It's amazing when you are able to tune into the Higher Power through yourself, trust in it and feel it working for the collective good, and with the belief that whatever comes your way is meant to be. Sometimes it's good, sometimes amazing, sometimes incredibly painful, and yet it's always making us grow, grow, grow...
I had such a cosmic thump earlier this year, when I had the sudden and very inexplicable compulsion to contact an ex-partner I hadn't spoken to in eight years, which had remained that way for the simple reason that our five year relationship had ended very acrimoniously and I had never had any desire whatsoever to revisit that chapter of my life. Done and dusted, over, finished. I did wonder at the time why he was even in my consciousness; but because I listen to myself these days, I rather fearfully dialed his number (great memory for numbers, sometimes handy, sometimes toxic!) of course after blocking my own number to avoid any repercussions. He didn't answer. I'd done my bit. Whew, no harm done, and he'd never know it's me, nor would he ever have any inkling it could ever have been me.
But.. the Universe thought otherwise.
I've always read and believe that you will keep getting the same lessons over and over until you learn what you need to learn. So of course when I had that second slap a few weeks later, a bit fiercer and way more urgent, I realised I hadn't yet done what needed doing. I'd considered that trying to contact him was enough; clearly I was going to have to make contact, willing or not. And no peace till I did!
So I sent him a text via Messenger (because of course I didn't want him to have my phone number, which is unlisted), asking him how life is in Waknuk these days.... (you'd need to have read the John Wyndham book The Chrysalids to understand the reference here) but we'd always jokingly referred to the little country hamlet that he had grown up in as Waknuk. You know, they have a parade of 8 because the whole town turned out so they could star in it. That kind of funky little place.
The answer I received devastated me. Not so good. Why, I ask. Because his 26 year old son Daniel had taken his own life some weeks earlier. Likely around the time when I'd received my first prompt to contact my deep and distant past. Eerie? No. Not when you believe in just about everything, as I do.. It's no stretch at all for me to believe that Daniel was behind it, first gently, and then more insistently, because his dad so needed the only person he believed might go a little way towards being able to help him through such an unspeakably sad horror that no parent would ever wish on another.
My ex-partner's parents had also passed away around this same period, but I guess if there is ever an event that can dull the loss of your dear parents, it's the loss of your beloved child. There is no grief like that one; incomprehensible to those of us lucky enough not to have experienced it. We all say goodbye to our parents at some point, hopefully later rather than sooner. Mourning our own children is shattering in its own sense of disbelief.
Communication now opened, there followed a flurry of messages, photos, video footage of the tall, heart-flutteringly handsome strapping young man Daniel had grown into since I'd last seen him, which was around 8 years ago. Back then he had been just growing into manhood, a tall boy still evolving into his mature glory, with the most beautifully sunny nature, and a smile that could light up a room with its presence. The heart-breakingly gorgeous smiling man I was looking at now in his adult photos and videos was a different creature indeed, a powerfully built young man, heavily inked, as is the fashion these days, with a killer smile, and attitude to spare. Curiously, I watched him dancing around on my screen. He was singing, strong body flexing such fluid movements as he pranced about, endlessly flashing that perfectly cheeky grin, as he sang about how everything was gonna be "all right..." Oh, the irony. The sheer loss. And the shatter for those who loved him, who are left behind to try and pick up the trillions of heart shaped pieces that are left in the wake of an inexplicable event such as this.
My next thoughts were of his younger brother, who had idolised the ground his big brother walked on, and the unbearable grief stricken black hole that his world would have suddenly become. I had memories of those two boys, and my own small daughter at the time, only three years old, and how she'd idolised those big boys, and how they had secretly doted on her, this cute little munchkin who invaded their space in the lounge room and insisted on lying between them on the carpet beside the heater, on her little foldout Elmo couch, watching the Simpsons together, and giggling whenever they did. Meanwhile we'd be on the big couch, laughing at the three of them lying there all in a row...
The news of Daniel's death hadn't really hit me yet, simply because I couldn't believe in such a senseless event. No amount of photos, footage of the funeral, listening to his dad erupt into wild sobbing on the phone, and then a few weeks later in person, with my arms wrapped firmly around his enormous ones, trying to comfort and soothe him in the only way I knew how, could ground me with any real tangible sense of reality of such a shocking and life changing event. I simply could not believe it, even when all the details were revealed to me, such details I can never ever think of without horror and misery, and yet which lurk in my consciousness all too often.. perhaps as a message, a warning, an elevated sense of knowing now that every person has their own personal breaking point, and that such a point has no polarity with where your own might be or might not be.
One of the first ripples of what I'll call the Daniel effect is that I cancelled my overseas holiday (at the airport customs departure lounge actually, so strongly was I fighting my own truth all the way to the departure gate!) and made an abrupt change of plan to drive two states away to spend time with my teenage daughter who in her father's care was feeling very fragile, and had given me such clear signs that she needed me in every way possible at that time. Daniel ensured I was never going to be able to get on that aeroplane and spend a few weeks abroad; not then, not when I knew that someone as strong and beautiful and good as he was could feel that he had no other options than to end his life. So instead, I heard my daughter's cries for help with a new consciousness, listened to what I heard and felt and knew, and when I hit that fork in the road, I barely slowed up as I steered the Scooby van down to good old Victoria instead.
Thank you, Daniel, this is your magic, rippling ever outwards.
I called in to visit Daniel's dad on the way of course; here was another miracle unfolding. I wanted to see him. I wanted to hold him. I wanted to console him, in whatever hopelessly inadequate way I could. I wanted to help him as badly as I'd wanted to never seen him again in the years prior. Such are the amazing happenings that can occur around life's curve balls of sheer tragedy, if we but only can feel them and respond to them, even when sometimes they cannot make any sense to us on a thinking level, and they especially don't make sense to those around us.
The weeks that followed have been incredible in their sheer simplicity. We talk, we laugh, we cry. And last night it was finally my turn to really howl at the moon over the loss of that most beautiful young man, Daniel. Buckets of tears ensued; and I finally got to howl out all my grief and feel the pain, pain that was hellish in its intensity and which left me bereft and shaking with the aftershocks of it all. He touched my life, and also my daughter's life, in more ways than we will ever know. And he's gone way way too soon, on to a different plane, a higher purpose, so the rest of us here are only left with an appreciation and heartfelt ache, of the short time we had him in our lives, that brightest of bright stars, and who now is creating magic and miracles nonetheless for those he left behind.
Where there is sadness, there is joy. Where there is loss, there is gain. We might not see Daniel again in our world as we knew him, but I personally plan on sharing a few Teddies with him (collectively our favorite beer apparently!) sometime in the future when we all meet up again for that party amongst the stars...
The beers will be icy cold, the music and dancing contagious, and big smiles and love will be around all of us...
Here's to you, gorgeous young Dan.. this is your song Xxxx
"Daniel is traveling tonight on a plane
I can see the red tail lights heading for Spain
Oh and I can see Daniel waving goodbye
God it looks like Daniel, must be the clouds in my eyes
They say Spain is pretty, though I've never been
Well Daniel says it's the best place that he's ever seen
Oh and he should know, he's been there enough
Lord I miss Daniel, oh I miss him so much
Daniel my brother you are older than me
Do you still feel the pain of the scars that won't heal
Your eyes have died, but you see more than I
Daniel you're a star in the face of the sky
Daniel is traveling tonight on a plane
I can see the red tail lights heading for Spain
Oh and I can see Daniel waving goodbye
God it looks like Daniel, must be the clouds in my eyes
Oh God it looks like Daniel, must be the clouds in my eyes" - Elton John
