First of all, he had a beautiful passing. In fact the last four months of his life were miraculous - I should have suspected something was up, things were going too well. In September we decided to drive across the country to take my daughter to her new home in Toronto and on the way we stopped at all the places where Harris had lived growing up, mainly Nebraska and Colorado. We saw the hotel where he was the bellboy when James Cagney came to town to film a western. He told us the story of how he earned big tips that summer by being sure to carry a hip flask of gin in his back pocket which he would offer to the Hollywood crowd every time he brought them their bags. Although he was only 16 he had been able to get some bottles from the local pool hall (10 cents a game) run by his best friend's mother and by the end of the movie shoot he was able to afford a used white convertible - which he and his pals drove endlessly up and down the city boulevard, all eight blocks! He told us this story and then just for fun looked up the name of one of the old friends in the local phone book - the fellow still lived in town and happened to be home that morning! They immediately met up and I got to hear stories my husband had never told in all our 45 years of marriage. Like the one about time he visited a friend when the parents weren't home and they found a shot gun in the attic - and a wasps' nest in the tree just outside the window. You can guess what happened next. All I'm going to say is the neighborhood was then tormented by angry wasps for a week... And they talked about being Privates in the Air force and their buddy who insisted on being called The Colonel who regularly snuck them into the officers club. Oh, maybe these aren't such amazing stories but the fact that he was able to connect with the friend to tell them - plus the fact my daughter had just got a video camera for the trip and was able to film them - well, now that he's gone I think of this as proof the angels do watch over us.
Many more stories and many more adventures and coincidences and synchronicities later we returned home and made an appointment for Harris to see a doctor. He had developed a cough which he thought was an allergy from driving through every wheat field between California and Canada. The nurse took a blood draw and peered at it through a microscope. "Would you like to know now or wait to speak to a doctor?" she asked. Suddenly I felt like I was in a very bad stupid movie. I knew what all the lines were going to be and I knew how it was going to end, and I knew that my role was to play innocent and naive. So trying to sound as if I didn't already know. I said brightly, "Oh tell us now." Her one word reply, "Cancer."
We had three months. I guess even that should be counted as a miracle. Indeed, the doctor told us the radiation treatment had been a huge success. At first I was thrilled. Then he brought us back down to earth. It seems the doctors didn't think he'd make it another week until Thanksgiving, now there was reason to hope he would live until Christmas! Wowee! I wanted to punch them. But in all fairness, what can doctors say? If they're upbeat you know they're lying, if they're negative they take away your will to live. Thankfully we knew my husband had dedicated people looking out for him. We had a few friends who prattled on about the AMA just trying to take our money and how we should hop a plane to Thailand where there were shamen on every corner who could shrink tumors overnight, but I know he got the best care - it was just his time. In fact, when my husband was first diagnosed I asked the I Ching if chemotherapy could make a difference. I received hexagram 42. Increase, line 6, "He brings increase to no one. Indeed someone even strikes him." I knew then chemotherapy wouldn't help and as it turned out the doctors said in his case chemo would make his condition worse.
But I promised you this story had a happy ending, and it did, sort of. The morning Harris passed away all his family was gathered around his bed. We had been in denial, hoping for a miracle up until the day before when we got a message from a Catholic orphanage. My husband had been adopted and had never been allowed to know anything about his birth parents. A psychic we once talked to told us his parents had been in love but forbidden to marry because the mother was under-age. He then told us that after being forced to give Harris up for adoption they later did marry but by then the courts had awarded him to the parents who raised him. This sounded like a complete fabrication to me (we psychics can be very skeptical) but we visited the orphanage on our trip east and, another miracle, a very caring woman took our information and since the laws now permitted more open discloser, she promised to look into our case and tell us anything she could find out. Well, the day before he died we got a letter from this woman telling us everything the psychic had told us was true, his father and mother had been engaged but the families kept them apart until they had been old enough to marry on their own. Now they were both deceased and the orphanage was at last able to send us their names. It meant so much to us. Somehow we could now let Harris go knowing there would be someone there to catch him on the other side.
And so knowing it was time for him to go but also that it would be all right, we stood around his bed. My son-in-law who was raised Catholic had the presence of mind to invite a priest to come and give him the last rights - another miracle as this was something I wouldn't have thought of but I know meant a great deal to my husband. Then Harris, no longer able to speak but fully awake, looked at each one of us very intently, there was a gurgling sound in his throat - the death rattle - then his face glowed, a halo of light surrounded his head. "Dad, you look beautiful!" my daughter gasped. And then he was gone.
Later that day I opened a Buddhist prayer book to the words, "When suffering ceases, all that is left is beauty."
Well, that's the story I'm going to tell at the gathering this weekend. Thank you for letting me tell it here first.
Love,
Rosada
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Rosada, EXT 2340
CertifiedPsychics.com
Rosada, EXT 2340
CertifiedPsychics.com
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