Lynn
This is the story of Lynn, a Bal Vikas Child, from Santa Barbara.
Lynn—The child
When I think of our daughter, Lynn, a mosaic of bright images comes to mind… Lynn, the child of whimsy, improviser of games and stories that delighted her friends. As one of them would later say, “Wherever Lynn was, there was laughter.” …Lynn, the true Bal Vikas [Sai Spiritual Education] pupil who loved to show reverence for her parents …serving me breakfast on “Mother’s Day” and tenderly caring for her father as he recovered from surgery …Lynn, the honor student, who loved school,… Lynn, the child who at 14 when other girls of her age talked about boys preferred to sing bhajans [devotional songs] and yes, climb trees… and most of all, Lynn who loved Baba with a devotion that would awaken an introspective quality in her and a desire for solitude in which to write poems and thoughts of Baba in her diary. Indeed, her intensity of devotion would draw her two younger brothers and her parents closer to God.
Lynn and Holy Company
It was in the winter of 1974 that I prayed for holy company. I know now it was Baba who answered my prayer; for, soon afterward, through a dear friend, we learned about Him, and Lynn and I began coming to bhajans at our Santa Barbara Sai Baba Center.
It was Lynn who after seeing our first Baba film at the center said, “Mummy, we must have our own meditation corner.” She promptly removed all the books from a recessed bookcase in our back hall, and thenceforth it was our altar where we meditate daily.
My hopes and unspoken prayers for the children’s spiritual education were quickly answered by Baba when shortly after joining the Sai family, our head of center formed a Bal Vikas [children’s] class. Thus, at Thursday evening bhajans and again on Sunday at Bal Vikas Class, Lynn’s devotion had precious opportunities to grow and to flower.
Indeed, she was the only child present at the daily celebration of Dasara and was proud and happy when asked to participate in the reading of the Chandi [a form of Goddess Parvati] on the culminating evening of Dasara that fall of 1975. I remember seeing tears of joy in Lynn’s eyes as she offered a flower to the Mother. And at Shivaratri, some six weeks before her passing, while many adults were too tired to continue, Lynn’s ardor sustained her (as it had the previous year) through the night‑long vigil of meditation, prayer, and bhajan.
At times like these my pride in her devotion was tempered by occasional thoughts that perhaps her zeal was being guided tenderly by our Lord and prepared for the culmination of her short life.
Lynn seeks the lamp of God
It was Thursday afternoon, ten days before Easter, the all‑important date on the Christian calendar that commemorates the resurrection of Jesus Christ. School had finished for the day. Lynn had gone to the park, and I knew she was heading for the tall pine, her favorite climbing tree. I remember watching from the kitchen window as she darted off, calling in her sweet voice for our dog Jupiter to follow.
Only 45 minutes later a neighbor came to tell me that Lynn had a fall. In her haste to help her brother, David, who had been bitten by a strange dog and was crying, she had stepped on a broken branch and fallen some 12 feet to the ground.
As I ran, I heard Lynn call, “Mommy!” Mommy!” And as I reached her side, she seemed to know that I was with her. She lay quietly and did not seem to be in pain; though I had no idea she was so near death. I prayed earnestly as I held her hand, “Baba, please be with Lynn, please be with Lynn…” An hour later, in the Catholic hospital nearby, a priest was administering the last rites as she quietly passed on.
Numb with grief, I asked Baba for reassurance. The first thought that came was: Why, it is Thursday, Baba’s day. Indeed, two short hours after Lynn’s passing, bhajans and prayers of our Santa Barbara center were lifting her spirit.
That night I could not sleep. I was tormented by the knowledge that Lynn, stunned by her fall, had perhaps been unable to think of Baba at the time of her going. The next morning when I went into her room, Baba had already answered my anguish. There on Lynn’s desk were her last words, written just before going to the park. They were a fateful synthesis of the morning prayers: “O, Lord, I rise now from the womb of slumber. Before I plunge again into the daily routine, let me pray most earnestly to Thee, omniscient Self, and seek thy lap, which confers on me restful sleep and blesses me with eternal peace and everlasting bliss.”
Our minister was so struck by the event that he would open the memorial service for Lynn with these very words.
Lynn and her dear, dear brother
The prayer had been written in her favorite purple ink, ready to be inserted into her new Bal Vikas notebook, which her teacher provided the day before her death. The notebook was to be a replacement for one David had lost on the way to Sunday morning Omkar at the center two weeks previously. (Now I know why David lost the notebook. It was all a part of Baba’s design.) At the time, I had marveled at Lynn. She did not get angry with David. She had simply said, “Well, Mommy, since our center leader is moving to a new house I shall start a new notebook.” I told her how happy I was that she did not get angry with David, “You see now Baba is answering your prayers,” I said. She had often asked Baba for help in dealing with, as I told her, very natural feelings of sibling rivalry with her younger brother. But Lynn, ever the perfectionist, was upset by her occasional negative feelings toward him, and she had often prayed to Baba for help. That’s why I now know that the way Lynn died was also part of Baba’s design, for she fell in the act of hurrying to David’s rescue. Thus, her last act was a selfless one.
Lynn’s favorite bhajan
Late Saturday we learned that Mr. Vimu Mukunda, distinguished musician from Bangalore and former atomic scientist, just happened to be visiting a friend near Santa Barbara when the news came of Lynn’s passing. He wished to play the Veena at Lynn’s memorial service.
The morning of Lynn’s service, Palm Sunday (one week before Easter), dawned fair and sunny after a brief shower of rain that seemed like a touch of grace. Well do I remember the tangible aura of peace in Lynn’s room that day. Later, after the service, friends would remark on it with a sense of awe.
The service was a beautiful one consisting of prayers, readings from the Bible and the Bhagavad-Gita, and Lynn’s own poems. And the high point was Mr. Mukunda’s Veena solo that he concluded by leading us all in singing Lynn’s favorite bhajan, “Jai Durga, Lakshmi, Saraswati….”
How grateful I was to Baba for Mr. Mukunda’s presence. It was as if our Lord had blessed the event to be one of celebration rather than lament.
After the service, friends who did not know of Baba came up to us with grief in their faces. How could I tell them, and yet our friends in the Baba family understood that our daughter had been blessed in her short life to come to Baba in her heart, to love this Avatar, who had now raised her pure spirit to Him. The tears in my eyes that day were tears of joy and reverence. Only much later would the very human emotions of missing her dear presence occur.
Lynn’s Grandmother
Shortly after Lynn’s death a friend and adopted “grandmother” added another bright image to Baba’s tapestry. …Three weeks before Lynn’s passing, during a special function at our center, we had seen inspiring films of India, and on the way home that night Lynn had asked her, “When do you think I shall go to see Baba? I want to so much.” That very night, our friend told me, she had a dream in which Baba came to her and said, “In 21 days she will come to me….” At the time our friend was in very poor health and she thought Baba meant that she was to die in three weeks. Then, after Lynn’s death, she suddenly realized that He had actually referred to Lynn in the dream, for it was indeed 21 days after that Lynn was to fall from the tree.
As our head of center remarked, everyone in our Sai family was deeply affected by the love Lynn left behind, a love she had quietly and undemonstratively exhibited as a participant in our worship. Her going made each of us re‑evaluate ourselves and perceive how vital each individual is to the life of a center.
Lynn and her Gift to her Father
And finally, as a legacy of Lynn’s passing, her father who was once an atheist is now himself on the spiritual path. The poetry of paradox was again clear: We usually consider death a tragic event, and yet in this instance, as a dear friend would say, Lynn’s life and death were a beautiful solo in Baba’s cosmic symphony. Indeed, Baba sent my husband a vivid dream that pointed out to him that our child had given him the key to a priceless treasure, the awareness of divinity within…Some months later he would say to me, “Lynn’s death has been a gift to me…I am now a believer.”
Lynn’s vision
I will close with Lynn’s own words, composed on a family camping trip:
The golden sun climbs up from behind
a round, green hill.
All the sky is blue, cold and open.
Sai Baba stands on a single rock,
smiling with the glory of dawn ………
and Wish.
And this poem, expressing her yearning that our Minister shared at her memorial service
To Baba, who sits on a golden throne;
Surrounded by snowflakes and frothy sea foam
Come into my heart
Remove with your touch the tears of my heart
And replace them with a blissful song….”
Source: Sanathana Sarathi, March 1979
