Articles by Shelley CampbellThe Center of the Labyrinth
Cool winter sunlight illuminated Grace Cathedral’s stained glass windows as I stepped on to the labyrinth’s twisting path for the first time. For days I had been struggling with a growing sense of disorientation, after a phone call that changed my life forever. My grown son had died. At first an impenetrable membrane of denial rejected the information. Obviously there had been a mistake; the authorities had screwed up. It couldn’t have been Jake lying dead of a drug overdose on a hotel room floor in Seattle.
The facts were like a drum of bleach leaking steadily into the fabric of my existence. I wandered among cardboard cut-outs of trees, buildings and people as the color leached from my life. Underneath a raw pain, throbbed a persistent message that I was still living in a body, as one heartbeat, one breath followed another. An invisible taproot had descended spontaneously out of the center of my chest and gravity was sucking me down to the core of the earth.
As I stepped on to the labyrinth’s path woven into the purple and cream carpet, I saw it is not a maze but leads without obstruction to the center of the mandala. Its serpentine twists and turns confound the mind forcing it to surrender to the singular focus of taking one step at a time. I felt I had found a container to hold my shattered self.
My mind gave way to trance as I placed one foot in front of the other. I felt Jake beside me as though his body were in the room, saying “Don’t worry Mom—it was an accident, I’m okay.” As my bare feet followed the path my body became a transmitter sending him prayers for a safe passage. Molten hot regrets cycled through my psyche one minute and tender memories the next.
Jake and I always shared humor. When he was seven he’d hidden a rubber lizard in a house plant. When I screamed and ran for the door his delight was boundless. The prank became a running joke. The phrase, “rubber lizard” was short hand for everything from fear to absurdity. An awkward first date, an intimidating job interview, virtually any uncomfortable situation would become hysterically funny when diagnosed as a harmless rubber lizard. As I made a sharp turn in the labyrinth a blast of Jake’s irreverent wit rippled through my body, as if he was saying, “Look, I’m safe, it’s a rubber lizard!”
I felt I was straddling the world of the living and the world of the dead. I suddenly realized the glib affirmation, “love is eternal” is literally true. It is a bridge between those worlds. At the same time a wrenching voice in my gut persisted “I can’t do this, it is too big.” My imagination began to fill with pictures of other mothers who had lost children. I knew others had walked this path before me. I reached out to the courage they had been forced to discover and felt less alone.
One evening as I sat with candles burning, listening to Gregorian chants, I was interrupted by a knock on the door. A lively couple looking for an apartment to rent for a grown daughter stood on the doorstep. As we chatted it emerged their daughter worked with birthing women and newborns. She was a doula. A new profession dedicated to guiding and supporting expectant mothers and gently welcoming the latest arrivals to human life. When I closed the door a picture of an angel sent to me by a grieving father who had also lost a son named Jake fell off the wall. It lay directly in my path.
The next day I went to the labyrinth. I surrendered to trance and my heart opened. Walking, I saw the birth of children as a wave of light eternally nourishing the earth like the perpetual breaking of the dawn. In every culture the birth of a child is a moment of celebration which ripples out spontaneously renewing us all.
Moving along the labyrinth’s path I felt the incessant drum beat of birth creating a bridge between the inner world of possibilities and the outer world of manifestation. Each new arrival catalyzes the love that binds us. As I stepped into the center of the labyrinth I felt the dots connect. My tragedy had opened a new sensitivity to the preciousness of life and to the importance of tenderly welcoming each child that joins the human family. I felt like a crazed saint in the desert with a burning message to share with women becoming mothers.
The labyrinth has taught me one step and one day at a time, there is a larger logic to life. The twists and turns often make it hard to see where our path is headed. Jake’s presence is always with me, constantly drawing me back to basics. Each time I welcome a child into the world, I stand for a moment where everything is simple and clear. I have learned that love always stands in the center.
