Ma Deva Rukma
Arrived: 16 February 1950, Manchester, UK
Left: 11 October 2015, Mullumbimby, NSW, Australia
Goodbye service, words and music: Friday 23 October, Durrumbul Hall, Mullumbimby
Rukma came to Australia around 1978 and worked as a nurse in aged care. She lived in Brisbane, then Cairns, where she dropped nursing, and got into face-painting. As a seeker she first worked with Course Of Miracles, then fell in love with Krishna rituals, before joining with Osho and sannyas, and the Sydney commune (tbc) to “clean up her energy.” She was also into astrology from a young age, leading to lifelong study and practice as an astrologer.
She moved to North Coast, NSW, and met her to-be husband Mitsou at LuLu’s Café, Mullum, in 1998. She had been cleaning and then became an artist. He learned framing, and from 2000 to 2010 they made a business “Y Knot Art” selling her original artworks, collages and prints at local markets. In 2010 Mitsuo became her carer, as she was living with COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder), emphysema, and asthma. Since then she mostly hung out, gardened, made a beautiful home (in Mullum), cooked (great cakes!), practised astrology, enjoyed dressing up and supported Mitsou’s own re-skilling as a guitarist.
Lately she realised a childhood desire; having taken lessons, she began spontaneously singing at “a mad jazz ensemble”, a weekly jam session they both attended for years. Most recently words were coming such as “I’m going to let go” and “forever changing.”
Rukma was child-free and her parents had died in 1998. Described by an aunt as “the one free spirit of the family,” she left an older sister in Switzerland and relatives in Adelaide and Manchester. She passed at home, on the night of their 16th wedding anniversary, with Mitsuo there. She was a flower, a butterfly, a hairy nature spirit and great lover of life. What a loss! Such a cuddly hugger, sharer of stories, and mischievous wild woman in that petite frame.
Sketch by Param based on input from Mitsou. Further insights and highlights welcome.