That was her right shoulder, and she was a righty. I had to help her with some of her daily functions. We were a team. We would recover from all this. We even decided to take a trip to Florida to get away a bit and avoid a New York winter. We were happy snowbirds flying away from the problem of the broken boiler in the apartment we shared. That damned boiler broke almost every winter. I had lived in that same place for thirty-eight years, the last thirty of which were with Merlin. The two-room apartment was just fine for us, but was increasingly a problem in the winter.
So, it was off to Florida, where we traveled extensively, implicitly looking for a place where we might eventually retire. We put in hundreds of miles cruising up and down the state. We wound up, that first time, at a Miami Beach condo that a cousin let us use. But we didn’t like the lifestyle in South Florida—noisy, crowded, expensive, and too hard to navigate, park, and find services. Eventually, we rented in Daytona Beach, during the winters of 2001 to 2005. Then we moved there as permanent residents because we had learned to love the beach area. And there, in 2006, Merlin suffered another fall. This time she broke her knee.
It didn’t require surgery, but she needed a wheelchair. Again, she endured all the discomforts without complaint. Her falls were draining her mobility and energy. And for the first time in her life, she looked older than she was. Just as her knee was healing, she fell again. I was, by then, holding on to her as much as I could. Who wouldn’t want to hold on to Merlin, weakened as she was, but always so beautiful, so full of good and loving energy? A broken pelvis put her back into the wheelchair again.
Merlin was in need of help. I did what was needed the first year. We could even put the wheelchair in the car and take long rides we both enjoyed—watching a sunset, the bridges opening over the Halifax River, or dolphins playing in the channel, sharing a chocolate milkshake, enjoying new neighborhoods. It was a joy to be there for her and with her. We still had our quality of life.
It was after the various falls and the long recuperative periods that a general practitioner said Merlin should see a neurologist. The falls were a sign of something more serious. I didn’t think we were in denial, but why this sudden seriousness? I was a romantic and never took into consideration that this could happen to Merlin. She was getting regular therapy for her injuries, and no other doctor had suggested a neurologist. When I noticed her more rapid decline, I thought we were just aging. I didn’t think it was anything more than that—nothing neurological. We went for so many tests. Western medicine seems happy to provide some terrible diagnosis. But, of course, I was in a state of devastation and despair when I heard the news. The doctor told us she had pseudobulbar palsy.
Of course, the doctor didn’t tell us much—or at least not enough. We had to go online to read the details. Healthline.com, one of those generic medical websites, spelled it out:
Patients with pseudobulbar palsy have progressive difficulty with activities that require the use of muscles in the head and neck that are controlled by particular cranial nerves. The first noticeable symptom is often slurred speech. Over time, speech, chewing, and swallowing become progressively more difficult, eventually becoming impossible.
“The prognosis,” they declared, “was quite poor.”
After using an experimental drug for six months, the doctor said, “There is no known cause, no known cure. She will lose her ability to speak, and the disease will kill her.”
“How long does she have?” I asked him, with tears flowing down my cheeks. “There is no timetable,” he replied. “Take her home and make her comfortable.” The glib indifference with which the doctor delivered the news led me to feel a sense of complete hopelessness.
There are lots of things in life that can scare someone, but Merlin was not one to be scared. It harkens back, almost comically, to what I call the “Psycho story.” We were sitting in our apartment when she first moved in, and I said to her, “Merlin, one of the great movies of all time, Psycho, is on. Do you want to watch it?”
“No,” Merlin said emphatically, “I don’t like to be scared.”
“You’ll like it. It’s interesting. Who doesn’t like a good horror movie?”
“Me,” she said. “I’ve seen too many horrors. I’ve traveled to places where women are stoned to death.”
“This isn’t real. It’s just a movie.”
“I don’t need to pretend stuff. The reality is horrible enough,” she explained.
It was clear, then, that Merlin was not a person who treated life trivially, though, in fact, she seemed to be getting her information from other than the conventional sources—not from print, TV, or other mass media. She didn’t need to read or hear the news. She got her news from a deeper source. I took her explanation so seriously that I turned it into a code word, a running joke of a kind. Any time the movie was being shown, I’d tell her, “Psycho is on.”
“It’s not real life,” she’d say, “so let’s skip it.”
If some terrible event was reported in the news, it was a Psycho moment. When Merlin was diagnosed, that was a Psycho moment, though this time, we only said it with our eyes.
She was fully coherent. She was very specific. “I don’t want to go to a nursing home.” Merlin was profoundly aware of her condition, knowing intuitively, physically, and emotionally that her life on Earth was finite.
“I just want to stay home with you,” she said.
“Of course,” I said. “No nursing home. Never.”
Oh love, what a gift Merlin always gave me. What a gift to be home with Merlin. But I realized I needed more help.
I hired two women, Shirley and Dorothy, to take care of Merlin seven days a week. They did everything for her during her last two years—all the necessary and personal things. They were there from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm. I took care of her the other fifteen hours a day.
I held her hand. I read to her and was attentive to all of her needs. It gave me joy just to be there for her. Nearer the end, when she couldn’t speak at all, we still communicated by her squeezing my hand. She could still move letters around on a magnetic slate I bought for her. I made a list of things she needed, and I would put her hand on mine and move my hand down the list, slowly, and she would indicate by blinking or squeezing my hand where I should stop so I knew what she wanted.
A friend of mine recommended VITAS, a nondenominational hospice care provider. They sent a medical doctor to screen us, and in the last week, they provided twenty-four-hour nursing care, though I continued to employ Shirley and Dorothy because they were such loyal helpers for Merlin. VITAS also asked if they could send a clinical practice chaplain, and though neither of us were ever practitioners of any traditional faith, I said “yes.”
A middle-aged woman I will call Elizabeth arrived, dressed neatly and simply. “Maybe I can help to reduce the sting of death.”
“I need help,” I told her. Of course, I wanted Merlin to have comfort, but I confessed, “I don’t want to live.”
Though VITAS did not send a chaplain for specific religious purposes, Elizabeth was Christian, but she never asked us if we wanted to pray. She was, in the best sense of the word, a professional “listener.” But she did tell us, “Merlin, you will be with your Father in heaven.”
I took her aside that same day, and I showed her Merlin’s books and papers. Elizabeth had never even heard of When God Was a Woman, but she was receptive so I gave her a copy.
The next day when she came for her daily visit, she said, “I read some of the book and it’s fascinating. It will change what I do.”
After talking with me for a few more days, she actually said, “Merlin represents a new concept. She is not just telling us things we have forgotten, she has started a new religion.”
“I’m so glad you like the book.”
“It’s more than that. It’s important to me. Even you, Lenny, are a big part of it.”
�
�I don’t understand,” I insisted.
“If Merlin is revealing truths, you are an original disciple. You are going to spread the word.”
With that comment alone, she gave me a way to cope. As consumed as I was by the moment, I had the hope that I would be able to carry on Merlin’s work. To see how this woman, Elizabeth, in just a few short days of knowing us, validated what Merlin herself envisioned—that the Goddess religion was the savior and the saver of the planet—I realized how important it would be for me to keep spreading the word. There we were, clearly in Merlin’s last hours on Earth, and she was still awakening people and changing their lives.
Her daughters came as soon as I called them. Jenny flew in from California and Cynthia from Paris. As painful as the circumstances were, Merlin’s eyes still clearly showed her joy in their being with her. They were always the love of her life. They sat with her, talked to her, gave all the comfort that loving daughters could possibly bestow. No mother and daughters could have been closer, and it was hard for me to watch how they were already grieving for their mother.
Even in her last days, Merlin and I had an unbreakable bond. She never lost her ability to understand. The process of her dying took only days more after her daughters arrived.
It had been weeks and weeks that she hadn’t spoken, but I sat with her in the last days, and I, for sure, was crying.
“I love you,” I said.
“I love you, too,” she echoed.
Her caregiver, Dorothy, was with me at that moment, and we were both quite startled. Those words were the last Merlin ever uttered. Two weeks later, she died at 4:52 am on February 23, 2011, in our home in Daytona Beach.
Merlin, love of my life, I only live for you. Your written words changed the world. The words you spoke to me transformed my heart.
[contents]
poems by
lenny schneir
Lenny and Merlin in front of their apartment
at 184 6th Avenue, New York City, 1999.
A Note about My Poems
These are not just poems. They are a short story that is still being told. How did she do it? How did Merlin manage to research and write her books? Merlin had no blueprints to follow, no shoulders to stand on, no roadmap, no compass. She’d never been to any of those places before. She didn’t speak the languages. No computer, no word processor, no technology, very little money. She hitchhiked in Lebanon, Greece, Turkey, Crete, and Cypress. She used buses and trains, slept outside, slept in caves, found scattered clues often separated by hundreds of miles. Most of the evidence had been destroyed. Was she carrying a typewriter or taking notes? Hundreds of pages of notes?
Either way, it sounds close to impossible, yet Merlin gathered enough information for When God Was a Woman and Ancient Mirrors of Womanhood and wrote them in two distinctly different styles: prose and poetry. How did she do it? I was in awe of her strength and courage. I learned from her, and these poems are a small indication of that. In fact, I worshipped her!
—Lenny Schneir
Meeting Merlin
I thought I was a free spirit,
then I met Merlin.
I thought I was a nonconformist,
then I met Merlin.
I thought I was creative,
then I met Merlin.
I thought I was a rebel,
then I met Merlin.
I thought I was smart.
You get the idea.
Get Stoned
Get stoned on Merlin.
On what?
Words, wisdom, poetry and love
in order to feel her presence.
Levitate your mind and body,
reach for your own potential.
Get stoned on Merlin.
On what?
Friendship, loyalty, trust and love.
She is with you always,
returned the Goddess to you,
trusting you to carry Her torch.
Get stoned on Merlin.
On what?
Peace, tolerance, understanding and love,
enlightenment, endarkenment, day and night
time, space, calendars and life,
truth, morality, equality and facts.
Get stoned on Merlin.
On what?
Taste, style, vocabulary and language
energy, gusto, bravery and courage,
knowledge, learning, scholarship and knowing.
Trust the Goddess to guide you.
Leave Me Alone
Leave me alone with Merlin.
Leave me alone with my poetry.
I will bury myself with knowledge and wisdom.
Your words transformed me.
It is you and me as always,
but you are not here.
You are inside and I
carry you like you carried me.
You were the doctor,
I was your patient.
You cured me.
You were the teacher,
I was your student.
You educated me.
You were the artist,
I was your canvas.
With strokes of your brush,
I was born.
You were the detective,
I had no clue.
You were the lighthouse,
I was lost at sea.
You were the lending library,
I read your books.
You were the calendar,
it was my time.
You were the universe,
I shared your space.
You were the Goddess who moved me.
I am happiest alone with you.
Dearest Merlin, I will always love you.
My Lady Luck
Don’t want to win the lottery
Or play the 3-shell game
Or hit the jackpot
To live on Easy Street.
All I want is Merlin.
Don’t want, according to Hoyle,
To spin the wheel,
To make easy money
With an ace in the hole.
All I want is Merlin.
Don’t want to be the king of hearts
Or go straight
Or hold four queens
Or draw new cards.
All I want is Merlin.
Don’t want a big bankroll
To buy blue chips.
Don’t want to be a wild card
Or a royal flush.
All I want is my Lady Luck.
Where Do You Live
I live in the eternal Grief Hotel.
The hotel has many guests
But they are invisible.
I do not want to mourn alone.
You can’t leave.
There is no check-out time;
Lots of baggage but no luggage.
Where is the bellhop?
I live on a high floor
With no view and no fire escape.
There are no restaurants or restrooms,
No pool or beach,
But there is an ocean—
The grief ocean;
It floods the hotel.
There is no day
There is no night, no date
No month, no year
No time.
Every moment is the same—
No weather.
Not cold, not hot,
No rain, no snow,
No sun, no wind,
No rooms, no furniture,
No room service, no doors,
No windows, no halls.
No past, present or future.
No exit.
No way out.
[
contents]
merlin in her
own words
Merlin on “our bench,” 6th Avenue,
between Prince and Spring streets, NYC, 1996.
Merlin in Her Own Words:
Excerpts from Talks and Articles
Selected by Lenny Schneir
I have all but memorized much of what Merlin wrote. Some passages stand out for me, and I have kept them in a journal of my own, considering them the core of Merlin’s research, teachings, and accomplishments. Those passages are compiled here as a reminder of what she did and with the hope that those reading them will go further, using the more complete citations at the end of this book, to more fully read Merlin’s work. The first quote appeared on the first page of her book The Paradise Papers: The Suppression of Women’s Rites and gave rise to the new title, When God Was a Woman, when the publisher, Dial Press, reissued it in 1976.
—Lenny Schneir
“In the beginning, people prayed to the Creatress of Life, the Mistress of Heaven. At the very dawn of religion, God was a woman. Do you remember?”
—When God Was a Woman
“The Goddess is not just the female version of God. She represents a different concept. While the Judeo-Christian God is transcendent, the Goddess is located ‘within each individual and all things in nature.’ ”
—Time Magazine (May 6, 1991)
“Women are beginning to feel strong and trust their perceptions. We know we don’t like war. We don’t support the destruction and pollution of the planet. We don’t understand why someone has to dominate. It’s an incredible new way to look at the world, and it may be one way to stop the destruction of the planet.
“Men are realizing … it makes much more sense for men and women to talk to one another like fellow human beings. … The myths and legends of the female deity offer a very different picture of womanhood than those of the male-oriented religions of today. The Goddess is back.”
Merlin Stone Remembered Page 10
