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| Maya Angelou |
The religion of my West African ancestors had never been one of heaven and hell. This much I understood. The other tidbits about ancestor veneration I'd learned from books, could recite or regurgitate back if asked. However, those facts held as much meaning in my life as laundry detergent. When I received word of Maya Angelou's passing, I was heart-broken. I loved her spirit, her poetry, her books, her inspiration that had kept me going on many a rainy day. She had lived a full life, and yet grief kept tugging at me like an undertow. But it was what pulled me back that suddenly opened my heart to the spirituality of my ancestors. For Maya had come to dwell within me.
When someone you love, whose presence has been foundational to your sense of peace, security and joy, dies, that person's spirit does not fly away to heaven or (if they were a bit too fun-loving) to that other place. Rather it spiritually clones itself and makes a home in the soul of each and every person who continues to love and need her. It takes the merest of whispers to call on her, to feel her loving embrace, to dance with her in joy.
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