This is a beautiful elegy of sorts for a lost friend.

-----Original Message----- From: ana voog [mailto:ana101@hotmail.com] Sent: Thursday, April 29, 2004 2:01 AM To: anacam@yahoogroups.com Subject: [anacam's daily pic! ] death, loving, giving, fearlessness

i touched sonia's dead hand. i have never touched a dead person's hand before. i know i said i would not go look at the body, but...i did. it would have been impossible not to, anyway, since during the entire memorial, her

casket was up there, open.

i was taken aback by the feel of her body. it was as hard as a candle. even the tiny wrinkles in her hands were as hard as if each nook and cranny of skin had been cast in wax. i don't know if the stuff the fill the body with hardened, or if they kind of coat the body in a layer of wax, or WHAT is the deal with that. i was not expecting that at all. i was expecting her skin to still feel like skin, but just be cold. i figured she would be stiff, but i really did imagine that the skin would be still like skin.

i also put my hand on the top of her head. she was not as cold as ice, but

she was a bit colder than room temperature.

a woman that was standing next to me kindly said, "don't you just expect her to open her eyes?". and i said no, i didn't at all, because, i explained, after i touched her i knew she was as hard as if made completely out of wax, and so, there was nothing about her that suggested that anything would have the possibility of moving anymore.

she didn't look at all bad in her coffin. she actually looked like a vampire because she was far paler than she was in life, and she had on burgundy lipstick with accentuated that paleness and with her trademark burgundy hair and favourite navy blue pin stripe suit, and punk rock leather wrist cuff,

and black nail polish, she looked very much like a vampire.

and portishead's "dummy" was playing in the background which was perfect.

they had 3 really huge boards up completely chalk full of pictures from her as a child, and all through her life. it was so cool to see all those pictures! so many years that she did so much and i did not know her then. i am sad about that. but at least i did get to know her for her last few years. wow, it just seems wrong to say "last".

i've always been extremely frightened by the idea that someday i might not

get the burial i want, and i will end up in a coffin looking all fakey and

waxy and then my friends will have that image of me in their minds for all

of time. but i realized yesterday, after i saw her, that it's not HER fault that she died and ended up looking all bizarre and waxy in a coffin, displayed like that in front of her entire friends and family. i know it sounds weird to say that...when i say that, i am forgiving MYSELF for ever

looking that way sometime in the future. not like it's my FAULT. i'm trying to come up with the way to explain this properly. i just have this weird fear of grossing people out with my dead body someday. and it's been hard for me to come to terms with the fact that i have absolutely NO control over that factor. there is NOTHING i can do about it, and it really bugs that shit out of me because you know how much of my life's work has been based upon looking really cool. and i like and need to be in control over that.

but i realized that when you love a person so much, when you see them looking all dead and waxy, the love you feel obliterates any grossed out feelings you could possibly feel. and i guess that is why i actually managed to have the guts to touch her hands and her face and the top of her head and hair. her hands, to me, meant so much since those were her tools to create

her beauty. and they always moved so strongly, deliberately, and with such

lightning speed. to see those hands that had touched my head so many times, i needed to touch them that one last time.

and when i felt them, and they felt nothing like her, i knew for absolutely certainty that she was very much gone. and i realized more concretely than i ever have before, that the body was just a shell that was left behind. i didn't need to know she was gone, i knew she was. i knew before the body was a shell. but now i know it at an even deeper level than before.

i wondered what she would think of me touching her dead hand and whether or not she would be bothered that i had done that.

all i know is that i looked upon the body with love, the same way you love

someone even on their ugly days when they stink or are puking in the bathroom. not like seeing her body like that was in any way like throwing up or smelling something bad. it was more comparable to just seeing someone on a day where they just don't look very healthy. you love the person always just as much, and you always think they are beautiful anyway, because they

ARE beautiful. and so, i'm not completely sure, but i think that i would have still thought her beautiful even if she had been laying up there and blue and gray. i don't know if i am explaining myself very well.

and so, seeing her dead is not a bad memory for me, and it does not tarnish the memory of her in any way. in fact, it only added to my love of her because when i saw her, i felt such intense compassion for her and such intense love in a different way and on a deeper level than before.

it was so gut wrenchingly hard for me as i watched this one man approach her and his entire face was quivering in a way i have never seen a person quiver before. he dropped to his knees and his hands were shaking just like mine were shaking. and just like how i had done, his shaking hands hovered over

hers before he had the guts to touch her hands. and on that 1st light touch, his hands did a quick recoil in the same way mine had. and then gently back down on her hands, his hands went. and he gently touched her face and her hair, and he quivered all over, his eyes as wide as saucers and tears welling up. he was in his own world as i saw him use every fiber of his being to try to take in a compute what on earth it was that he was seeing and experiencing. i don't think i have ever, first hand, had the experience of witnessing such a deep array of sadness and incomprehension and absolute PURE love and compassion emanating from a being.

i talked to him later and found out he was an ex boyfriend. i can imagine now how hard that would be to touch a body you had one been so intimate with. he told me how she was always so animated that she would even accidentally kick him in her sleep.

the memorial service or funeral or whatever it was like none i had ever been to before. there was no religion in it. there was no church-like atmosphere. there was no minister, sermon, or hymns.

it was just, one by one, people walking up with no prepared speeches, and telling their stories about sonia and their good byes to her. i am even crying again as i recall the level of intensity and love which was outpoured from everyone.

and yes another 1st time for me, i finally "got it" how people say that the person lives on in each and every one of us. it is so true.

i always wanted to have the experience of feeling the one who passed away,

still being there, watching over the funeral, and comforting the ones who are left behind and grieving. you hear stories about how all of a sudden someone will just "know" they are there and they will feel comforted. and i have always heard that almost always, the dead attend their own funerals.

i tried really hard to see if i felt sonia there. but i didn't feel her there at all, as a separate presence that was sonia.

but i DID feel her, TRULY, living on in each and every one of us who was there. she WAS there, IN us. and now i understand more completely this exchange of energy/love that goes on between people. and that as we touch each other's

lives, all of us really DO take little pieces of all those energies and they live on in us. because as each person got up to talk, i felt that same sense of being uplifted and loved and aligned as i i did when she would do that to me when i was alive!

and it really made me question, and i will continue to question, what energy am *I* giving to people?

when all that is left of me on this planet is the energy that i gave to people, and they that chose to keep in their hearts and souls and incorporate that into themselves and let it become part of who THEY are, what will it be?

will people just list off my accomplishments and what i liked and who i was...or will they talk about how i TOUCHED their lives in a positive way?

who did *I* uplift and support and encourage to be a better "themselves" than they were before they met me? who did i ASSIST in helping themselves see parts of themselves they had not seen before? and to find strength within them that they did not know they had? and who did i assist in showing a person how to shine their light as bright as can be and be the best self

they possibly ever could? i realize now that i don't want people to only say at my funeral things like, "she was such a good artist, her photos will surely be missed". or something like that, although, that is a good thing,

too.

many many people have emailed me throughout the years and told them that i

touched their lives and i helped them get out of their funk, or i helped them discover their creative side, or i had helped them find the guts to do this and that where before they hadn't. but i have never met these people face to face. and i do actually kind of go out of my way now to be alone because i really don't have the type of energy that sonia had in that she was a face to face "people" person.

so because i am not a people person and i have been more selfish with my personal space and time but choose to share my life and art through the more physically distant medium of the internet and with cds and paintings and i

choose to not do as much one on one types of stuff, do this still make me an OK person? is the way i give less effective or "good"?

can the love and vision i have shared through my art in this way be ENOUGH? am i too selfish? do i need to give more?

i think the answer is most likely that i do indeed need to do it in MY way, as i am doing now. even in writing this. because i am not sonia, i am me. i cannot help it if i am not very face-to-face social. and i do think that i can do far more good being alone, where i can save my energy for making my

art. i think sonia would tell me that i am fine just the way i am.

but still, i am questioning myself, and i think i need to question myself about this. i think everyone should do this every once in awhile, to keep oneself in check.

but sonia, indeed, was a magnet and a hub for a great many very very cool people. and it drives me nuts that i do not know almost any of her friends. but i did meet a few that i am quite sure i will see again, and that makes me happy.

just in the way that , i guess, one would understandably want to cling to the little pieces of sonia that are still living in us all. to not know any of her friends would almost be like losing her completely.

except for the fact that she is in me, too

this friday a bunch of us are going to get a little tattoo to remember her

by. i want an S, but they wanted a 5, she was sonia5 on lj. i don't know why the # 5 was important to her, but i'm sure i will find out on friday.

i actually had the guts to go up there in front of everyone and say something, too. i can't believe had the guts to. there was probably over 200 people at her funeral. almost all of them unknown to me.

i was just shaking and the adrenalin was surging through me, and my voice was shaky because i was crying the entire time i talked.

i said of how i was upset because this week i was going to play scrabble with her. and how i had taken my hair extensions out at the same time she died and then felt empty. so i made the falls and put them in myself and how sonia didn't really like the way the DIY hair girls did it, and here i was

being one of them for her funeral. and t i know she was happy i wore her hair to her funeral, but i also know that deep down she would also be happy that i was having a great deal of trouble getting them in and it didn't look right because sonia was THE QUEEN, and she knew that if she did the hair, it rocked, but if you tried to do it yourself, it was just a pale imitation. (and i as i was trying to get my hair in, i said out loud several times, sonia! help me! i need help with my hair!) anyway, all the people had a good knowing laugh at this, which was good. and i talked about how she made me feel like a goddess and aligned and uplifted me in my path. and that felt good to say that and acknowledge that in front of everyone.

people who aren't into hair the way we are into hair, just aren't going to

get how ALL encompassing importance of this whole hair thing :)

actually, there were a lot of great funny things a lot of people said. it was all very much a laid back conversation type of talking. it was truly wonderful to have it done this way. and allow people to rant and cry and laugh and even be irreverent at times.

there were huge parts of sonia's life i never got to know much about. one being her whole sobriety thing and how she battled addiction and got clean

and then sponsored so many people and helped them through their addiction. that went so incredibly deep and was such a huge part of her that i did not share with her.

and the other thing was how she married a black man in the 60's and had a son with him. i know the son, and he's such a nice and guy and handsome. but you know, i

never knew this happened in the 60's and all that entailed. all the racism

and terrible comments she would get. how she was the 1st white person a lot of these black people were friends with. it was so cool to see this huge black side of the family she had mixed in with all of us crazy nutty punk rock hairdresser type people.

she was so fearless and such a pioneer. and she always saw people not for what they looked like on the outside but by who they were inside. back then, parties would be shut down by the police if you even had white and black people having a party together. this even happened once and they all ended

up in jail, for that odd reason.

let alone MARRY interracially and raise a son in that era with all that racial tension and violence. back then, to have an interracial marriage like that was as volatile and violent a subject as homosexuals marrying now.

she was also really into jamaica and there were a few very rastafarian type people there who looked so awesomely cool and kingly :)

wow, the layers to her amazingness just peel back and back and back forever and ever.

another thing about sonia was that she really didn't start taking charge of her life and accomplishing all these things and pioneering hair extensions

until she was in her 30's! when she became sober and fully awake, aware, alive, that is when she took life by the horns and went full force. i find

that extremely inspiring.

because of sonia, i know it's possible to do a complete 180 at ANY point in your life and start anew, start new businesses, move, become a new person,

learn new skills, and do things that other people say are impossible or silly.

and i too, am quite fearless and do things in this way, but i need to be reminded of this. and so i am thankful for that.

one thing i really need to do with my life more is get out there and explore the world more. as in travelling. i need to find a way to make that work for me.

anyway, i'll stop writing here for now. i have a lot more to say about this. and i may come and edit this post here and there as i think of things that i missed saying.

i just have to write this out in spurts or else i will never get it all out if i think i have to write about the entire thing all at once.

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10:40:15 AM