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Love R. Marian Arnold
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This
story is so traumatic that I hardly know where to begin, but it keeps
coming back at me in the quiet moments after waking when I lie on the
edge of the morning, little visuals repeating themselves from beginning
to end with all the people involved. Wondering if I could
have done or said anything different, known more, helped better, or
been more successful. I did my best, but I know it was not
good enough. Lying there in utter stillness, I realize I am
no longer asleep, my thoughts are not a continuation of the night’s
dreams, and the sheets and blankets twisted around me are my security
cuddle against self-castigation for failing. No imperative
to get up or rush—it is far too early—but once again the ghostly images
of the tale niggle at me from inside my head, waiting to be told.
I work as a psychic and palm
reader during the nightly sunset celebration on the pier at Mallory
Square in Key West, and this night I’d had a comfortable parade of
gentle souls asking questions. The sun had set in a glory of
colors beyond the sea, thrusting an incredibly vivid afterglow high in
the sky above our heads. It faded slowly to the softest
peach, and now even the blue had darkened to indigo. Full
dark, it was time for me to pack up my sign, fold my chair, and leave
the pier.
As I turned, the busy
conglomerate of a large family drifted closer, and I was asked, “Are
you finished?”
I sat down again on my stool,
listened to their soft laughter, and watched as about eight or nine
people gathered loosely about me in a kind of detached manner.
“Who is first?” I asked them.
About three or four of the
younger nearly grown children of the family had turned and wandered
across the pier to the edge of the sea. They sat down on the
shallow coping stone in a little line, looking past me, then back at
the almost-finished fiesta. It was peaceful; a beautiful
evening with a comfortable temperature of about
seventy-five. The gentle sounds of laughter heard at a
distance floated over to us from another group of young people further
down the pier. The small noise of hand-pushed wheels walked
past, some of the vendors were finished, as well, and trailed their
loaded trolleys over the hand-set bricks of the pier, rattling on
towards the car park and home. The young people in the
group, sitting at the edge of the sea, were obviously used to waiting
with patience; they didn’t mind at all while their grown-ups did what
they wanted to do. They were quite happy to be sitting
there, peacefully talking with each other. The lady who
looked to be the younger boy’s mother brought him towards me, her arm
circling his waist with love.
“I want you to read my
son. He has never had a reading before, and I want to know
about his future.”
The older people in the group
were all behind them, but not too close, not intrusive, still extremely
curious about what was going on, needing to know what I was saying in
case it might have been hurtful. I am used to friends of
relatives of the one being read becoming almost too curious, too
pushy. Unknown to them, they may come into the field of the
client’s aura and interfere with it. But these people
weren’t pushy. They wanted to know, but were polite and well
mannered. The father stood on the other side of his son, but
a pace or two behind; the grandparents stayed to the side and in back,
as well, listening quietly. More grown-ups, probably the
same age as the parents, collected unconsciously in an irregular circle
to the rear. It was an irregular circle, with lots of loving
energy coming towards me. One of the women, slightly younger
than the mother, pushed forward to stand close and supportive, with her
head looking over the lady’s shoulder. This was a very
close-knit family, so she was probably either a sister or a
sister-in-law.
When I read, I do so via the
eyes and both hands, absolutely refusing to take any money or have any
money about the person of the client until I have
finished. I took hold of the young boy’s hands, took a slow
breath to center myself, and looked into his eyes. They
looked back at me in a guileless, patient, and disinterested manner,
giving me nothing in return, echoing no thoughts back to me except a
soft resignation, as if he had gone as far as he
could. There was no more. It wasn’t as if he was
foolish. There were good brains behind his eyes, but he was
either not thinking at that moment or was surprisingly mature and able
to patiently keep his impressions to himself while he waited for me to
talk. But his utter privacy was all I saw. I
sighed and stood silent, looking at his outer figure.
“How old are you?” I asked, going out in another direction.
“Twelve.” Twelve-year
old boys are not usually so pale, with a layer of fat padding them
everywhere so that it looked as if a tiny cushion of air was underneath
the skin, puffing it up. I looked and saw, but that higher
part of myself allowed the analytical part of my brain to shut down,
refusing to notice what I was looking at.
“Well, you have a marvelous
brain, and will have a long life. Into the sixties and
seventies,” I added for good measure, although his lifeline was not
really as long as that. “What do you like
doing? Because you can do anything you want
to. You’re smart and sharp. You run rings around
everybody else, getting your own way. What do you want to do
when you’re grown up? You’d be a super
doctor. You have the ability to heal. Can you
feel the energy from my hands?”
“Yes.”
My hands held above and below
his were bouncing off the energy waves of his aura. “What do you want
to do?” I asked him.
“Get better,” he said so
softly I almost misheard him. ‘Oh Lord,’ I thought to
myself. ‘Dear God, please guide me in the words that I
speak.’
“You will. Didn’t I tell you that you’re going to live to be seventy?”
His eyes brightened a little
bit, and he looked better by the time I’d finished, but he was still
almost too gentle a child, for a young boy. I dared not ask
the nature of his illness. It had obviously been draining on
him. But if nothing else, the incredible love generated for
him by his family members must be of help to him. He was
here, after all—upright, walking on the pier among his large and loving
family—and he did have a continuing lifeline.
His tall, fourteen-year old
sister was next, sadly plainer than her brother was. With
her, I emphasized as strongly as I could that when she used makeup, she
should try to make herself look dramatic, but without going
overboard. She had lovely lines, with which I knew one could
do wonders because I used to be a portrait artist and always look at
the bones beneath the skin. But the here and now was being a
bit rough on her. She was stretched out in her adolescent
growth spurt, covered with pimples, and with a brother who must be
seriously ill. But the love in that family stretched far and
wide, with no end to it, and she had not been pushed onto a back burner.
Next was another handsome
young boy, obviously the brother of the first one, several inches
taller, yet to my surprise two years younger. ‘Oh dear,’ I
thought. ‘This is how well and strong his brother should
have been.’
“Oh, you tell everyone what
to do!” I said. “You run the whole
family!” There was such a whoosh of laughter from every
person around that I knew I’d hit the jackpot with that
remark. He was so brilliant in everything I looked at that I
could hardly get the words out fast enough.
“You’re going to be a doctor
of medicine. You’re also going to be an inventor, and do
innovative work in the delicate instruments that doctors need for
intricate surgery.” I pulled his mother closer to me, and
politely shushed the coterie further away so they could not hear what I
was saying. Then I really went out into left field,
listening inside my head, knowing that at that moment I was totally out
of my body. I tried to have the courage to speak out, and
say what I knew I had to say.
“In a previous life you were
a doctor at a medieval university, somewhere in Italy or elsewhere in
Europe. This was in the fifteen hundreds. You
have not come back into this life for a long time, but now you have
something important to do. You were a doctor of philosophy,
as well as a surgeon. In those days, these fields were
closely connected with astrology. I see you in a long,
old-fashioned gown with lots of pleats over the shoulders, almost down
to the ground, and wearing a flat hat befitting your
dignity. You were a wise and much-trusted man, always
searching among your herbs and simples for cures. You have
inherited this drive to explore not lands, but areas of
knowledge. You have a mile of work to do in your life ahead,
my dear young man. It is there, but will never be achieved
without your doing the most incredible hard work.” All this
I said about a boy who was a mere ten years old. But this
one had been born old. As I was speaking, I became aware
that his research would be in the sphere of his brother’s illness, yet
I still did not know exactly the nature of the brother’s
ailment.
At the very end, the mother
stepped forward, gave a sweet glance at her husband, and stood in front
of me, her hands reaching out in supplication. As always, I
took hold of her hands and looked into her eyes, then immediately
dropped them. She had such agony within, pleading for
escape. I looked up at the crowd around me, which, with the
continuation of the readings had gradually drawn closer and
closer. “This is a private one. Please give us
some room,” I said, flapping my hands urgently at the intent
faces. Incredibly, they all immediately turned and walked
far away.
“Is this man your husband?” I
asked her. “He can stay, and I want him beside me to give me
energy.” The sister hesitated, not wanting to leave, but I
gently flapped my hand at her, too, and she retired.
“You look as if you’re in
agony, in desperation, as if you’ve fallen off a cliff and are hanging
on by the very tips of your fingers to a tiny crack. What in
the world is happening?”
“My son has leukemia,” the
father standing beside me spoke. “He was
misdiagnosed. They thought he had juvenile arthritis, and he
was given drugs that almost destroyed his liver and
kidneys. The doctors were adamant.”
The mother picked up the
story. “It was only when my husband was able, through
friends, to send him to the Shriners hospital, that they told us what
was truly wrong and started the correct treatment. But with
the technical delay in being accepted, the damage was
done. The Shriners hospital is so highly respected,
everybody wants to go there. We are fighting with everything
we have, but you see him. You see how he is.”
‘Of course,’ I
thought. What I’d mistakenly thought was body fat was
actually bloating from steroids. I reached out my arms to
give this dear lady a hug, and it went on for a long time, rocking back
and forth with the age-old nurturing of a desperately hurt
soul. She was far too nice a person to have something so
devastating happen to her. “I’m a Gi Gong healer,” I told
her. “I’m sometimes able to take pain away.” We
arranged for me to call at her house the next morning to see if I could
do anything. My abilities are with surface pain, and this
was something far beyond my experience—but nothing tried, nothing
gained.
I passed my hands above the
boy’s back, and accidentally touched him. His “Oooh” told me
that his skin could bear nothing stronger than a feather to touch
it.
“Do you feel as if you’ve been fed into a meat grinder and come out hamburger?”
“Yes.” His lips raised the smallest quirk.
All the time I was in the
house the father never left my presence, tolerating me because his wife
wanted it, but certainly not trusting me. He was pacing like
a panther and glowering at me from the end of the boy’s bed to make
sure I would do no harm to his beloved son. But at the end,
he unbent a bit and shook my hand, realizing I’d been trying my best
and had not evil intent.
There is ability in many
people to be healers, and looking at the hands of both the mother and
grandmother, I told them that they were to continue, doing a healing
over him every day. I showed them how to say a heartfelt
prayer before they began, how to pass their hands above the boy, and
have the faith that they would be able to draw out the
malaise. The grandmother was the strongest healer in that
family. She was to stand at the head of the boy, his mother
at the foot. “And of course continue with the medical
treatments, now that you have some good doctors who know what they are
doing,” I said.
I had to drive up to Miami,
and left. The grandmother came out to me on the porch, and
as I was about to swing my purse over my shoulder she bent down, close
and confidential, although she was already inches shorter than I
was.
“And how much do we owe you?” she whispered in a sweet voice.
I sighed at such tact and
generosity. What an emotional morning! We both
had tears in our eyes as I gave her another farewell hug.
“Nothing. I think
you’ve already paid enough. Pay me by doing the healing
every day. It might help.”
They have come into my mind
many times over the years. I’ve never seen them since, and
have the sad feeling that the boy’s illness was too severe.
‘Dear God, I wish I’d known more. Was more able.’ |
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Date Submitted:
2001-03-07 00:00:00 |
Copyright Information:
Copyright © R. Marion Arnold, 2001 |
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