NOTE: you can leave your own remembrance in the comment box at the end of this post
by Ramsay Davila
My Mom had been battling cancer for a number of years now. Her journey with cancer can only be described as utterly graceful. Somehow, she escaped the pain and suffering that goes along with this horrible disease.
Most people aren’t aware that my mom had this amazing ability and strength to be there for people in their dying days. A number of people died in my house as a child, people who are sick and needed support. Other times she would fly across country to be with people who are alone, people who she hadn’t seen in years and years. I always thought my mom was doing this because she had some sort of fear of dying alone, and she was trying to use karma to head your bets. I was completely wrong. My mom is not afraid of death. She chose to discontinue cancer treatments, even though they could’ve extended her life. She had seen so many friends struggle with different cancer treatments and decided she wanted nothing to do with it. My mom is karma was to not die alone, but die without pain and suffering with the most grace I ever thought imaginable. She was with her kids at her passing.
My mom‘s name Luzita, translates to “little light”. That could not be more of an understatement. There was nothing little about the light my mom brought. She brought warmth and comfort to everyone around her. She was an amazing mother and wife to dad of 52 years. We lost a good egg. You’ll be missed, mom.
By Halimah Collingwood
For nearly 60 years, Luzita Davila and I were the best of friends. We met in the music scene of the Bay Area in the mid-1960s. She was this happy, smiling, friendly genuine spark of Life that was at every music concert, party or gathering where she would light up the room. My boyfriend at the time and I moved in with her in a tiny funky one-bedroom house in Larkspur, a small town in Marin County. She always had her friends from Santa Cruz visiting and going to, you guessed it, parties. When it was just the two of us living in the house, we were like sisters of the Spirit, ready to be on the go…somewhere.
I had already joined Subud when we met and when a job took her to New York City, I knew she was going to need something to keep her sane. I gave her the phone number of a helper I knew there and soon she was an applicant. I’ll never forget the first time I saw her after she was opened. She came to visit me on my houseboat in Sausalito. I went to the door at her knock, threw it open and there was this Light in front of me – her smile was so bright, her eyes twinkling and I fell in love with her all over again. My feelings were so deep, I knew that I would die for her to save her life.
We met up again in 1970 at Skymont just before Bapak’s visit. She was dating Ralph and they became a couple while there. I went to Indonesia after Bapak left and then the UK, but we continued to write (real letters) and keep abreast of the happenings of our lives.
I wasn’t able to attend her double wedding with the MacNeils at Skymont but I was there for their first child’s birth. My dear Godson, Hartwell, was born in their tiny cabin in September of 1971, surrounded by her Subud sisters and her Subud midwife. I distinctly remember Ann Holiday saying after two hours of pushing, “If you don’t have your baby now, I’m going to take you to the hospital.” He popped out shortly after that!!
In 1983 when my family moved from the UK to the US, we stayed with Ralph and Luzita for 10 days while we decided where to go to find our new home. My sons, three and five, who had lived their first years in a village of 100 people in Scotland without any nearby friends, were overjoyed to be living with four Davila children and with the many Gleeson kids next door. Our lives were bound together forever.
When Luzita was a National Helper, she traveled around the country, making close friends wherever she went. Everyone loved her. She was everyone’s best friend. I remember going to Subud meetings and gatherings and spending very little time with her because she had to catch up with this lady or have lunch with someone else. I once told her that I was jealous because she never made a point to be with me. She was surprised because we were so close that she thought we’d always be there together. Ever after that she was conscientious to spend time with me at each event.
Over the years, Luzita helped many women transition to their new life, giving her all to those people she loved and who deeply loved her. I once told her I wanted her to be my death doula when it was my time. Little did I know that it would be me who was one of her close friends at her side to say good-bye.
“We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when, but I know we’ll meet again some sunny day!”
From her consistently, amazingly open and loving heart, Luzita is closest one I know to being an angel in human clothing. Prayer is with my long time friend & brother, Ralph.
You know how Subud is – you may never live near someone or even be close friends but they are there and when you see them, you feel happy and close and that’s how I felt and feel about Luzita. She was there. I have no doubt that had I needed something, she would be there for me personally as she was for so many. I miss her already.
Thank you Ralph and Luzita for allowing, at the end of your life, the grace of being able to leave the planet so closely to each other (for what’s a week in spirit time?) and take the journey together on this most glorious path you are on.
Our earthly journey together started in the seventies and always had a little distance because of location, but no distance in the love . . . and you never failed to send a Xmas card picturing the amazing family growing around you. You were, as I see it now, the solid pillars but also the inspired spirit of that tribe. The inspired elders! What a role to sustain! And you did it well!
Thank you for being with me today. I learned of your passing last night through the inspired and inspiring tribute by your son Ramsey. I remember Ramsey, thank you Ramsey.
Today Ralph and Luzita I lend you my eyes so we can spend the day together saying goodbye, so you can see yourself through my eyes in everything I encounter on the earthly plane. . . It will be imbued with your spirit like a golden mist penetrating everything I touch. This, of course. only if you wish to take a little detour on your journey to visit once again our amazingly beautiful natural world, the world our divine selves created in unity, this world of love it was meant to be. With the light you always carried Luzita, everything will be illuminated, like it ignited the spark in everyone you touched and helped in your daily life.
Today you inspire every one of my moves, every one of my utterances: a glorious latihan! I see you in everything I do, your features so clear. We have a long history since the seventies, but we never got a chance to spend much time together because of physical distance.
We got to know you first on our yearly visit to the Gleeson’s house. We often got together around food and wine, the kids played together, my daughters terrified by the wildness of ‘the boys.’ Throughout the years our paths crossed here and there; it was like going to shore on a slow flowing river for an exchange of goodwill and a sharing of observations and ideas: the observers in us!
And of course partaking in the latihan, attending many Subud International events, Manucha etc. . .
We spent a little more time with Ralph for a couple of weeks in Kenya, when he and I chose to take refuge and sleep in a tiny car rather than camp with the three others in the wild Kenyan Savannah when three Masaïs with spears visited a our campsite. We went on many adventures exploring the fauna of the Masaï Mara reserve.
Then you stopped by together a few times on your way to Burning Man, at another time when we had a visit from the regional helpers, but we never got a chance to share the daily details of our lives (so we can do it today as our last day on earth together.) I see your face in the face of all others.
We were allowed a friendship with no judgment, no entanglements, only love.
Thank you.
Riantee and Charles
A poem to Luzita, from Leana McClellan:
I am at home making banana
bread and you are dying in
another city.
I check my step count on FitBit for the tenth
time today, throw a load of laundry in, later
I will head out for a walk, You struggle to get
out of bed.
Dying is a solitary feat of this existence
that is our lot, an in-between time of
unique isolation, a blind midnight swim
into the vast ethereal pond, Dying is both
the smallest blade of grass and the
mountain at once.
And no matter how much one
is loved it cannot be shared, only experienced.
I imagined you would live to be one hundred,
comforting the rest of us as we lay dying.
Your multi-ringed fingers would pet our sickroom
hands, the alchemy of your kindness, open spirit and
down-to-earth nature easing your fifty best friends to
the other side.
But into the exquisite reality beyond this complex
dream you go, where “Don’t forget to write!” has
no meaning, but I need to say it anyway,
Leave the tears to us and be unbounded in joy,
Love, Leana
Luzita was the best US helper I knew when I was young in Subud. She had that full of Grace and it flows right through to you thing… always reflecting the light & power of the Almighty from deep in her being. She was gentle and so direct. She didn’t know I felt that way about her and loved her dearly.
When my ex-husband Donald and I came to Skymont for his probationary meeting with Machmud Kennedy, we got to stay in the Davila’s house there. It was quiet & full of love. That experience and seeing one of the Saltzmann’s babies born were two gifts that prepared me to become a new wife and mother in Texas without Subud family near me for 4 years. I felt the women’s energy, the joy of being forth children from the latihan and bond between husbands and wives who each do the latihan. I will always feel gratitude to Ralph and Luzita for sharing that cabin and their precious love throughout our Subud family for so many years.
I loved Luzita for her fearless grace and her contagious courage. And I loved her for loving my mother, whom she once called a warm beacon of light on a journey home. I feel deep gratitude that they were friends and feel very confident they are together now, having tea and pastries, my mom finally resting into Luzita’s joyful laughter, after a lifetime of raising Salzmanns (no small feat).
Two glorious women, flying free.