Blue Feather in the Desert of Dementia: Journey of Loss and Love

EPISODE DESCRIPTION

In this deeply personal episode of Viral Mindfulness, Alexander Bluefeather shares an intimate reflection on the passing of his father. Recorded in real time as he heads across the desert toward a family gathering and celebration of life, this episode is a raw meditation on grief, memory, sacred moments, and the practice of presence at the threshold of death. Alexander offers stories from his final days with his dad, reads from The Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller, and introduces the upcoming Spring Wise Circle, a soulful sanctuary for shared healing. If you are navigating loss or seeking to better understand the terrain of grief, this is a tender companion for the journey.

SUMMARY

Alexander Blue Feather reflects on the death of his father, recounting the events leading up to his passing and the sacred experience of being present for his final breath. He speaks from the road, on his way to Joshua Tree and a family gathering in Arizona. With candor and warmth, he revisits the special relationship he shared with his dad—a friendship marked by mutual respect, healing, and deep love across generational and identity divides. He reads from Francis Weller’s The Wild Edge of Sorrow, exploring the five gates of grief and sharing how his spiritual practices and the memory of his father now guide him. The episode closes with an invitation to join his Spring Wise Circle, a five-week offering centered around creative healing and community.

Key Takeaways

Loss and love are inseparable. Grief is the price of deep love, and honoring that loss is sacred work.

Being present at the end of life can be transformative and healing, both for the dying and for those who remain.

Spiritual practice prepares us. The mantra “when I get there, what I need will be there” held true for Alexander during his father’s passing.

Francis Weller’s framework of the five gates of grief offers language and structure to understand the multidimensional nature of sorrow.

The Spring Wise Circle is open and welcoming, a creative and contemplative space to process grief, deepen self-awareness, and find soulful connection.

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to Viral Mindfulness, the podcast. I'm your host, Alexander Bluefeather. It's mid April. I'm well into my new year. What's shaking?

What's cooking, honey? Hey, soul sibling. Welcome back to the podcast. I wanna give a content warning today. I am going to talk about death of a parent, death of one of my parents.

So if that's not the space that you're in or can contain in this hour, this shift of the day, push pause, come back. I'll be here. I'm not gonna get too far into the details, but I am gonna give you a state of the union blue update blue update today and let you know where I'm headed and how I'm flying and floating in real time as the feather that I am, the blue feather that I am. It's been almost two months since my father died, February 18. And I am in real time leaving in just a couple hours in my car from Southern California to drive across the desert to do what I have been doing since 2015, when my dad and his partner, my stepmother, were in process in relocating, to The United States from Ecuador.

And so I've been driving across the desert out there with this whole decade of dementia, the decade of the desert drives, thinking about my daddy. And now in 2025, driving back and forth from his dying days and transition, which was February 18, I was able to be out there for four nights and four days with him before he took his last breath. And with all of my siblings, and some of my nieces and nephews and also the great the greats, their children. My dad's sweet love and second wife, Lynn, my stepmother, and of course, one of my dad's very dearest, his dearest best friend, Nevada, who was such a gift to our family in assisting Lynn, assisting Cardell. I felt so grateful to learn about her experience with being in process with the dying.

And she's helped several hundred people over her career and her calling to transition, including both of her parents. I'm gonna head out to gather with all of my family. It's Easter weekend in real time. Tomorrow will be the two month anniversary of his death day. And then Saturday, the nineteenth, we'll be gathering for a celebration of life.

All of my family will be together. And my dearest friend and bestie, Jay, will be joining me from New York, and it should be very lovely. And so I'm heading out towards Joshua Tree today to walk and hike and be in my own process of sorrow, grief, and loss, as well as love and gratitude and memory. At this point in the game, I feel like part of what I'm doing in real time is allowing for all the thoughts and the memories and the feelings and the sensations to come home that I have created a space, a life, an expansive spiritual human nature. And I get to remember and love.

For me, loss and love are two sides of a coin. I love and therefore I will lose. And now that I've lost my first parent, I understand more. And I also was a lot more afraid of the actual dying process. And since I was able to be with my dad, he entered into the emergency room on his birthday which was February 10.

Having some symptoms like sick for a couple weeks. Issues with his bowels and issue with his urinary tract. Not feeling well. And when they checked into the ER, there were issues arriving with more tests. A swollen prostate that had been quite enlarged for time and needed surgery.

His kidney levels were starting to go into failure, just starting the process. He was, he had pneumonia. And so what turned into that first night, then he stayed in this ER and day by day, we all started to arrive and the situation got more complex. Lungs, lungs filling up with fluid, kidney levels not coming, blood pressure, there was a heart issue. He went into Afib.

His cardiac health failing. And by Sunday, February 16, the decision was made for him to come home to die and to be under the care of hospice. And Lynn and my dad's dear friend, Nevada, were there to participate, as sort of the point people. And of course, my siblings were all there. We were all together.

And it was very difficult and very beautiful. For me it was very sacred. I had plenty of time alone with my dad which was very meaningful. And He was home for two nights and Sunday and Monday and died Tuesday, February 18. He took his last breath surrounded by a few of us.

Myself, Lynn, his wife, Nevada, his best friend. My nephew, Christian, and his wife, and also one of our other adopted but full nephews, Caleb. The six of us were there with him when he took his last breath. And wow. So much of my fear has been eliminated about the process of dying.

This is my first time being with someone who took their last breath. My first time being in this situation of going from having conversations, brief ones with him, eyes open to transitioning day by day and night by night out of this dimension. I feel so grateful. He was one of the great loves of my life. We had a really beautiful connection and friendship as adults and we had a beautiful life.

I had a beautiful life as a kid. Of course, there were all kinds of, you know, dynamics and layers over the time and length of such a relationship. But one of the great gifts of my life was meeting my dad in the middle. The middle of my life, my mid twenties into my mid forties and having a very close relationship with him. Me as a gay man, as a queer human with a straight father outside of religion, outside of gender norms, outside of heteronormative thinking in a space of exploration and curiosity and not knowing and being open to the fertile soil of possibility and love.

And it was such a beautiful gift in my life, especially as a gay man. I know so many gay men who don't have or didn't get to have what I had and shared with my father. And then, of course, in 2015, the beginning of dementia started, and there was a powerful time where I was able to be with him Under my avocado tree and he was able to he was visiting me here in Southern California and we were talking about what was happening with his memory and he was afraid. And he hadn't talked about it yet. And he didn't think that his wife knew.

He was afraid to talk to her about it. And I we talked, and I said, she loves you. You don't I'm what makes you think she doesn't already notice? And you two are good friends and this is what you do. And we talked about eventually you know what might happen.

And his interest in, of course, his wife being taken care of and being okay when he dies. If he goes first and this was in 2015 and we had this time together where it was really the last time we meditated together in that same full capacity. We sat under the tree and did a meditation together. And it's such a special memory for me underneath this beautiful avocado tree that lives on my patio and where I have contemplated season after season, year after year, love and life and sobriety and building viral mindfulness, building this podcast, and ultimately into now, his transition in his death. So, one thing that I've learned now having gone through this is that my practice of faith has an idea that when I get there, what I need will be there for me, and that is how it has been.

And I continue from this moment looking forward to have faith in that way, in that melody and mantra. When I get there, I trust that there will be soil and nutrients and sun and water and beautiful fellow plants who are the humans growing around me and that in that difficult future moment, everything I need will be there. So, I want to finish this episode today and just share a couple ideas from a book that has really come in to help me and then, of course, I wanted to tell you about my Spring Wise Circle. It starts next Tuesday on April twenty second, and there are two seats still available. And I wanna open up open it up to any of you listeners.

Pay what you can. You need to just email me or reach out to me and say, I'm interested in that seat. Here's what I can pay to be part of the five week Springs Edge, Tuesday, Wise Circle, nine AM Pacific time. So first up, the book, the wild edge of sorrow by Francis Weller. It is so gorgeous, and it's really given me the language to create a container that is relevant for what I'm going through and what I believe and what I've noticed.

So the wild edge of sorrow, rituals of renewal and the sacred work of grief by Francis Weller. I'm gonna read a couple thoughts for you. He says, there is some strange intimacy between grief and aliveness. Some sacred exchange between what seems unbearable and what is most exquisitely alive. Through this, I have come to have a lasting faith in grief.

And so here I am sixty days into my, well, longer grief. And it's real and it's vivid. And I'm and I'm working to cultivate a space for me to be honest about it. Francis Weller says everyone of us must take undertake an apprenticeship with sorrow. We must learn the art and craft of grief, discover the profound ways it ripens and deepens us.

While grief is an intense emotion, it is also a skill we develop through a prolonged walk with loss. Facing grief is hard work. It takes outrageous courage to face outrageous loss, and this is precisely what we are being called to do. This is what I'm being called to do. Isn't that beautiful?

So, I'm packed up. I'm heading out in my beautiful little Hudson Harvey Mountain feather wilderness cross trek. And I'm gonna go explore Joshua Tree today and into the night. I'll sleep overnight at a really cute little hotel motel boutique and then wake up with the sunrise and drive out to Gilbert, Arizona and pick up my best friend at the airport. It means a lot to me because Joshua Tree is my father national park.

I learned from author and writer Terry Tempest Williams. She has a mother and father national park, and so I do too. And I am I have a gender expansive national park that I haven't identified yet. I think I know which one it's going to be, and you'll want to follow along this spring on the podcast here to find out. My father national park is Joshua Tree and my mother national park is Yosemite.

Also Zion has a element of mother to me. The Virgin River in Zion National Park had some really powerful moments for me. I wanna share one more concept with you from Francis Weller's work. He teaches about five gates, g a t e s, five gates of grief. And I wanna just quickly go through them with you because they're so beautiful.

The first gate he describes as everything we love, we will lose. And in this, he quotes a twelfth century poem. Here's the poem. He doesn't give an author here. So, 'tis a fearful thing to love what death can touch.

To love, to hope, to dream, and oh, to lose. A thing for fools, this love, but a holy thing, to love what death can touch. The second the second gate of grief surprises us. The places that have not known love. The places in your life that have not known love.

Weller says about this, these are the places within us that have been wrapped in shame and banished to the farthest shores of our lives. These neglected pieces of soul live in utter despair. The proper response to any loss is grief, but we cannot grieve for something that we feel is outside the circle of worth. Can you relate to these? Here's the third gate of grief.

The sorrows of the world. Boy, is that not true? The World twenty twenty five on planet Earth? Yeah. A surprisingly number of people list grief at what is happening in the world as a grief they have long lived with.

And in the Buddhist traditions, the first noble truth of the Buddha is that suffering does exist. I know for me, there is so much collective sorrow and suffering within our country, The United States Of America right now, where democracy is on attack across the planet with other countries, with war, with climate issues, with economies, commercialism, capitalism, information. It's just a lot. Yeah. So the fourth gate of grief, what we expected and did not receive.

So, here's what Weller says, deep in our bones lies an old intuition that we arrive here carrying a bundle of gifts to offer to the community. And, in a sense, it is a form of spiritual employment. Hidden within the losses at this gate lies our diminished experience of who we truly are. I love the idea that we have a spiritual employment here on Earth based off of what our gifts are, and that some of the us who we truly are is diminished through life and through those expectations, the fourth gate, what we expect and did not receive. So many of us have that reality when we look back at our childhood.

The caretakers, the expectations that we had, the things we did not receive. At a time when we were young and most vulnerable, and the the fifth and final stage of grief, Weller calls the ancestral grief. He says, this is the grief we carry in our bodies from sorrows experienced by our ancestors. Tending this undigest grief of our ancestors not only frees us to live our own lives, but also eases ancestral suffering in the other world. I feel so grateful for the strength and the authentic, intimate relationship I forged with my dad before he fell into the dementia and the desert of dementia.

We had so many beautiful conversations. We talked about the end. We talked about what he cared about in dying and when I was there to be with him, I wasn't alone but I had many moments alone. I remembered and I knew what to do intuitively to support him, to hold steady like a rock, to hold love, to hold a breath, to get out of my own feelings, and to assist him as he was pushing off from earth, pushing off from life, and I was able to practice what I learned and read from teachers on death and dying to be that rock, to be a rock, a mountain, a blue rock that he could push off of. I love him and I feel connected to him still.

He is now part of my wisest circle, the old ones, the ancestors. I feel like he's the leader of that circle now. He's all like, hey, everybody. I'm here. I'm in charge and we have got to, we've got work to do to support Alexander Bluefeather.

This is my golden child. And he has work and magic to do. My dad was such a beautiful healer and helper. He helped thousands of humans. He created such an open, loving, unconditional space and touched people at some of the most difficult times in their life, including me when I was in the first few years of my addiction and my propensities for crystal meth as an injecting drug user way back in 02/1967.

He was so helpful in helping me navigate my way into my first version of sobriety and eventually getting to abstinence from crystal meth for a period of five years before I fell into it for a final couple years before 2015, the same year, you know, he started dementia. I started sobriety in recovery, active in community, intentional. Soul Siblings, thanks for listening. I am heading out to the desert, and then I'll be heading to New York for several weeks of spring and healing and time with Harvey and her dads and the animals and the flowers and plants in the garden. I will be podcasting.

I will be sharing content from my Instagram at Viral Mindfulness. And, again, just a reminder, I have my spring y circle, spring's edge is what it's called. It starts Tuesday morning, April twenty second at 9AM Pacific time. We meet on Zoom. We meet every Tuesday from 9AM to 10:30AM Pacific time on the East Coast.

That's noon to 01:30. I would love for you to join. And I have two seats that I would love to have go used. And so I'm offering right now a pay what you can. You tell me how much you wanna pay.

That seat is yours. It's my way of giving back. It's my way of creating space for those seats to be utilized. I run the circles with either three to six participants. The structure of the circle, we have a live Zoom session every week for one hour and thirty minutes.

We open those first thirty minutes with guided meditation and then we do our writing practice which is a way we practice meditation on the page. Meaning, we write timed topic writings where we allow for our wild mind to flow with a topic And of course, your mind will jump from place to place on the page, and it's a beautiful place to practice. There will be a short teaching or reflection on the topic for the week, the practice labs each week. We start with movement of the body and emotions. We then move into music, drawing, and of course, meditation, and writing practice.

The core listening circle and sharing circle is sixty minutes in our live weekly Zoom call. Each of you as a participant will get ten minutes to share and to interact with me. You can also read from your writings. It's a very beautiful place to bring the core of what's going on. What's top of the list in your heart, your stresses, and let other like minded humans under my tutelage and guidance as the field guide of the circles to hold space for you to be witnessed, to be heard, to talk about your grief, to talk about your intentions, your dreams, your sadness, your anger.

Sharing can include reflections, personal experiences, and interactions with me, not with the other participants. We focus on wise and deep listening, fostering a sacred and supportive space to be seen and heard. And then, the practice labs are optional and supportive in a digital classroom. Each week, there's about thirty minutes meditation and, videos and audios that support the weekly practice lab, the movement, the music, the drawing. Don't take my word for it.

I think it's awesome. I love it every time. I've been doing it for almost two years now. I've run close to 10 circles with so many amazing humans. AJ, here's what she says.

So, Y Circle helped me understand myself better. The group's warmth and Alexander's guidance made it safe to be vulnerable, explore difficult emotions, and find peace. Lisa, she says, Alexander creates a sacred and magical space where healing and personal growth are inevitable. It is more than just a circle. It's a life changing experience.

So, I'd love for you to join me. You can head over to viralmindfulness.com. Follow the link for the circle. You're welcome to enroll and pay the full price if you want. It's $3.49 for five weeks starting Tuesday, April 22.

And if you can't fit that in your budget, send me an email and let me know what you can pay. Pay what you can, grab that seat, I would be honored. There is no prior experience in meditation, writing, or art needed. These are very gentle and introductory ideas. So, whether you're seeking emotional healing, creative inspiration, or meaningful community, why circle, my signature offering is a path to some transfers transformation.

Think of as a five week spiritual retreat and so, that's it. I'll see you next time here on the podcast.