I only learned her age after her death. And I only learned of her death last night. Hella was not a fan of ageism and certainly never let her growing blindness and unsteadiness in the wake of a stroke and a whole heap of years (almost 80 of them, shhh, don’t tell her I told you) get in the way of adventuring. I’ve been missing my dear friend a lot lately.

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The last time we spoke was in December when she dropped a tantalizing invitation. Have a listen and please let me know if you have any idea who this Moroccan Sufi Mystic might be. You can bet your bottom dollar I’ll be making a pilgrimage for Hella at the soonest opportunity.

We met at the beginning of April 2021 at Medicine Buddha puja, held every month at the Tibetan Buddhist centre here in Cape Town by my beloved Medicine Buddha Mama, Lindi. In the sharing circle Hella mentioned that she was delighted to be there as a longtime Zen practitioner who hadn’t managed to find a Zen sanga in the Mother City. I whispered in her ear at tea time that I belonged to just what she was looking for…and so began our honeymoon.

We met just about every weekend after that. She offered me Alexander Technique in return for my lifts to Zen practice. Her knowing hands were just what my sad body needed. I was grieving the loss of too many people. Four friends had just been felled by Cancer and my grandparents passed at the height of the second wave of the Covid pandemic in December 2020.

You’ll hear her speak of a Congress that she’d attended in Germany a year or so ago. This was her wonderful quest to always deepen her practice. She made documentaries about Alexander Technique, the San (she grew up in Angola and visited her beloved Namibia often) and recorded her experience sitting sesshin with Sekkei Harada Roshi, abbot of a Soto Zen monastery in Fukui Prefecture, Japan.

Hella’s sharp mind and great enthusiasm for life was just the tonic I needed. She had studied widely and had degrees from several universities (BA from UCT in Philosophy, Library Science at Stellenbosch University, in Munich a MA in Art History and German followed by years of teaching) but was more interested in the wisdom of the body, in travel and her art practice.

Our paths were intertwined. She injected me with some hope about how to forge ahead in this sea of troubles. She generously introduced me to her people and really touched my heart by inviting me to her birthday luncheon just a month after meeting.

During my long lonely trek over the Himalayas she offered a warm regard via voice note that I sorely appreciated. When I couldn’t reach her this year I thought that it might just be that she was in a farflung spot. Besides, she had messaged me from Berlin, the Arctic circle, Greece and then planted the seed of a quest to Morocco in her last words to me. But on her birthday last month, after I failed to reach her by any means, I began to fear that she was no longer within telecommunicative range. Last night a google search pulled up that thing you hope never to see, her obituary.

Hella graced quite a few of my circles and retreats and I know that all who met her, lay on her therapy table, sat Zen with her, will miss her dearly. She never married or had children, but they say friends are the family you choose and I really do feel that dear Hella is that. A soul sister.

It seems she may have died in Germany on the day we experienced magnificent bioluminscence here. After a day of Song Church and Sound Medicine with my friend Ames (who is half my age), I found myself splashing in the mysterious waters on Muizenberg beach. Laughing, growing quiet. Ever since I read Lord of the Flies as a young teen, I have associated bioluminescence with the death of sweet Simon. This scene had me sobbing on my green Girls High uniform in my bedroom.

Along the shoreward edge of the shallows the advancing clearness was full of strange, moonbeam-bodied creatures with fiery eyes. Here and there a larger pebble clung to its own air and was covered with a coat of pearls. The tide swelled in over the rain-pitted sand and smoothed everything with a layer of silver. Now it touched the first of the stains that seeped from the broken body and the creatures made a moving patch of light as they gathered at the edge. The water rose further and dressed Simon's coarse hair with brightness….Somewhere over the darkened curve of the world the sun and moon were pulling; and the film of water on the earth planet was held, bulging slightly on one side while the solid core turned. The great wave of the tide moved further along the island and the water lifted. Softly, surrounded by a fringe of inquisitive bright creatures, itself a silver shape beneath the steadfast constellations, Simon's dead body moved out towards the open sea.― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

I would say rest in peace, but knowing Hella, she is exploring the furthest reaches of whatever unfathomable energetic space-time-mattering is unfolding. She touched so many lives with her vivacious inquisitive energy. Thank you Hella for your example of how to be truly alive.

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