Joyce’s Photos & Story of her Passing
Dear Friends of Joyce (aka Anna Joy) Gayheart,
Joyce passed away peacefully on Friday, Feb. 29, 2008 at 2 pm. Perhaps the leap year inspired her to take the leap into the next leg of her soul journey, which I assured her included a stop at “Flower Heaven”. I called it Flower Heaven to entice her to let go of her attachment to her flower garden on Earth. She was enduring great pain hoping to see her tulips and day lillies this spring. I am relieved to know she is free from her excruciating pain.
Some of you receiving this letter may not have known she was being healed for the last two years by aggressive breast cancer that had spread to other parts of her body. I say “healed” advisedly. Although disease is a very tough form of love, it is in essence still love. Like all experience, it is a gift from the Life Force.
Last December, after two long years of struggle, Joyce thought she was cancer free in her breast and lungs, only to suddenly discover the cancer had moved instead to her liver and brain. (for those details, see attached letter sent out to family & a few friends about a month ago. Text file attached is called “Please Open Your Heart, Smile Deeply to Joyce).
What is important now is that, for the next few days, Joyce is holding open a portal between the physical and spiritual worlds that offers an opportunity for everyone who knew and loved her to tune in and remember. She is radiating beautiful waves of love and light, just as she did in physical life – only now her soul’s Inner Smile is imbued with a lovely, deep, ethereal quality.
I invite all who knew and loved her to tune into her soul NOW. The purpose is to facilitate resolving any imcompletion she may have, as well as to give some closure for the physically embodied. I hesitate to call us on this side of the fence the “living”, since as we all know, life is endless and creation continues in other dimensions. It’s not necessary to physically visit Joyce to connect to her. For those who live far away, I’ve enclosed a little photo essay of Joyce to help you better remember her wonderful sweet heart.
In the Chinese tradition it is good to wear white, as white nurtures and calms the Po soul (or lung spirit) of the deceased, the aspect of our psyche which is the most attached to earth. Joyce had lung issues. Consider wearing a white item of clothing to add extra ease to Joyce’s departure.
Visitors are welcome to meditate quietly with Joyce; it is not a funeral service or time for sharing stories about Joyce. Joyce explicitly forbade me to have a service for her during the winter. She only wanted a service in the late spring or summer, when the land was glorious with flowers, a suitable expression of her great love for gardening, landscaping, and her “flower children”. If you walk the land, which you are most welcome to do (or hang out in the Stone Circle), you will feel her presence imbued in it.
So I am planning to have a “soul memorial” event in June, when I’m not in China or at Heavenly Mountain. We’ll scatter half her ashes on the land, and the rest go to her beloved ocean and her dolphin playmates.
When Joyce stopped eating or drinking a week ago, I knew she was planning to leave. I was fortunate to be able to share my heavy grieving with her while she was alive. I appreciate the many offers of support I’ve received. But I’m accepting the change of losing my partner of many years, and am “fine” in the sense of feeling balanced — tears at her loss and bliss in sharing where she is. There is nothing really that I need right now except for you opening your heart to support Joyce. Please internally express your gratitude for who she was and release her from any attachment here by gracefully accepting her departure.
We already have quite a few flowers at the house. I’m sure Joyce will feel there’s never enough, and I’m sure her soul will drink in the nectar of any you bring. But I suggest you consider saving the flower money and buying instead a copy of the book written about her called “Under One Sky” by Rafi Nasser (Seven Paws Press). It has fifty pages of Joyce’s description of her interesting life, followed by top astrology readings from 12 major different schools of astrology analyzing (blindly) her natal chart. It’s an excellent way to get to know her better, and learn how and whether astrology works at the same time.
Also, there is another option for your flower money. Now that she is not here to stop me, I will also finally be able to offer Joyce’s wonderful Feldenkrais audio CDs designed for those learning qigong. For years Joyce would not let me sell them because they were not perfect enough (background noises, etc.).
But I can assure you, “imperfect” for Joyce is irrelevant in this case – the audio CDs are filled with her extraordinary voice and insights into moving effortlessly. She would go into a special teaching voice that was so intimate you feel lulled into a trance, in which she is inside your body. Every time I hear these audios I fall in love with her as if it was the first time I met her. To order Joyce’s Audio CD’s, “I Move Easily, My Body is Graceful”. go to https://healingtaousa.com/taichi/
I think that knowing others have been empowered by Joyce’s insights into living a graceful life – despite the heavy suffering she faced this lifetime – will give Joyce the greatest satisfaction in her after life.
Left: A young angel, blissfully unaware of what is to come: a jealous father that tries to break her will; two serious car accidents, resulting in metal rods and fusion of seven vertebrae; the murder of her father by an evil step mother; a ladder collapse that broke her shoulder and triggered five silent heart attacks, followed by a black widow bite; then breast cancer.
Right: mother Rose, father Finley, brother Daniel, sisters Carol and Debbie (baby)
Joyce in center with their 1958 Bel Aire Chevrolet
Left: Wedding to Michael Winn Aug. 23 on the edge of the Grand Canyon (Shoshone Point, South Rim)
Michael is wearing an Ethiopian Prince’s gold and velvet cape, pith helment and Tai Chi slippers.
Right: Yin Yang wedding cakes were delicious and harmonizing for everyone that ate them!
Joyce in her silk wedding dress purchased for $25 at a flee market.
Left: Playing in the dirt was bliss for Joyce. She was a master gardener and soil scientist.
Right: Joyce in the Cook Islands in the South Pacific, 1997. She learned to hula dance.
Left: Her childhood fantasy come true. Chengdu Panda Reserve 2002.
Right: On the Great Wall of China with Michael, 2002.
Despite great back pain, she also climbed 7000 ft. Huashan, or “Flower Mtn”.
Tulum mayan temple, Mexico, 2002. The ocean was her great healer and primary elemental love.
Left: summer 2007 – view from our back porch in Blue Ridge Mountain near Asheville, NC,
happily surrounding her with green.
Right: Valentines Day, 2008 (two weeks before she passed – still strong and healthy!)
Christmas, 2007. Flames of hope in her struggle with cancer.
Old childhood friends mourn her passing.
Joyce was survived by Leilani, her holland lop, who in her will was Chief Gardener for his valuable pellets. Five months later, bereft by her absence Leilani died mysteriously after chewing on a painting by Joyce called the Angel of Death.
Read about the extraordinary events on the third day after she passed.
