Candace Van der Meulen

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Candace Vicki Van der Meulen passed away peacefully on August 23, 2021, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She is pre-deceased by her parents, Paul Reon Barnes (Johnnie); the love of her life, Jacob (Jack) Louis Van der Meulen of Grand Rapids; and her brothers Chris Barnes (Katy), Eric Barnes(Judi). She is survived by her loving daughter, Hannah Callaway (Anthony Trunzo), her brothers Duane Barnes (Bea) and Geoff Barnes; her sister Stephanie Smith (Jon); and her many loving nieces and nephews; also grieving her loss are her former son in law, Tim Schlafer; her grandchildren Timothy, Rin, and Gia; her brother Duane Barnes (Bea) and sister Stephanie Smith (Jon); and her lifelong friends Barbara Buchanan, Lorna Brand, Ann Barbee, and Ben Fong-Torres; and her Buddhist family at the Nyingma Buddhist Institute in Berkeley, California, where she was a devoted practitioner for 30 years. She also leaves behind the Michigan-based family of her beloved Jack, who surrounded and supported her throughout his illness and death, and her own: sisters-in-law Winifred (Winky) Meyer (Rich); Theda Williams (Ron); and Evy Vander Meulen Clowes (Ken); her brother-in-law Peter Vander Meulen (Peggi), who took care of her like he was her own brother; and numerous nieces and nephews.

There will be an as-yet-unscheduled Celebration of Life held for Candace in California. Please write your memories, prayers, thoughts, inspirations, and anything else Candace brought to your life; there will be a published booklet, including all of your loving thoughts, as well as photos of Candace and her artwork, which will be given out at the Celebration and sent upon request to any not able to attend. In lieu of sending flowers, please give flowers to someone you know who needs them.

Following is a remembrance from Candace’s daughter and only child, Hannah Callaway:

Candace Vdm, my beloved mama and only parent until I was 23, shuffled off this mortal coil on August 23, 2021, one month and one day before today, her 77th birthday.There will be details to come for anyone who might want to attend her celebration of life, once I’m back in California (see first comment), but this isn’t an obituary. This is my celebration of her life.

She was not afraid to die, and I was not afraid for her. I am deeply sad, and at the same time have never felt more gratitude and connection with the universe and everyone in it. This was her gift to me and to the world.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thich Nhat Hanh

Contemplation on No-Coming and No-Going -

excerpted from the “Ceremony for Closing the Coffin.”

This body is not me.

I am not limited by this body.

I am life without boundaries.

I have never been born,

and I have never died.

Look at the ocean and the sky filled with stars,

manifestations from my wondrous true mind.

Since before time, I have been free.

Birth and death are only doors through which we pass,

sacred thresholds on our journey.

Birth and death are a game of hide-and-seek.

So laugh with me,

hold my hand,

let us say good-bye,

say good-bye, to meet again soon.

We meet today.

We will meet again tomorrow.

We will meet at the source every moment.

We meet each other in all forms of life.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was an unexpectedly sudden and beautiful and peaceful death; she had made her own decision and been able to communicate it to the doctor herself. She was surrounded by her Grand Rapids family and chose the moment herself as we gathered around her bed, all of our hands on her. She did not suffer.

She met my sweet papa, Jack, when they were 50. I’ve never seen a couple so made for each other. Both having practiced Nyingma Buddhism for decades, they had made a deal to live at least the next three lifetimes together, and had made a deal to meet at a special bridge on Salt Spring Island in Canada, whenever the second one died. My papa died a year and a half ago, and I know they are both there. I just know it’s true. And even if it isn’t, it doesn’t matter, because I KNOW IT and it give me the greatest comfort to think of them together.

My mother was an artist from the day she was born. She saw the suffering in the world, but she also had the gift of seeing art and beauty, constantly, everywhere. From poetry to paintings to rusted faucets to the faces of Holocaust survivors, which she had hanging in her room and held in her practice…it was all art.

She was glorious to behold in her astounding, colorful, and sophisticated wardrobe. In the difficult year and a half between my papa’s death and her own, the artist in her still found a way to express itself in this way. The people in her retirement community in Grand Rapids, Michigan, hardly knew what hit them.

Once she had made her decision, I covered her bed and her body with her favorite Buddhist statues and relics and photos of my sweet papa, and she said, “I feel like an art gallery.”

She found people beautiful, too, and she told them so, all day, everywhere she went.

The nurses, janitors, food service workers, and the various medical assistants in the hospital loved her—they never failed to tell me “your mom is such a kick” or “I can’t believe she was listening to Chris Stapleton!” or “your mom gave me the prettiest hair band” or “she noticed I looked sad and asked me about it and put her hand on mine while I talked with her a little.” I am not sure they had ever met an “old lady” who was so cool; who was willing to grow and to be changed by what she saw and heard in the world: she saw beauty, she spoke it.

She was a talented and hilarious writer. In the amendment to her Advance Directive for Health Care, she gave the palliative care team very clear instructions on what to do, listing several conditions she didn’t want to stay alive with. An excerpt, “I do not wish to have invasive procedures to save my life if I am a paraplegic, have dementia, in any way become a burden on my heirs, or become the proverbial vegetable” Who makes a joke when they’re considering their death? My mama, that’s who.

The palliative care doctor said it was the most intimate, well-written, and funny Advance Directive she had ever seen, and that she was making copies in case others chose to use it. How she would have loved that, in her lifelong quest to help others and reduce suffering for all sentient beings.

She had many calls and videos come in during the final hours of her life, as I let friends and family know of her decision. I truly realized during those precious hours how much she had impacted people—especially the children in her life. I was her only biological child, but she was a wonderful, artistic, creative, fun, Weird Auntie to many children in her life. She not only loved children, she saw our souls; she respected us, never “talking down” to us, and always, always took the time to be with us.

She saw and encouraged the artist in Aaron, whose beautiful video message to her I watch every single day.

She shared her love of Joni Mitchell with her beloved nephew, Bruce, now a pianist and conductor. Through a tricky video connection, he played and sang Joni back to her as she sat forward in her bed, a wide smile on her face clearly visible through the full-face oxygen mask she wore.

She was a second mother to her niece, Andrea, whose sensitivity and emotional intelligence she always saw, and who has sustained me in ways I can’t express.

As the calls came in, she said, “I didn’t know I was so loved.”

We called the Grand Rapids Buddhist Temple which sent a young monk. He held her hand, chanted, read…and was simply present, for anything she wanted, with lovingkindness and tears in his eyes. He rang a Tibetan singing bowl 108 times, creating a powerful vibration in the room and in everyone in it, which spilled out into the hallway where the ICU nurses stood, some with their eyes closed, silently being with us.

I sang to her all the music she had surrounded me with in my childhood: Stevie Wonder, Cat Stevens, Joni Mitchell, Amazing Grace, and “our song”: “Just the Two of Us,” our anthem as a single, struggling mom and her only child. I chanted the Vajra Guru to her.

She loved me so hard, harder than I have ever been loved and probably harder than I ever will be again. Her faith in me simply never wavered. Only half-jokingly, she would refer to herself as “Holy Candace, Mother of Hannah.” We had difficult periods in our relationship—REALLY difficult periods. But all of that had melted away and not only was her unconditional love with me until her last moments, when I asked her straight out, “Are you sure you are ready to die, mama?” She put her hand on the side of my face and looked at with me the most loving eyes I have ever seen and nodded. She had spent the last several days getting sicker and sicker, getting more tests and more invasive treatments. She was tired and struggling to breathe and would often say the most positive thing she could: “Today was a long day.” As she prepared to go, one of the last things she spoke to me was, “Today was a good day.”

What a beautiful, beautiful gift she gave me by assuring me, thousands of times since I was a tiny girl, that someday she would die but that she would never leave me and would “haunt me forever,” She said “I will be in every beautiful thing your eye falls upon “which, to her, was EVERYTHING.

I’ve looked at life from both sides now

From near and far

and still, somehow…

it’s life’s illusions I recall

I really don’t know life at all.

Candace Vicki Van der Meulen

Wife of her beloved Jack

September 24, 1944-August 23, 2021