A Day With Billie

Photo by Asha Brogan

Yesterday I saw my friend and client Billie, who is 93 and whom I have known for 30 years. She was one of the first people I met when I moved to Yellow Springs as she is a Quaker.

I had wanted to get married to my then boyfriend Brian and we could not find a marriage ceremony that adequately fit our beliefs about marriage and who should be doing the pronouncing and witnessing of the ceremony. 

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After a lot of investigation we felt that the Quaker style of marriage most closely reflected our beliefs. In order for that to happen we had to meet with a Quaker Committee, and thus I met Billie and Dick for a supper interview out at their home in the Vale. That marriage story will write its own  lovely way another time.

Billie is passionate about wellness and politics and through her I was introduced to ayurveda, hair analysis, the Natural Law Party, a course in miracles and much more. We became friends and peers, enriching each other with ideas about life that revolved around connections, God, our own mothers and being mothers.

Billie always saw me as a healer. After I met Swamiji and went to India, she was convinced that my healing abilities were heightened, as they were. She appreciated the therapeutic massages I gave more than anyone and was convinced on several occasions that she could only heal from a flu or respiratory infection if I could come and work with her. She would call me or go to my husband’s school to find him to ask if I could come and see her. I started visiting Billie more regularly when I set up my practice at her house after I closed my Xenia Avenue office. This introduced clients to the Better Health Co-op and Billie. For me it meant lovely days of having tea in her kitchen by the wood-stove before and after treatments, conversation, and bird watching out of her kitchen window.  

Billie’s home was created consciously as a home that was open to all. For example, when the girls were little, I would take them to Billie’s house just to be in her home. Billie and Dick had an actual tree in their living room with a treehouse that was filled with toys. Outside in the yard were chickens, gardens, a teepee and a swing. Going to the Vale to visit Billie allowed me to slow down and to be present.

When I arrived yesterday and we settled in she reminded me that she was 94. I told her about a memory I had of my great-grandma Henshaw who lived to be 100. When I was quite young we had driven to Kalamazoo to see my great-grandma. She lived in an upstairs room of her home...or at least that’s how it seemed. We climbed the wooden stairs that echoed, and opened the door, and there was that hush that sometimes accompanies a visit when you do not fully know the person. My parents said their hellos and then they nudged each of us to go over to her. She was sitting in a wheelchair and was wearing dark blue and she had on on dark glasses. I don’t know if it had been explained to me that she was blind, but she took my hand and so lovingly felt it all over and said, “Susan. How are you?” She smiled. It seemed both amazing and natural that she knew who I was by my hand. Even though I was very young, I somehow had awareness that there were four other siblings and that we would have all grown since we saw her last so how did she know that that hand was mine? It was a powerful moment for me and yet as natural as any other part of life. She loved poetry and the bible, and she recited long passages to us. Everything about her was gentle and calm. She asked me to memorize a few different thing to recite for her. Then after the visit, my grandma Mary, her daughter, helped me with memorizing poems and bible passages.

I told all of this to Billie and we marveled about life, enjoying our time together. There is always a bittersweet moment when I am with Billie, when the session is almost over. After her joints have been worked and her spine is stretched, she turns to face me with a smile and says, as she always does, “Well, I know this means it is almost over.” She smiles, but I know she wishes it could go on and on. She says that I have worked every joint in her body, that the whole endocrine system has gotten connected and that we are all connected, to each other and to God. She says that God is the only thing that matters.

​She says, “We are given so much! Look at the beautiful mountains and the sea and the beautiful trees and the beautiful flowers. Oh, all of it is out here for us to enjoy and appreciate!” She asks about my mother whom she met on my wedding day, and then asks about Asha, wondering how she is after that horse accident where she was bitten. "Such a terrible thing, but I know it was a powerful experience for Asha, that she learned something important that will make her stronger…and that we are all connected." I take my leave, loving that I am in a world with Billie where there is so much conscious connection and love, where God is all that matters.