I leave immediately.

The next day I go over to see my mother. I bring chocolates. She is happy to see me. I wheel her outside to get some fresh air. You'd never know the night before even happened.

My mother complains that she never got to travel enough. There had been a trip to Bermuda with her mother when she was just a child. The trip had been to help Skipper recover from the nervous breakdown she'd had as a result of her husband's drunken escapades. Then there was a trip to Europe in her early twenties, funded by Skipper, to help my own mother cope with the strain of being married to her drunk husband.

Other than that, she devoted her life to working. She was at the church on Sundays and Wednesdays and in the theater on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Sat.u.r.days. When she had finally planned a trip to Heidelberg in her eighties, a vertebra in her back needed attention. She went in for surgery. Not only did she not go to Heidelberg, she did not walk una.s.sisted ever again.

The lessons of 2008 and my mother's regrets have not been lost on me. I have decided to go to India and take a program at Sadhguru's ashram. Because of the economic "downturn," airline tickets are cheaper than ever, staying at the ashram is ridiculously inexpensive, and I've got a break between terms. The only reason for me not to go is that Hank doesn't want me to. And Hank is on the other side of the country and shows no inclination to return, so his opinion is of little weight.

"You should go," my mother says. "You will never regret it."

"Will you be okay?" I ask.

"I'm terrified of you leaving for that long. But you must do it."

She's right. I do not want to be sitting around spilling my regrets to Emmy some day.

TWO.

FEBRUARY 2009, SOUTH INDIA.

The thick woolly heat of the late February afternoon has finally released its tentacles from around our necks as Margit from Germany and I pick our way through the crowd of Indians in front of the temple. Dust rises around our sandaled feet but does not settle on our pristine Indian outfits. I am in borrowed silk (from my Indian neighbor back in Charlotte)-cobalt blue with gold flowers on the tunic and the pants. Margit wears linen, a little more comfortable for the daylight hours, but by the middle of the night, I'll be glad I'm in something heavier.

We wind our way through throngs of the devoted outside the temple and pa.s.s a giant statue of a kneeling black bull to meet up with a striking blond woman named Anya, whose job it is to help us find the bus. Anya is wearing a turquoise tunic and pants with linen trim. A few other Westerners gather around her with us. We're all dressed so beautifully. Have I ever been to a rock concert in anything but jeans and a T-shirt, I wonder? Have any of us?

We leave the temple grounds, which are located on the edge of the sprawling Isha yoga ashram, and walk past long rows of towering coconut trees to the bus. We crowd in and soon bang down the dirt road to the concert grounds where we will celebrate Mahashivrathri with live music, dancing, and chanting with more than one hundred thousand other happy, dancing people. The bus chugs through swarms of motorcycles and deposits us in a veritable ocean of people: old folks, children, parents, teenagers. At the edge of the grounds a giant Ferris wheel spins, lights twinkling. We wander into an enormous white tent. Our section is close to the front along the side of the tent. We have a great view of the stage where the bands will play.

About five hundred of us non-Indians are staying at the ashram, preparing for the meditation program. Tonight, however, we are going to kick out the jams Indian-style from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. Why are we doing this and without the benefit of wakefulness-inducing drugs? (Most of us haven't had caffeine for the past forty days.) We are here because Sadhguru has invited us to be here, and generally when Sadhguru wants you to do something there is a certain amount of fun involved, not to mention the spiritual sparks. And always music.

Mahashivarathri means "The Great Night of Shiva." It is celebrated all over India on the fourteenth night of the new moon that occurs in February or March. Shiva is the destroyer-the original yogi.

The program starts with music, but my new friend Ginny and I decide to wander around the grounds. When we get back to our spots in the bleachers, Sadhguru is sitting on the stage in his robe. He explains to the throngs that there are several legends attached to Mahashivarathri, which make it an ideal night to honor Shiva since you get to decide the reason.

"For one, it is the day that Shiva attained his ultimate stillness. For another, a day of absolute inclusiveness. For another, it's a wedding. For another, it is conquest, and for another it is the day of the weird." Then Sadhguru gives that characteristic hearty laugh of his.

Weird it is, but in a somehow familiar way. Woodstock without the mud. Bonnaroo without the hangover. Bliss without blowback. I thought I might have a hard time staying awake, and there are a couple of moments early on when my head lolls forward, but pretty soon the energy in the place starts crackling. It's like a fire. There is that first lick of flame, a few inquiring tentacles, and then the sudden bursting forth of yellow pitchforks and searing heat. The enormous crowd is chanting, calling "Shambo, Shambo," which is another name for Shiva. The sound beating from a hundred thousand throats mesmerizes me.

As the night rolls forward, serious dance music ratchets up. A band called Indian Ocean roars into the wee hours, and the night turns wilder and wilder. Finally, the house band, Sounds of Isha, comes on. A supernatural ecstasy permeates the tent. By this time we are on the chairs, gyrating madly, hands in the air. It goes on and on. Tribal. Primal. The Destroyer has demolished all inhibition. We are marionettes and the musicians pull the strings.

And then it ends. Six a.m. has arrived, and we have not slept or even wanted to. We file out of the great tent into the delicate morning air at the foothills of the White Mountains. Those rosy fingers of dawn creep over the mountains as we jostle our way onto the bus. No one is tired yet. We're all high, but we're not stoned. This may be what I've been looking for all my life.

I cannot describe the experience of a program like Samyama-the seven-day silent meditation program created by Sadhguru. I won't even try. But I will say that for seven days I finally paid attention to myself and discovered some things I had kept hidden in the storage chest of my head. I took a good, hard look at my marriage, and I realized that it had run its course. When I emerged, I was a subtly different person. I was free in a way I had not been before.

Before I leave the ashram, a large group of us takes a trek into the mountains. This is supposed to be the "easy" trek, the one for the ladies. I'm in fairly good shape, but I'm glad I didn't take the "hard" trek because that might have just killed me. We walk through a village-a few small plaster houses with chickens and roosters strutting around dirt yards, curious children watching, incurious monkeys not watching, just swinging in the trees nearby. We climb along a steep path. We can smell elephant dung but we don't see elephants. The trek up takes a couple of hours of steady walking. We take periodic rests. We've been given a picnic lunch and we stop to munch an apple or raisins. Our goal is to reach a sacred cave where Sadhguru once meditated. How did he ever manage to find it, I wonder.

Then we reach the brook running down the mountain beside the cave. And I finally understand what is meant by the word "paradise." The few men who are with us peel off and go down river. When they are out of sight, we women strip down to our bras and panties and jump into the freezing waters. The waterfall shocks our senses. The sunlight bends into blues and reds in the tiny drops. We lounge on the huge boulders and eat our lunches. And as we do so, thousands of b.u.t.terflies of every color and design imaginable hover in the air and dart about. I feel like a kaleidoscope has broken over me. Pieces of sky and sun have come to life and are dancing before our eyes.

The next day I am flying home, back to my mundane life, and I'm feeling so grateful to my mother for insisting that I go on this adventure. I'm not sure if I'm any closer to enlightenment. I doubt it, but she was right: I will never regret this trip. My grat.i.tude extends beyond my mother as well. Emmy had promised not to have any emergencies while I was incommunicado, and she didn't. Even Hank contributed in his own way by vacating my life.

The day I get home, I drive over to the Sanctuary. When I walk inside I hear my mother improvising on the piano. Unaware that I am watching, she drifts into that world where I can never follow except on the backs of the notes she plays. While I was in India, Sadhguru told us about a guru who became wise through loving attention to his elderly parents. I begin to realize that the years I gave to my mother were really a gift to me.

THREE.

SPRING 2009.

It may seem absurdly obvious to say that ending a twenty-fiveyear marriage is not easy. But you never know until you try to do it. Sometimes I feel as if I am trying to amputate my own arm.

Since he left, Hank and I rarely communicate, but when we do, I feel like I'm in a Quentin Tarantino movie. One afternoon, we have it out. He's angry about everything, and his rage is like a sledgehammer, shattering my psyche. Me, I'm too tired to be angry. I'm tired of defending actions that I don't believe are wrong. But I pull out any ammunition I think I have. He pulls out his. We aim, fire. We take no prisoners. Finally, I tell him I can't talk to him anymore. I hang up the phone and refuse to think about what has just happened. I refuse to acknowledge the fact that my best friend is no longer that. I go to bed as if everything is the same as it ever was.

But in the morning, I find I cannot get out of bed. My blood has been replaced with some kind of thick sludge. I'm sure that glue has been affixed to my skin. I roll this way and that, but I am effectively paralyzed. What am I going to do, I wonder. I could reach for the phone, call a friend, and ask her to come help me get out of bed, but how would she get in the door? I ponder my situation. I am like a three-quarters dead woman. I will have to get up. I will have to go to the bathroom. I will have to eat something. It takes a long time, but eventually I push the lavender comforter off of myself and coax my recalcitrant body, my crushed spirit, my noodle spine into an erect position.

Without allowing myself to think, I move forward, stumble into the hall, into the bathroom, go through the morning motions, and then find I am downstairs where I fall into the couch, the same place where the phone call took place. And then I cry like a wounded animal. How long? I don't know. I crawl across the floor to the windows that look out upon the spring day. There are three of them-floor-to-ceiling windows. After five days of steady rain, the sun is beaming its G.o.dly face onto the brilliant wet green of the woods outside my window. And in the midst of this h.e.l.lish pain I feel a warmth, a weird, totally inappropriate joy. The birds outside are going nuts. A woodp.e.c.k.e.r taps on the trees. Cardinals streak by like red comets. Blue jays are on the prowl, and a tiny yellow bird comes flitting over the back deck, and it occurs to me as the yellow bird flits past me that I'm going to be okay. I repeat the thought: I'm going to be okay. And the bird flits past me once again. So one more time, I say it-this time out loud.

"I'm going to be okay."

The bird flits by one more time.

I get the message. I know it will be hard as h.e.l.l but I get it. I will be okay.

Still, I can't help thinking of all the times I wasn't there for someone, a friend, when they may have been wounded. I think of how selfishly I live my life, wrapped up in my world of mothering, daughtering, and writing. Okay, perhaps those aren't the most selfish activities. The point is that when my friends have been grieving, I have not always recognized the depth of their pain. Sometimes it seems that it's only about me, my pain, my drama.

I vow right then that I will be more sensitive to the needs of others-and not just those who are related to me by blood. I stand up, feeling I have resolved something, my tears dried, a sense of having been washed ash.o.r.e after a wicked storm.

I've been invited to give some workshops at the Tallaha.s.see Writers Conference in April. I'm delighted. My university is paying to fly me down, and I'll have a chance to see my oldest and dearest friends in the college town I'll always consider home.

It's spring in Tallaha.s.see, and the azaleas are blooming. I stay with my friends Pam and Gary in their A-frame in the woods by a pond that otters occasionally visit. In some essential way Pam reminds me of my mother. It is her combination of kindness and wide-ranging intelligence. She knows books, art, cooking, movies, different cultures. And somehow she manages not to make other people feel stupid.

Other friends join us and we laugh and toast to nothing as we salivate over Pam's delicious dinner made with crushed mushrooms from her backyard.

The next day at the conference, I'm seated between two writers. They want to know what I've written lately. That's always the question.

"Not much," I answer. "I've been taking care of my elderly mother for the past few years. It's not so bad now that she's in a.s.sisted living, but still . . ."

I don't have to tell them. Soon both of them are weeping over their pasta primavera, talking about their fathers, how these men they loved got sick, what their mothers could or could not do, and the wrenching loss.

"Jesus," I say. "I'm so sorry." The three of us sit there, morosely recounting our parents' demises the way we once would have sat and gossiped about the boys we liked or later about our children.

The second day of the conference I find vendors in the lobby of the hotel selling handmade soaps, imported clothing, and jewelry. I'm trying to conserve my cash and so I propel myself past the shiny objects, but a carousel of greeting cards lands a hook in me, and I stop to look at a card with a picture of a bright, blue b.u.t.terfly on the front.

"I made the card from my photographs," the eager seller says.

I can't think of any reason I need this card, but I do like b.u.t.terflies.

"How much?" I ask.

"Four dollars."

A lot for a card, but not much for a work of art. I buy the card.

The conference ends and I leave, wondering what to do with my time. Pam and Gary are at the beach with friends from Scotland. I've already been down to the water the night before and had dinner with my friend Dean. We spent most of it talking about the death of his wife, our beloved poet Wendy Bishop. I remembered the love poems she had written for him, and how happy he was when they finally got together. I was sad that Dean had lost her, but also envious that he had known such unequivocal love. It seemed that Hank and I had always held something back from each other. What would it be like to give yourself wholly to another person the way Dean and Wendy had?

Since I've got some time, I decide I will go see Kitty's mother, Cathy. Kitty died of breast cancer in 2001, and I try to visit Cathy whenever I am in Tallaha.s.see. I think Cathy likes to have someone to talk with about Kitty.

To my surprise, Kitty's sister Martha, who lives in California, stands on the porch, leaning against the wrought-iron trellis. Her red hair is pulled back from her thin, pretty face, and I can see shades of Kitty in her features.

"Mom is in the hospital," Martha says.

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that." Martha and I have not always been on the best of terms, but today she treats me like an old friend.

"You don't know what happened, do you?" she asks after apologizing for her unfriendliness the last time we met.

I shake my head and follow her inside the red brick ranch house.

Through Kitty I had met Martha, but there was another sister that I'd never met. This sister, according to Martha, had swooped in one night with her husband, both of them in the military, and in a domestic coup they had deposed the matriarch of the house. They took her to a place that Martha described as a "locked ward" and cleaned out her house.

"They couldn't sell the house because, unbeknownst to me, Mother had put it in my name as well as hers," Martha confides. By now we are sitting in the living room which had once been quite comfortable with overstuffed couches and chairs. Now Martha is perched on a spindly-looking white settee, holding Cathy's poodle on her lap. Her eyes are weary, and her mouth held tight against a storm of betrayal.

"They destroyed all the books," she says and indicates the barren shelves. My G.o.d, I'm thinking, they were like n.a.z.is getting ready for a book burning. "And pried those antique mirrors off the wall." I see two blank spots I hadn't noticed before.

This story seems incredible to me. How could someone do this?

"They took all the china and silver, too," Martha says. I get up and go into the dining room where once upon a time I ate blueberry pancakes with Kitty and her mother and Emmy. I look in the china cabinet where I had often stopped to admire Cathy's collection. I liked those plates and cups and saucers so much because they were the same pattern that I had chosen when I was seventeen and embarked on a misguided marital adventure with the heroin addict next door. The marriage ended soon after the wedding, but to this day I still own one beautiful blue-and-gold-trimmed plate.

The china cabinet is empty. I sit back down, stunned. Martha continues.

"They put her in a locked ward," she reiterates. "With crazy people screaming all night. She wasn't out of her mind. She knew exactly where she was. She called me every day and said if she didn't get out, she'd kill herself. I spent every cent I had on lawyers and finally got a court order to have her released."

My disbelief turns into horror and sorrow.

"I don't remember meeting your other sister," I say to her. "Was she at Kitty's funeral?"

"No," Martha answers. "She took her kids to Disney World instead."

We sit quietly for a moment while I absorb that piece of information.

"Where is Cathy now?" I ask.

"In the cardiac intensive care unit at the hospital. Six months in that place broke her, Pat," she says.

"Will they let me see her?"

"Yes, she'd like to see you, I'm sure."

On the way to the hospital I think about getting some flowers, but I'm in a hurry to see her. Martha had mentioned that the doctors were talking about getting her into hospice, which was where we watched Kitty die. Then I remember the card in my briefcase.

I place the b.u.t.terfly card on the rolling table at Cathy's bedside where she can look at it. She looks so frail, with her bruised arm and the bandage wrapped around the IV needle. It takes a moment for her to recognize me. I can tell the state of her health is not the best topic, so I tell her about Emmy.

"She's in college now, taking honors courses, and she has a cute little apartment near campus." Cathy's eyes light up.

"Oh, that's so wonderful," she says in her soft, lilting voice.

A nurse comes in to draw blood. He's gentle and friendly. Cathy seems tired, and I'm not sure how long I should stay. I clasp her hand. Her hair is a white crown surrounding her lovely face. Kitty always said, "Isn't she precious?"

Yes, I'm thinking now, our precious mothers.

Before I leave Tallaha.s.see, a few of us go over to our friend Theo's house, which is tucked under enormous Spanish-moss-laden live oaks. I've known Theo since graduate school, where he was admired for his dry wit and whiskey. I remember his wedding. I even remember scouring the local antique stores for a wedding present and finding a soup tureen that seemed like a weird enough gift to give the two coolest people I knew. We hadn't seen each other much over the years, and so I had only recently learned that Theo's wife left him about a week before Hank got on that train to California. We commiserate a bit about how odd it is to be suddenly single after years of marriage.

Lately, I've been wondering if I'll ever be attractive to anyone again. A sociologist named Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot describes the years between fifty and seventy-five as the third chapter. She says these years are transformative and regenerative, a time for pa.s.sion, risk, and adventure. But to me, it's looking scary and sad. It's looking like years of going to bed at nine thirty with a book and my cat. It's looking like maybe being alone and sometimes screaming out loud just to see if anyone hears.

Everyone but me is drinking wine, but I might as well be drunk as I show off the scar from my surgery. I've become rather proud of my brief fling with cancer, and my friends are dutifully impressed. Then we're winding down. Gary, Amy, and Mark are talking music. Pam falls asleep on the couch. I am sitting on the other end of the couch bundled up in a paisley blanket. When I look up, Theo is smiling at me, and it occurs to me that the third chapter of my life might not be so bleak after all.

FOUR.

MAY 2009.

I am sitting at the Caribou coffee shop with my friends for our biweekly writers get-together. As we're waiting for everyone to arrive and eat a quick lunch, I notice Tamara's big, boxy emerald ring with two diamonds on either side.

"Wow, that's beautiful," I remark.

"Thank you," she says. "It's my engagement ring. I love emeralds." Tamara's husband is a doctor and makes a pretty decent salary-a lot of which gets donated to various causes that Tamara believes in, but I guess he gets to spoil her a little when she lets him.

"I gave Emmy an emerald ring for Christmas a couple years ago," I tell her. I bought it at the jewelry store in this same shopping center.

"That's right," she says. "I remember that."