Where Stream Meets Boulder: In Memory of My Beloved Friend and Fellow Bewilderness Traveler, Christie Bates

I've heard it said
That people come into our lives for a reason
Bringing something we must learn
And we are led
To those who help us most to grow
If we let them
And we help them in return
Well, I don't know if I believe that's true
But I know I'm who I am today
Because I knew you

“For Good”, Stephen Lawrence Schultz, Wicked

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After reading the poem twice and offering jump-off lines for our free writing in Bewilderness Writing classes, I will invite writers to “go wherever the poem took them”, or offer an alternative line, like “what I really want to say is…”.

I started this piece at least ten times since Christie's death from cancer, six months from diagnosis, on Feb. 23, each time the words dwindling to vapors of what I was really trying to say. 

What I want to say is what she meant to me, what she taught me, how I want to carry that forward.

I want to tell you she never missed a session of BWW since it began in 2020. I want to write about how our weekly phone calls kept me moored and nourished me, how I remember even in college she felt like an old soul, how I can’t even express how much I will miss her.  

I want to tell you how she was a bright light in our often dark world, how she was able to find the light in you even when you couldn’t find it yourself, and how she demonstrated this through her Buddhist path, and as a therapist, and in helping those battling addiction.

I want to write about how she looked cancer, and her impending death, straight in the eye without flinching, how her every step forward from diagnosis was made with intention and mindfulness, how my weeks spent with her at the end of her life were like stepping out of time and into a deeply sacred, liminal space.

I want to tell you how sometimes tears would fill her eyes and her daughter would ask, “What’s wrong, momma?”, afraid she was in pain from the cancer. “I’m just having a wave of gratitude” she would reply, smiling, and reaching out to grasp your hand.  

“Like a comet pulled from orbit
As it passes a sun
Like a stream that meets a boulder
Halfway through the wood
Who can say if I've been changed for the better? But
Because I knew you
I have been changed for good”

I want to tell you how she has changed me, how I know that there will be a season of recalibrating and deciding how I want to move forward from here.

What story do I want to write?

What story do I want to live?

What am I tending to? What is essential?

I want to tell you I know it will look different, how I am shifting into my Mary Oliver chapter of birding and stargazing and paying attention. Of poetry, and astonishment, and freedom. Of recommitting to my afterschool arts-education program and Bewilderness Writing communities, to my friends, and most of all, my family (including my new extended family of Christie’s two beautiful daughters and granddaughter).

Of tending to the essential.

All Because I Knew Her, I Am Changed For Good.

Christie Bates was a cherished member of the Bewilderness Writing community. Join us in celebrating her voice, and read her featured poem, “The Answer is in the Question.”