Barbara Diamond Gail Scott Michael felt like...

Barbara Diamond

Gail Scott Michael felt like an orphan until her mother was dying.

“My childhood was very painful, and it took years to heal the

wounds, but by living through my mother’s death process and her

actual death, I learned to truly accept her, forgive her and love her

deeply,” Michael said.

Michael’s book “I am a Thousand Winds that Blow” chronicles how

she reconciled the mother she wanted with the mother she had. The

book was written here two weeks after her mother’s death and took

only 10 hours to get on paper a lifetime of grievances and the

ultimate resolution.

“The main theme is the relationship between mother and daughter,”

Michael said.

The Laguna Beach author and her mother, Alyce Jane Ouelette

Hendricks, were estranged for most of Michael’s adult life. She

hardly saw her father after her mother left him when Michael was 10.

Hendricks was not well-educated and, after the separation from her

husband, worked long hours as a waitress to support her family of

four children. The job sapped her strength, and she suffered from

exhaustion and depression that kept her in her room for hours,

sometimes days, on end.

When her mother took to her bed or was away at work, Michael was

the de facto head of the family, which included a younger sister and

brother and an older sister whose mental age never got beyond 10.

Michael fled her Massachusetts home and family at 21, overwhelmed

by the burdens she had shouldered since childhood.

She left home before that epiphany experienced by most adult

children when they finally accept their parents as people. The last

year and particularly the last week of Hendricks’ life showed Michael

a woman she had never known.

“I saw her through the eyes of others that loved her and I saw her

for the very first time as the mother I had always yearned for,”

Michael said. “Everyone wants to be loved by his or her own parent.

Now I felt I truly was. So I am left with this incredible,

life-changing realization. I no longer feel like an orphan.”

Michael said she hopes her book will help people who are grieving

the loss of a parent or are preparing themselves for the loss.

“There are so many gifts we are given during this time, if we

could only be open to seeing them,” Michael said.

Michael’s distressed childhood left its marks. She suffered bouts

of depression and feelings of inadequacy, despite career successes.

Commitment made her claustrophobic. She changed jobs numerous times

and married twice.

Neither of her husbands are mentioned by name in the book. The

second marriage lasted less than a year. The first marriage produced

the love of her life, her son, Troy, and she remains on good terms

with his father.

The book is a ramble through the minefields of dysfunctional

family relations and Michael’s personal responses. She sought the

peace she craved in studies of Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Zen,

Taoism, Confucianism, T’ai Chi Ch’uan and the teachings of Ascended

Masters, self-realization and channeled Ramtha and Mafu.

These studies have led Michael to believe that when people die,

they are actually being born into an afterlife from which they came

originally.

“We are returning home after we have learned the lessons of love

and compassion and whatever our contract with the divine is, for our

time spent here on earth,” Michael said.

It was the diagnosis of Hendricks’ lung cancer that opened the

path of reconciliation and acceptance between mother and daughter,

and subsequently between mother and son, who also were estranged.

Only the youngest daughter, Lisa, had stayed close, geographically

and emotionally, to Hendricks. She was the recipient of the kind of

love and nurturing Michael craved from her mother.

“During the last year of her life, my mother made peace with

herself and her loved ones,” said Michael.

As her mother approached death, the family removed what Michael

refers to as “ego masks,” which protected them and shaped how they

dealt with one another. With the masks gone, Michael discovered her

mother’s simple life was a fulfilling one, a life to which Michael

had been blind.

She had never before seen the woman loved and respected by other

family members, friends and co-workers until they rallied around her

death bed.

“As she lay dying, she changed everyone’s tears into laughter,”

Michael said. “She had us belly laughing throughout the whole ordeal.

She chose to pass over with laughter and loved ones surrounding her.

She had no time for tears or sorrows.

“My mother’s life was very simple and meager by today’s standards,

but she lived it like a queen.”

The title of the book comes from a poem her mother had tucked in

with the crossword puzzles she loved.

“Do not stand on my grave and weep

I am not there; I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow.

I am the diamonds that glint in the snow.

I am the sunlight in a ripened grain.

I am the gentle autumn’s rain.

When you awaken in the morning’s hush,

I am the soft, uplifting rush

of quiet birds in circled flight.

I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry.

I am not there.

I did not die.”

Michael’s 116-page, soft-cover book is available at

www.cedarfort.com or by mail from distributor Cedar Fort, 925 North

Main St., Springfield, Utah 84663 for $10.95 per copy, plus $3.49 for

shipping and handling. Add 99 cents for each additional copy. The

book also is available at all bookstores by special order and at

Barnes and Noble. Michael will be signing copies of the book Feb. 26

at the bookstore in Aliso Viejo.

For more information, visit gail-michael.com.

* BARBARA DIAMOND is a reporter for the Laguna Beach Coastline

Pilot. She may be reached at 494-4321.