Always Remember Sky - our annual giving to the La'akea Sky Smith Sustainability Scholarship

Oct 5th 2022  

Dear Friends and family of La'akea Smith, it is that time of year again to remember Sky with a donation to the Scholarship in his name at Cabrillo College  in Santa Cruz that continues to thrive and support students who have a focus on sustainability. Every year I get a thank you card that includes a list of the recipients and often photos of them and personal thank you notes sharing their aspirations. This year when I opened the “Thank You”  note had to blink as I saw written there among the names of the students who received the scholarship was “Bodhi Lee”. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me!  Bodhi Lee is Sky’s big brother’s name.  Once again it feels like a little “Hey there” from the spirit world, a wave of the hand from Sky to all of us.  The Thank You card had 5 recipients this year!  I am sending a big Thanks to all of you who have donated over the years and encourage you to go to the website again as part of your holiday giving and also a remembrance of our La’akea Sky.  This has been a most meaningful and impactful reflection on the life of a remarkable young man I am privileged to call my son. And yes when people ask me how many children I have…. I say 5. He will always be a part of our family and community and the scholarship is one way he still lives among us.  I am also reposting a writing I ran across while preparing to reach out to you all this year…….  Sometimes going back and reading things years later reveals more gifts.  Enjoy reading as you please.  And here is the link for the scholarship donation.  Donate Here to Sky's Scholarship .  Please indicate “Student Scholarship”  and in the notes “La’akea Sky Smith Sustainability Scholarship”    From my warm heart, I thank you  

My Life Tuns Me On 

Amy parked quietly and walked up my front steps, accompanied by the soft Kauai breeze and fragrant plumeria flowers. I saw her there through my glass french doors, wavering in my sight as tears immediately welled up. I had never met her in person still there was a profound familiarity, a soul silence as we embraced.  A few years prior her 17 year old daughter, a good friend of my youngest son,  had been killed in a bazar motor cycle accident. The shock and grief I witnessed in Vivian’s friends was now churning up my own life. Amy had brought me a bar of her gourmet soap, made in her home studio shop, and the small book “Healing from Loss” that the local hospice makes available. I don’t remember if we shared even a handful of words, I just know Amy, as well as a few other women, held me in the first months after my son Sky was also killed in a motorcycle accident. Sherry and Cyndee and Jan had also “lost” children. They invited me to join them, initiating me into this club in which no mother would ever wish to belong . We gather for tea, talk, walk, share art projects, or spend a weekend in a cabin in the mountains. We allow the stories and shared grief to arise naturally. The subtle familiarity we share is one of the greatest solaces available in this remarkable journey of healing, of learning to live with the texture of grief woven through almost all others sensations and experiences.  Month by month, year by year, many too many others joined us, and we reached out to them, inviting them to join us when we gathered. “How many years has it been for you?” we ask,  when it feels right to ask. ‘Last month’, “10 years ago’, ‘ It’s 3 years for me next month’ , ‘My child was just a new born’, ‘ My son was 35’……. the spectrum too wide the shock and pain similar through out.  At one gathering an idea arose to make a Facebook group to share stories, resources, inspiration, tears and to communicate about our next gathering.  We came up with the name “Mothers of our Shooting Stars” and translated it into Hawaiian “Na Makuahine O Na Hokulele”. The reach of the group gradually spread to the mainland, to “new” mothers and those whom we have known to be in this club for decades. The intimacy born of this shared grief, the familiarity we share is a constant comfort. Any day or eve the crushing wave of grief might drown any one of us but for the life raft of unconditional love and acceptance we are certain is there. We encourage one another to reach out, or post a tear emoji on the Facebook page, or scan for the latest inspiration or beauty posted there by our sisters. 

About a year after Sky died I started going to a weekly writing group where we read our pieces aloud for each other. The story of Sky often came through the writing I shared and again people were supportive, interested, patient, affected by the profundity of the  journey. I wrote the following piece for a spoken word show. It reflects the truth of how common this loss is through out the ages and across the lands and oceans or our world. Common and none the less, always astonishing. 

for “Give Peace a Chance” spoken word March 2016  

THE LOTTERY     by Eana Rose

1,2,3 what are we fighting for……… I was a flower child from birth, the proverbial Pollyanna, and that year I felt like I was parting the veils of a privileged life looking into the crazed world of war games, astonished that it all could come so close to home.  It was 1971 and I was a budding hippy at a summer church camp nestled in the in the beautiful Cuyamaca mountains an hour east of San Diego. Frozen with anxiety, I waited for the phone call that would revel his number. The lottery that year was striking home and I was fearful in the not knowing.  The call came after lunch, 305! I remember yelping with relief. 305! Steve’s Lottery number was 305, my brother was safe, not going, of course he could not, would not go. Tears of relief streamed over my cheeks.  

But what of the others? The endless sisters and brothers and fathers and mothers?  I never thought too much viscerally about the others until decades later when my own son was killed under a midnight sky in a complicated war zone intersection of Oakland. Oakland, it is torture to even say that city’s name or acknowledge it on the map, a city now where horrors take place, blood stains on the asphalt like so much of our earth ground soaked with the blood of endless wars. Oakland, for me now like Auschwitz, I’m nauseated as it rolls off my tongue. Oakland, I feel my resentment, the war inside, the resistance against what is. Oakland, to me a city only come up in the world because it hugs Berkeley, UC Berkeley. Berkeley where Sky was a bran new shinning star. Berkeley where they did give a damn, safe on hallowed ground all those years ago and still protesting - so many sons of mothers come home in a box. So many dead sons. Oh my god, you could re name our planet, our beautiful blue green planet - The Planet of the Mothers Dead Sons. 

Mothers dead daughters also, so many traffic accidents, over doses, fatal falls and broken dam walls, suicides from mysteriously broken insides. When will we give peace a chance? 

Early mornings I look out from my Lani, gold shining through the palm leaves that whisper in the breeze. The sun rises and lights up the droplets of dew on the green - green every where shimmering rainbows - define the miracle of spider webs - and many bird songs surround me, many flower scents welcome me. Right here right now is peace. Right here right now I find a moment of acceptance and I bask in it knowing how fragile it is, the acceptance. It seems miraculous how beauty and peace can be double exposed over the horror of war and sloppily executed intersections and the red Suzuki motorcycle whose fault it was not, it was just a machine, innocent. So much innocence before the dangers of life. I finally saw a photo of it captioned “Don’t tell mom” on Sky’s Instagram. The bright pink blaze of the sunset behind him a glory. Sky, shinning there next to the bike, like the sons in their uniforms, excited for the camaraderie, proudly going off to war. Like the young Cheyenne hunter going off on this first hunt, pounding hoofs and then the keening of the mother as her son comes into camp draped over the back of his horse. 

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This is my awakening: that this journey, this story, is an opportunity to come through the inconceivable and live a life where joy and sorrow exist as facets of one gem. A world where utter devastation and hope ride on one breath, where all consuming grief glistens along side limitless stretches of beauty and grace.  

There are particulars, subtle or dramatic differences in circumstance in the way our children die. Yet, one thing I have found to be certain and simple and inconceivable is the power of gratitude. I first really heard it from my dear friend Cyndee; she said,  “Gratitude is the thing that really got me through the worst of it”.  And though I did not have the courage or strength at the time to ask what she meant, this has rescued me time and again when I feel like I am slip sliding down the dark slope of despondency and loneliness. 

My son’s own story paved the way in some respects for our families particular experience. From the time he was 17, until his death at 23, La’akea Sky, (his full name - meaning the sacred light that shines from with in) had turned his life around 180 degrees. He was endowed with a brilliant mind and a most compassionate heart. This combination of attributes ultimately lead to a psychotic break at the fragile age of 17. Experimenting with drugs, as many do, and self medicating to relive stress from family trauma along with the stresses of moving towards his goal to attend a top ivy league university pushed the envelope and he quickly accelerated into a severe manic episode. In motherly ferocity, I took Sky and his brother Sangjay to live at a Buddhist retreat center in the mountains that cradle Santa Cruz, California.  It took a year, living at the center where Sky learned to be authentic in his meditation practice. We worked with a dear friend who is an extraordinary psychotherapist; a psychiatrist and medication; various addiction recovery resources and programs, until Sky stabilized. He continued to work with his psychotherapist every week.  My mother and his elder sister both helped me for a time pay for his continuing care.  Then there came the day when he called and said that he wanted to pay for his weekly appointments himself, all the while attending the local Jr. College and landing an esteemed serving job at a high class restaurant.  He had an unparalleled drive to conquer and turn around his obstacles. He learned to gage his “energy” and adjust his medications with the help of his psychiatrist. Remarkably, at 21 years old  he invested in himself at $380 a month for is sessions with the psychotherapist plus hours of work trade in a commitment to his healing. During these years he vigorously worked a 12 step program and became a leader in youth recovery programs. This community began to look to him as one looks to the shinning stars for guidance and inspiration trusting they would be held in his remarkable intelligence and compassion. 

Finally he was ready to step farther out onto his path and he applied and was accepted to UC Berkeley as a transfer student from the Jr College. The summer prior to entrance he traveled with a best Bud, Grant, to Machu Picchu, Peru and on to the coast to surf their way up through Ecuador. His major was community sustainability and Grant shared post posthumously how he would find Sky in the small village centers surrounded by the local people, speaking with them fluently in Spanish, sharing his passionate interest in their lives.  

Shortly after he returned to Santa Cruz in July, our spiritual teacher died suddenly. This was a great challenge to navigate while making his move up to the east bay to begin his life long dream of attending a top rate university. I remember him telling me how he finally cried after being frozen with grief. What a relief this was and how he felt his heart melt and open again.  At the time I was helping care from my mother who was in hospice care in her home declining from ALS.  Sky came out to visit us for our birthdays in August, just weeks before courses were to begin at UC Berkeley. He was kind, generous and gentle and I recall how I could see that even his physiology had softened though his recovery and healing. He was  utterly changed from all the work he had son towards his healing and yet his humorous vigor and tangible compassion and passion remained constant. On his way back to California he took a detour to visit his best friend Ross in Portland, he was strikingly loyal to family and friends  and It feels now like he was preparing. La’akea Sky had become one of the most non-judgmental people I have ever encountered. He was also stubborn and against many pleading to the contrary, and all the while unbeknownst to me, he had qualified for a small loan and purchased a motorcycle, justifying it as he and his buddy were planning on using the bikes to commute from Oakland where they had found an apartment, and more easily park at the University. 

I am sharing all this with you to illustrate our family story around our loss and how we are are surviving, for the morning before the accident Sky had posted a powerful statement on his Facebook page. He simply wrote “My Life Turns Me On”.  This has become his epitaph. It is an invitation, a challenge, an opportunity for daily reflection, and ultimately a way to honor his memory.  Asking ourselves if indeed our lives turn us on, and if not, what can we do to change that. 

Sky was in his fullness and I have to believe that he was complete in many ways.  The day after his death some dear friends were sharing their grief with a friend of theirs.  They spoke of Sky’s remarkable life and his powerful impact on the world around him.  This friend took a walk as a way of processing the story and she had an experience that she can only say was a “visitation” from Sky. She was astonished as she had never met him in his body. He spoke of many things, actually giving her solace as she grieved for her own son’s current struggles, inviting her to just love and accept him and trust his path.  At last he left her with this message for us:  “ The gift of such a shock is that it makes us stop what we are doing and notice. That is what I wish people to experience right now. Just to  stop and rest and notice the depth and beauty of everything.”  And so on occasion I remember these eternal messages Sky has given us  and I am grateful. 

Though a midnight motorcycle accident, returning home from a young peoples 12 step program after mentoring young friends who had come up from Santa Cruz to see him, is tragic, I realize that there are seemingly worse ways our children die. My heart goes out to mothers who’s children have died through suicide or violence or war. Yet the hole in our lives is the same. We simply miss them. Surviving a child is a singular experience and we never get used to it. Still we can remember to stop what we are doing and notice the depth and beauty around us while feeling the intimate longing and the miraculous closeness we now have with our children who are not longer with us in their bodies. Every day I am grateful that we have each other, our unlikely “club” of mothers.  To travel this path together is a horror and still an honor that in-blazes our lives, stripping us of duplicity and leaving us naked to the truth of this fragile and beautiful life.