{"id":1672,"date":"2011-07-11T14:21:56","date_gmt":"2011-07-11T18:21:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=1672"},"modified":"2011-09-07T13:11:10","modified_gmt":"2011-09-07T17:11:10","slug":"evies-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=1672","title":{"rendered":"Evie’s Death"},"content":{"rendered":"

I haven\u2019t posted anything for a week because Evie Spodnik, a dear friend and fellow circle dancer, was killed in a horrific and shocking way. For more details<\/a>
\nFor more information about Evie see Leah Carey\u2019s blog<\/a> and the next two posts which are also about Evie.<\/p>\n

Last Wednesday, at Memoir Class, I finally had the support and the time to write down my thoughts.\u00a0 Evie brought Barry to dance several times and he seemed nice, pretty mellow, was OK with the dances.\u00a0 Looking back I see that there was a sort of \u201cflatness\u201d to him, he wasn\u2019t really engaged with things.\u00a0 Wednesday, June 29, we heard that Evie had been injured and Barry too, and they were in critical condition in Boston hospitals.\u00a0 The plural of hospital gave us the first inkling that the fire was not just an accident.\u00a0 Rumors were flying around, the Police were investigating.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A small group of us gathered at Linda Frank\u2019s house.\u00a0 She\u2019s a Sufi and led a Sufi healing ceremony.\u00a0 We shared food and danced on her deck.\u00a0 The dances were from a CD of \u201cmountain dances\u201d that Mary Ellen brought.\u00a0 The climb up Dicky Mountain and dancing on top was an annual ritual that Evie was usually part of. It was really good to gather with friends and to do something that felt like we were really helping Evie.<\/p>\n

I had been praying for Evie, mostly asking for the \u201cbest outcome\u201d and \u201cthy will be done.\u201d\u00a0 Knowing how incredibly painful burns are, and how hard it would be to recover from such major damage, I really wasn\u2019t sure if I wanted her to live or die.<\/p>\n

One of the rumors was that Barry had thrown gasoline on Evie.\u00a0 Mary Ellen said that she and Bill had been at a gathering in Canada, and Evie and Barry were arguing.\u00a0 It was beginning to sound like she broke up with him and he retaliated with murder & suicide.<\/p>\n

The last time Evie came to dance at Neskaya, she said that Barry had applied for a job in Whitefield and she was hoping that they could move back to the Franconia area.\u00a0 I told her I\u2019d be delighted.\u00a0 It was almost the last thing I said to her.\u00a0 Kayla found out Friday night that Evie had died, and the Police were now saying if Barry survived, he would be charged with 1st degree murder.\u00a0 Kayla called me early Saturday to let me know.\u00a0 I went over to Neskaya to help her put together a message to the Circle Dance community that we were hosting a gathering on Sunday, starting at 4PM.<\/p>\n

The gathering at Neskaya totally surpassed my expectation of what a grieving community could do.\u00a0 At least 50 people gathered, bringing food, poems, flowers and photographs.\u00a0 We started about 4PM with a dance and a circle of names.\u00a0 We went on to share dances, stories about Evie, poems and tributes, and more dances.\u00a0 Someone would say \u201cLet\u2019s do Medicine Wheel\u201d and we\u2019d do it.\u00a0 Someone would say \u201cI have a poem to read.\u201d\u00a0 We went on until 8:30 sharing dances, stories, food, pictures, and more dances.\u00a0 We hadn\u2019t organized it, just called the group together into sacred space.\u00a0 The event unfolded very organically and beautifully.\u00a0 Evie\u2019s daughter, who knew how much Circle Dancing meant to Evie, was there and told us about Evie\u2019s last hours.\u00a0 She had passed away very peacefully.<\/p>\n

As people were starting to leave, I went to the West door.\u00a0 I could see the crescent moon through the window, and because the little white lights hanging on the balcony were reflected in the glass, it looked like the moon was hanging from a starry necklace.\u00a0 Many of us went out to look at the moon, and as we stood there, fireworks began.\u00a0 They were somewhere out the Easton Road, probably at the Franconia Inn, and they burst in the space between the trees and the moon.\u00a0 It reminded me of Leah\u2019s story about how much Evie enjoyed fireworks.<\/p>\n

At the end I felt totally satisfied.\u00a0 What we had done together had met my need to grieve, to celebrate Evie, to come to terms with the loss of her, to be with people who knew and loved her.\u00a0 I had many chances to cry, usually when greeting someone I hadn\u2019t seen for a while.\u00a0 We\u2019d hug and then one or the other or both would burst into tears.\u00a0 We danced Evie\u2019s favorite dances, joyful dances, prayerful dances, and a dance called \u201cThe Crossing\u201d which we have done for everyone we care about who has died.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I haven\u2019t posted anything for a week because Evie Spodnik, a dear friend and fellow circle dancer, was killed in a horrific and shocking way. For more details For more information about Evie see Leah Carey\u2019s blog and the next … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1672\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}