In Memorium, by Scott McKeown of Transition Sebastopol

Note: this was written by Scott McKeown, who worked closely with Nancy in co-founding Transition Sebastopol.

In Memoriam

A Tribute to Nancy Goddard 

Co-Founder, Transition Sebastopol

Original Leader of the Food Group, the first Transition Sebastopol working group

Dear participants, supporters, and friends of Transition Sebastopol, 

I am sad to announce to the Transition Sebastopol community that less than 24 hours ago, on March 1, 2011 at a few minutes after 1:00 PM, Nancy Goddard, the co-founder of Transition Sebastopol, and first leader of first working group of Transition Sebastopol, passed away in her home overlooking the beautiful gardens of the co-housing community in Sebastopol that she co-founded and where she has lived for many years. Nancy died with her partner Gary and her son Sean by her side, and surrounded by a large, caring community of people who loved her. 

Nancy was also a very dear and beloved friend to many of us in the Transition movement, and she will be deeply missed. Anyone who met her can't help but remember her signature radiant smile. She was always a presence of love. She was an instant friend to almost everyone she met – a person who you instantly felt comfortable with. When I first met Nancy – and I've heard this from many others – I somehow had an instant feeling that we had always been friends. The only part of her that was ever diminished almost always came from her occasional lack of self-confidence, that somehow she wasn't always able to fully see her own brilliance. 

Last November Nancy found out she had serious and irreversible pancreatic cancer, and that it was only a matter of time. Unfortunately, especially during the last few weeks, her condition deteriorated much more quickly than anyone had anticipated. 

The journey on which Nancy faced and came to fully accept her own death with such consciousness and presence, including the very day she learned of her cancer, through the deeply touching letter she wrote to her entire community, and through the amazing outpouring of love and support she inspired, leading up to the auspicious moment of her passing just hours ago – her face radiating with love and the entire space filled with a profound and deep peace – provided a tremendous blessing for everyone in the community who witnessed it.

During the summer of 2008, I had the blessing of being in the unique position of initiator for Transition Sebastopol, and part of that responsibility was to create an "initiating group." Nancy Goddard was one of the very first people I approached to be on that original committee. Although Nancy was a regular participant of Peak Oil Sebastopol, the organization that preceded Transition Sebastopol, most importantly, she was a respected figure in the Sebastopol community, and I knew that if she agreed to be part of the founding team it would give some instant credibility to our brand new group. 

In addition to being a long-time permaculturist and founding member of an intentional community, Nancy was well-known for being out in front with many other new trends that are now accepted core elements of the sustainability movement. She was living transition long before there was a Transition movement. And people who knew Nancy knew that she would not just casually put her weight behind something unless she thought it was important and cutting-edge. So when I was forming the initiating group I knew that if people saw that Nancy Goddard was behind Transition Sebastopol, they would take it seriously. And they did. 

In late 2008 when Transition Sebastopol was accepted by the Transition originators in the UK as the 9th Transition Town in the United States, Nancy Goddard's name was one of six listed as the founders on the application. The very first meeting ever of Transition Sebastopol was the first initiating group meeting that happened on October 1, 2008 in Nancy's house, the very house where she just passed away. And the next meeting after that. And many more. In addition to her over twelve months of going to weekly meetings and doing a lot of work on the initiating group as Transition Sebastopol was being created, Nancy also lead the effort to launch the first Transition Sebastopol working group, the Food group, and she was its first leader. Some of us remember a few wonderful summer gatherings we had at Nancy's co-housing community under the tree in front of her house, eating delicious treats grown in her garden as we planned the forming of the Food Group. 

The Food group continued under the skilled leadership of Sara Mccamant and among other things, created two of the most significant Transition Sebastopol projects to date: the local 350 Garden Challenge (the Sebastopol area effort) and the Reskilling Fair, something Nancy talked much about and advocated from the very beginning. The Reskilling Fair eventually became reality through the dedication and hard work of the brilliant organizers on the Reskilling group, a spin-off team from the Food group. Although Nancy was not directly involved with those events, she was instrumental in the founding of the organization that helped bring about that incredible work done by Sara and her amazing team. 

For many months Nancy selflessly donated a large part of her life so that Transition Sebastopol could get started and grow into one of the most active Transition initiatives in the country. All of us involved with Transition Sebastopol, and anyone in the future who benefits at all from Transition Sebastopol activities, owes gratitude to Nancy for her countless hours of hard work getting our initiative successfully launched and to the place it is today with 12 active working groups and many dozens of events and projects under its belt that has affected many hundreds, in fact, thousands of people, all in just a little over two years after its first public event.  

Last Thursday, five days before she died, three of us who are current members of the Transition Sebastopol initiating group, Wendy Taylor, Ben Zolno, and myself went to visit Nancy to deliver a huge card made by Julia Bystrova, Wendy Taylor, Deborah Grace, Julia Valentine, and Carolyne Stayton who is the Executive Director of Transition US and oversees the entire Transition movement across the country, and who hand painted a beautiful watercolor for the cover, and also myself. In our oversized card was a collage of dozens of photographs and memorabilia from early and recent Transition Sebastopol events, including photos from the amazing Reskilling Fair last November that Nancy had envisioned and was so passionate about. Along with the photos were many personal messages and poems from people involved with Transition expressing their love and gratitude for all she had done. In big letters were the words, "Nancy's Harvest."

Before we arrived we had been told there was probably only a 20% chance we could see her, what with the situation as it was and with everything going on. However when Nancy was told there were some Transition friends downstairs she asked to have us come right up. Entering her room, expecting to find someone in a depressed state, what we found instead was that huge smile -- yes, that world-class smile -- and gigantic amounts of love beaming out of her eyes welcoming us. It was almost shocking to see the incredible amount of radiance glowing through her body and face that was so ravaged. After just a few seconds of adjustment to first seeing her discolored and gaunt face, the shear brilliance of light coming through her eyes overrode everything else, so that it became almost difficult for me to see anything other than her incredibly bright spirit piercing out of her shining eyes. 

Rather than having her talk yet again about her cancer and give us some kind of update on her situation for the umpteenth time, we chose instead to not go there at all, but instead to just be together, talk about things going on now, some recent successes with Transition Sebastopol, some silly stories from the past, and just be together like the friends that we are, and enjoy each other's company. She spoke a bit of her own impending death, absent of any denial. With the feeling of peace and clarity that imbued the entire space it was obvious that through her journey she had come to a place of full acceptance. We thanked her and expressed deep gratitude on behalf of everyone involved with Transition Sebastopol for all she had done. She was very thrilled to get the card, and as she looked through the photos and all the written expressions of love and appreciation to her, she expressed how moved and touched she was, and you could see in her face how true it was. She was blown away when we told her there were now 12 active working groups, especially given how she remembered starting the only existing working group at the time. After looking at the different parts of the card for a while, and saying how much it meant to her, she set it aside and said she would look at it in great detail later, but for now she really just wanted to visit with us. We sat around her bed next to a large window that looks out over the green land with its abundant gardens, the light coming in, with Nancy sitting up and beaming us love and telling us she loved us, and us telling her the same, smiling and talking, and it was, for a few wonderful moments, just the eternal now, with all the full love there is just being together in the present moment. 

After a while, it was time to go. You could tell that her body needed rest, and so Nancy hugged each of us again, and "I love you" was said to each other for the last time. 

I have been told that shortly after our visit her condition deteriorated rapidly. About a day or so later and she would have not been able to be as fully present and carry on the clear conversation that she did. At the time we visited, other than being a bit slow with her speech and her gaunt appearance, it was the same essential Nancy that we knew, fully present. Only later did we realize how blessed we were that a door had somehow magically opened for us, not just as her friends but also as the representatives of her work with Transition, to deliver to her the message of how her work had gone on and grown, and how it resulted in real, tangible manifestations that touched many lives, and how it will continue to go on and grow. As it happened, it was one of the last few moments Nancy would be capable of fully receiving the appreciation and gratitude that ALL of us in this movement here have for her. For those of you reading this now who have been involved at some point with Transition Sebastopol and knew Nancy, but perhaps not well, or were not able to see her during her last days, please know your appreciation and love for her was given to her that day. 

For me, my visit with Nancy affected me deeply. I felt it was a great blessing. My heart was opened up wide, and it lasted all that day. And I knew, deep in my heart, that something was very much up. A couple of us even commented on the same thing right after our visit. There was a transcendent glow coming through Nancy's eyes, something I'd seen before in people who were about to burst into the infinity that we call death. Something WAY beyond any medication that is usually given to people at the end. I've seen what it looks like when a person gets very close to leaving. The veil gets very thin. And for those of us blessed enough to be in that presence, especially in the presence of someone as conscious and loving of Nancy Goddard, a reflection of the infinite love leaks through just a bit and touches us. I knew she was getting close. 

Yesterday, a few hours after Nancy's passing I had the opportunity to be in the presence of a few men who are dear close friends of Nancy, including her loving partner, Gary. I heard some stories of real and powerful magic that had happened that day. And it still goes on, as it is still only hours later. She is with me a bit. Or me with her. I still feel her love that she gave to me when I was in her presence with only a few days to go before her entry into the Great Mystery. It is very real. But, I suspect, it will eventually fade as time goes by, as it always seems to do. But for now, as I write this tribute, still well less than 24 hours since her passing, I can still feel it. I am touched by the infinite love.

Thank you, Nancy. 

I love you.

Scott McKeown

A poem contributed by Julia Valentine for Nancy:

Anyone Can Sing

 

Anyone can sing. You just open your mouth,
and give shape to a sound. Anyone can sing.
What is harder, is to proclaim the soul,
to initiate a wild and necessary deepening:
to give the voice broad, sonorous wings
of solitude, grief, and celebration,
to fill the body with the echoes of voices
lost long ago to bravery, and silence,
to prise the reluctant heart wide open,
to witness defeat, to suffer contempt,
to shrink, lose face, go down in ignominy,
to retreat to the last dark hiding-place
where the tattered remnants of your pride
still gather themselves around your nakedness,
to know these rags as your only protection
and yet still open - to face the possibility
that your innermost core may hold nothing at all,
and to sing from that - to fill the void
with every hurt, every harm, every hard-won joy
that staves off death yet honours its coming,
to sing both full and utterly empty,
alone and conjoined, exiled and at home,
to sing what people feel most keenly
yet never acknowledge until you sing it.
Anyone can sing. Yes. Anyone can sing.

~ William Ayot ~

 

 

(Small Things that Matter)