Melissa Mari, Bay Area singer for Death Under Fire and The 01Experience passes away at 62
Obituary
Melissa Mari, Bay Area singer for Death Under Fire dies at 62
Melissa, Mari, vocalist for numerous Bay Area California rock and metal acts passed away on January 5th, 2025 after a two year battle with cervical cancer. She was known for her highly compelling theatrical performances, unique voice and stage presence.
Melissa was born and raised in Mill Valley, CA and was singing and playing music as early as age 4. She studied music and acting at the College of Marin in 1980. She started out with folk music in the 1970's, but progressed through several styles, always getting heavier as she evolved. The bands she played with over the years include World Unite Now (WUN), The Intentions, The Mel Mari solo project, Flip Side Mary, Mindscar, Thredd, Death Under Fire, The 01Experience and Deprogramatrix.
Her husband of 12 years, Colin Davis, guitarist for the death metal band Vile, acted as her bandmate and promoter starting in 2013. He states: "Melissa was the "essential" artist. Everything she did came from the deepest place in her soul. She was always totally true to herself and her nature. Melissa was a "dark rock queen". Her subject matter was often about inner struggle and the drive to heal and evolve herself. She had a difficult upbringing and used music as a therapeutic process but also as a medium for communicating spiritual wisdom that came to her through deeply pondering the nature of her being."
Besides creating heavy, dark and spiritual music, she and Colin wrote books and lectured on inner healing work. She is the co-author of the book Shadow Tech (2015).
Colin has already started on the production of a film about her life. Fans and interested parties can keep up with that project and find her music and videos on her website melissamarimusic.com
She is survived by her sister Sandra Weinstein of Orange, Massachusetts. Her husband Colin can be reached at imperialmastering.com
Facebook post by husband Colin Davis about Melissa’s passing
https://www.facebook.com/colindavismetalmaster/posts/pfbid0sxVpzFQEThZHCDWrZSdmw1W88wZyxSXfi464xGtwi9AWua9K99RZHedoNHvgsux9l
Melissa Mari, my beautiful and immensely talented wife left this plane of existence last night, January 5th at around 9 pm. In the two weeks that she spent in the hospital, she was able to recognize the great pouring out of love and prayers that you all had been sending to her. I will give you the full story below. If you were close to Melissa and feel grief over her passing, feel free to stay in touch with me so I can help you process and if you have memories, pictures or videos of her you want to disclose, do contact me, tag me or post in the comments for others to see.
First let me say that this entire process was obviously very challenging. I had been shifting back and forth between grief and denial multiple times a day for the last two weeks as she lay in the hospital. I visited her twice a day every day. Although I will continue to grieve into the future, I am now in much better place where I have shifted from sadness to joy.
Melissa passed absolutely peacefully and quickly, once her soul was fully ready to move on. She passed with a serene look on her face, in acceptance of the final steps to the other side that were to come. I was hoping that this would occur and it did. I am so happy about that.
As I told my brother on the phone last night, she was like a star, not just a rockstar which she was, but a very hot and powerful sun. I was massively blessed and privileged to bask in her heat and light for 17 years of friendship and 12 years of true love and partnership. I benefitted massively from her presence in my life so I cannot ask her to give me more heat and warmth than she was able to put out. I am therefore elated, blessed and incredibly happy that I was able to have the time I had with her. And the time I had with her was just incredible in every way. Our partnership was so very deep. We were inseparable.
So although I feel great loss at the moment, I am fully satisfied with her decision to get off the ride at this stop, and I am very grateful that her bodily suffering has ended. Now let me fill you in on some of the details as to what was ailing her and what we were doing about it.
Although she was pretty quiet about this to everyone but her closest family and friends, two years ago (Dec. 2022) she started feeling pain in her hips which spread to her greater pelvis, groin and lower back over the next 6 months. At first we thought that it would pass eventually because she had developed other psychosomatic pains during periods of life transition. She had just turned 60 and we thought that once she figured out how she was going to focus herself at this stage, the pain would pass. She managed it successfully with just Ibuprofen at night during all of 2023.
She had always wanted to return to Europe, since first visiting in her childhood, and so I brought her there with my band Vile in August of 2023 (and again in 2024). She didn’t want to start getting involved with doctors until after she returned from the first trip. In August, she had some tests done and was told that she had cancer markers in her blood. She had already developed an early stage cancer (as well as a large benign fibroid before that) in the same areas over 20 years prior and had beat them with nutrition and diet. So she figured she would do that again.
She then got some different scans (MRI, CT) which did show a small to medium sized tumor on her cervical wall as well as an enlarged right side kidney. In early 2024, after much deliberation, she decided to try the recommended 7 weeks of chemo-radiation. That knocked her health back a bit and according to subsequent scans, did nothing to shrink the tumor. From there she went into exploring many alternative cancer treatment methods.
Doctors in a number of fields were never able to fully explain the reason for the pain because many people with cervical cancer tumors do not develop pain and hers was not that big. We of course knew that it was largely related to the movement of emotional pain created by her tumultuous past as well as that of her family line which carried some severe trauma on both sides. Anyone who has listened to her music and lyrics knows that processing this old trauma was a huge part of her life’s mission, and she did that to a great extent.
She was already a super clean eater with a background in nutrition and had worked in the natural foods industry, so she was capable of steering her treatment. But after that chemo-radiation phase, she said that she did not want to go back and do that again. She said that she would beat it naturally or die.
For almost the entire two years, except the final few months, she was managing it well, going to the gym, traveling, living a mellow life although there was obviously a lot of underlying anxiety back there. During this phase she deepened her inner spiritual practice and this helped, but as things went on she increasingly wondered if this condition was going to take her out. But she had conquered so many other health and relational challenges in her past that she knew it was possible she could beat this, so she pushed on with my help and that of her family and close friends
Beyond the physical pain, she struggled in 2024 to either find a new musical outlet that would carry her passion forward or to move into a more elder role as a teacher and mentor to others on the psycho-spiritual healing path. She dabbled in a number of trial efforts to determine what particular outlet was going to work for her, but over time, the idea that perhaps this was the beginning of the end increasingly crept into her consciousness.
Those of you who know about our public psycho-spiritual work together know that we have always approached healing from the perspective that you must address the psychological aspects in order to get to the root causes of disease. And you know that we had been doing this as deeply as anyone can imagine over many years and that we wrote books and lectured about this. So when this condition appeared, she ramped up her inner investigations.
Our dear friend and mentor C. Michael Smith (Mikkal) counseled her regularly during 2024, giving her more objective feedback to add to what I was giving her and this helped her understand herself even more than she already did. They did a lot of IFS “parts work” together and I learned the basics of how to use the IFS system though this as well.
Then in September of 2024, her former partner and band mate Simon Moon passed away and it was at about this time that Melissa’s pain level took another step up. It was at this time that any denial about what may be coming began to break down. It was at this time that she found it increasingly difficult to maintain the faith although we both vacillated back and forth.
She had been experiencing many very interesting but concerning symptoms over the entire time, but as things went on, that deep animal anxiety ramped up. Sometimes her teeth would start chattering at night as she was in the kitchen cooking dinner. Sleeping was more difficult and other psychological changes took place.
Then a couple months ago she began vomiting uncontrollably. There was one initial phase of vomiting that lasted 3 days then subsided for a couple months and then a few weeks ago a several-day long period of vomiting which dehydrated her so much we admitted her into the hospital.
She stayed for 3 days and was released. But that night, the vomiting returned with a vengeance and we re-admitted her the next day. After a few days of painful and stressful automatic hacking and vomiting, they discovered she had feces in her stomach. Her bowels were moving in reverse. They put a tube down her nose and pumped brown liquid from her stomach.
I was never convinced until the end that the cancer tumor was causing her bowels to stop working and always pushed (sometimes successfully) to get the pump off, to feed her juices and soft foods and for bowel movement strategies. They X-rayed and CT scanned her multiple times and found no physical obstructions in her bowels.
Over time, the hospital staff (with my permission) increased her medication (Dilaudid and Ativan) to help calm her and at this stage, although she was still uncomfortable and not wanting to be there, it was tolerable. The pump stopped the vomiting and she could relax. But the medication also made it increasingly hard for her to communicate. I pushed for periods without meds so we could talk more easily but after a while her communication broke down no matter what strategy we employed. Together with her sister Sandra, my family, Mikkal, Aion and others, we talked about strategies and I went to the hospital every day with a new twist to try to move things in the right direction.
The last time I was able to communicate with her somewhat clearly was last Thursday. Increasingly, her ego mind broke down to a more child-like state. The nurses saw what was coming and recommended we move her to “hospice” and they set everything up with her insurance to make that happen. I tried to delay that at first but it turned out to be a big blessing. By the way, the nurses at the hospital and hospice were frankly amazing and I so much thank them for caring for her so deeply and carefully.
Although we continued to strategize her path to recovery, we moved her to Christopher House hospice on Saturday night. That transition was stressful for her and she talked a bit again, asking why this was happening and what was going on. She was very disoriented even though we had reduced her meds to help her talk if she could. I was always trying to get her to talk and add her input. Sometimes I got that, often not.
I continually did everything to comfort her. I was present with her for hours multiple times a day, holding her hands, petting her forehead, speaking beautiful words to her. I played baroque music softly in her room. Friends and family sent flowers. Except for occasions when nurses had to do procedures, she was mostly calm and sleepy for most of the time in hospital and hospice.
As I was out doing errands on Sunday, yesterday, I received a call from her nurse telling me that her heart rate had increased to 156 and that her breathing had shifted noticeably. She asked me to come back right away, which I did.
When I got there, the nurse showed me that her hands were colder and there was some greying happening. Then within a couple hours, her feet started to turn purple. We knew then that she had made the decision to pass and her time here was short. My mother Carol came up to Austin from San Antonio and we both sat with her quietly into the evening as she slept peacefully. I set up some ritual items from her home alter on her bed and performed last rites, in my own way. (Btw, she was baptized a Christian by Mikkal in 2023 and raised with Jewish and Christian parents, but her spiritual beliefs and practices were truly holistic. She was a follower of the Yogananda lineage, Amma and many others.)
I sat next to her bed, held her hand and watched her breath go though the different end stages. I had been processing the grief for the two weeks she was in the hospital, crying spontaneously many times a day and because of this, I was able to sit with her calmly at this stage. I was so happy that she had decided to get off the ride peacefully and easily.
Mikkal texted me at about 8:30 pm and I called him back and stepped out of the room into the hall. We talked for about 15 min and then I went back in. I quietly talked to my mom about her life and how we all project our subjective stories onto people’s lives but that those stories aren’t real. We should step back and allow new stories that make other meanings out of life to emerge.
At about 9:30 pm I sat back down and held her hand and I immediately realized that she was gone. She must have passed in the few minutes when I had stepped away from her bedside to talk to Mikkal or Carol.
She looked so peaceful. She went out like a champ. She didn’t drag it out. She made her decision and crossed the bridge. I am so happy for her. Her body immediately began to change and the nurse proclaimed her death at 9:39 pm, although it probably happened around 9 or so.
We sat with her for a while longer, then arranged with staff for her to be cremated at Heart of Texas Cremation, then we gathered her things and left the building. I sat in the car texting Sandra before pulling out and then got a call from Amber, the night nurse. She said some piece of jewelry had been left so I went back in. She presented to me a small cross that was from a necklace. Maybe it was Melissa’s, from her purse, I don’t know but this inspired me to ask for one more visit with her body.
The staff had already cleaned her up and put a rose in her hands. She looked beautiful. She had such beautiful features. She was such a beautiful woman in every way conceivable.
In coming posts I will talk more about her life and her talents and I will begin work on a film about her life’s work and our time together. I will share more about the very deep inner work we did as alchemical partners. Some of her musical friends didn’t know as much about the deep psycho-spiritual work we did together and some of her spiritual friends didn’t know as much about her musical career. So I will try to bring them together.
I hope you all are able to fully process the grief of losing her. Remember her life was amazing. It was so dynamic, so energetic, so full. She was so powerful and her talent was an immense, genius level talent as you know. I now recognize the perfection of her path and how complete her life was.
Melissa was my best friend, soul mate, lover, band mate, alchemical partner, wife and she was also the carrier of my projections of mother and daughter, as all women are for men. This means that she will always be a part of me.
We will arrange for a memorial service in Marin County California and then a spreading of her ashes at RCA beach in Bolinas in the near future. If you want to attend, let me know and I’ll stay in touch. Sandra and I will post new updates or add things in the comment sections.
I want to extend my deepest thanks to all her close friends and her sister Sandra who kept up with me and continued to support us both during this time. I don’t want to leave anyone out but you know who you are. I also want to thank my family members in Texas - Carol and Hogue, Gary and Gette, Noah and Tonya for their continual support and for loving her.
Bye sweetheart. I’ll take the baton from here and I’ll see you next time!
Colin Davis, January 6, 2025 imperialmastering@gmail.com
