Eve’s housemate, Barbara, had arranged with Eve’s family to save some of her ashes for me to take to Bali for final resting on a Balinese family altar where she had been revered her as a special elder. I had tried a couple of times previously to pick up the ashes from Barbara, but each time something had come up at the last minute to delay he transfer. Finally, in February 2005, we had arranged that I would drive to Sonoma after work on a Friday, en route to a relative’s home in Santa Rosa.
Normally I couldn’t think of leaving work early, but this day I got permission to leave the department around 4:00, to try to get ahead of the rush hour Friday traffic. I anticipated the usual one hour and fifteen-minute journey to take over an hour and a half, traffic permitting. I needn’t have worried about the traffic, for it was so light I was able to let my attention wander away from driving and reflect on my years of friendship with this woman who had called me one of the “daughters of her heart.”
The weather that day was alternately dark and blustery, sunny, and rainy – changing every few minutes the way change-of-season weather sometimes acts. As I approached the old-fashioned town square, it was raining again, but the sun was still visible through the clouds, when a rainbow started to form, deepening into the most intense, brightest, clearest colors I have ever seen.
It was so captivating, I feared that I would get into an accident with my divided attention, so I pulled into a parking lot to enjoy the show. As I watched, the rainbow spread out into a full arc, with one end somewhere near the Sonoma town square and the other end off into the eastern hills. The colors continued to deepen when a second “shadow arc” formed behind the full rainbow and spread into another full rainbow. The second rainbow was brighter than most initial rainbows.
Sitting there in the car I started to laugh as I remembered that Eve had always filled her home with rainbows, cast by dozens of crystals she had hung from every window so that each room would have rainbows at some time of the day. Rainbows, along with unicorns, were Eve’s personal symbols.
While laughing and taking in the splendor of the dual rainbows, I thanked Eve for giving me a special show as I had come to fulfill an old promise made. A few years earlier, we had spent two months together in a mountain village in Bali, each of us intending to work on our memoirs. She was more successful than I and had written pages of experiences, reflections, and descriptions of her times traveling the world. She paced her writing with play periods with the local children. On occasion, we were invited to participate in sacred Hindu ceremonies by the village elders. At those times she was the visiting royalty, and I was the attendant to the “queen.’ Our host had taken a shine to her and gave her the promise that, if someone brought her ashes to him after she passed away, he would place them up on his family altar and revere her in the Balinese way. This honor appealed to her since she had long ago expanded her sense of spirituality to include many ways of understanding God. It seemed fitting that she who had spent most of her life in far-flung places would end up on a Balinese altar.
The timing of the dual rainbow show was so serendipitous that I was sure that Eve, in her new interdimensional travels had blessed me with the experience. A few minutes later, after the rainbows had slowly faded, I reluctantly headed down the street, preparing to wait for Barbara to get out of work and meet me. I was excited to share with her what had just happened. Having lived with Eve for several years, she shared Eve’s love of rainbows and the ephemeral decoration of their small home with dancing light.
As I drove further down Highway 12, it began to sprinkle again, and a new rainbow started to appear in the same manner and location as the first. Since I had time to kill and since the rainbow looked like it was nearby, I decided to chase down the “end of the rainbow.” I guessed that it might lie in the old California fort or mission area, but when I got there, it still appeared to be a few more blocks away. I wound my way behind the old mission, getting closer with each zigzag until I turned into a dead-ended street and there it was. Straight ahead in the middle of the hillside, the rainbow came fully down to ground completely enveloping a huge white cross! As I watched, the partial arc again expanded into a fully patterned, brilliantly lit complete rainbow, then began to create the second partial arc shadow rainbow.
In awe, I watched this new show and remembered that several times in our relationship Eve had mentioned a promise she had given Barbara. She had stated, “If there is a way to give you a sign from the beyond, I will.” I had just witnessed the fulfillment of Eve’s promise to Barbara.
I stayed there until the rainbows faded into memory and hurried to join Barbara and share what I had just experienced. She had taken note of the rainbow on her way home from work, but from her vantage point only saw that it began in town somewhere. We talked about Eve’s repeated promise, and she felt comforted by the reassurance delivered via the rainbow. When it was time for me to take possession of the ashes and leave, Barbara was reluctant to release them to me. She felt that she still needed to do one more personal closure ritual and that the ashes would help her with that. Since I had no immediate plans to return to Bali, I agreed to leave them behind and collect them at a future date.
During the holidays that year, I was going to be driving through Sonoma once again and sent Barbara a Christmas card alerting her that I would be in touch to arrange a new date to collect the ashes. A week later I had a message on my phone that Barbara had died in the earlier in the year. When I followed up with the person who left the message, I learned that Barbara had died within two months of the day of the rainbow due to cancer.
With Barbara’s passing, the household was cleared out and Eve’s ashes had disappeared. Upon reflection, I realize that it was never about my promise to deliver the ashes to Bali. It was really about Eve’s promise to Barbara to send a sign to her that there is life after death. The ashes and my determination to get them from Barbara were just preparation to the main event – seeing Eve’s rainbow ending in the cross, the strongest western symbol of spirit and life everlasting.