies. (We got off on challenging each other.)
Monica's wild intuitive talent was grounded by expert critical thinking, and her leadership of spiritual discussion groups (aimed at really raising consciousness) transformed the strange into the straightforward. For so many people, hanging out with Monica raised our tolerance threshold for weirdness into the stratosphere.
She changed us, her friends and clients, collaborators and onlookers. The space left empty by her passage out of this world into the Other is large.
We will fill it, by becoming the people she taught us to be.
Vale.
