Читать книгу We Live Forever - PMH Atwater - Страница 8

“You meet your destiny on the road you take to avoid it.”

—Carl Gustav Jung

The unthinkable happened.

Myriam, an incredibly lively, beautiful, curious two-year-old with a decided mind of her own was rushed to the hospital on Thursday, December 16, 1999, pronounced brain dead the following afternoon, and died that evening. We learned later that her brain had collapsed onto her brain stem. Bacterial meningitis.

By the time my youngest daughter, Paulie, and I could fly to San Jose, California, from Virginia, the faces of Kelly and Lydia, Myriam’s parents, were shrouded in a pasty blankness—that death mask people wear who have suffered a grievous loss. Like robots, they shuffled through the demands of their fledgling business. They had workers on job sites. Deadlines pressed. The phone rang incessantly.

A crush of aunts and uncles, grandparents and friends, gathered in the tiny house to do what they could to help. Aaron, two years older than his sister, Myriam, gaped in awe at all the touching, sharing, crying, and hugging that happened as photos of happier times passed from hand to hand and memories found voices. Grief. Sobs. Laughter. Pain.

A family in crisis—my son and firstborn, my daughter-in-law, her kin, ours.

So, in the name of love, the crowd of us tripped over each other’s feet in an inexplicable urge to “do something.” Food was cooked, although few had an appetite. Errands were run, even though those who knew the way got lost running them. Clutches formed around the I-can’t-stand-it-any-longer smokers, the pink-skinned fresh-air freaks, the nonstop chatterboxes, the God-love-’em clean team, and the kid pals who spent their time frolicking on the floor with Aaron. Those who claimed the right to grieve alone still wandered in and out the front door as if drawn to the warmth of noisy bodies and the sounds and smells of humanness.

Comments lingered in the air, waiting to be repeated to each new visitor.

Kelly remembered that: “Towards the end, the feelings between Myriam and I were much stronger. She really appreciated being with Daddy. This was new, as Mommy had always come first before. I wish she were here right now. I miss her terribly.”

Lydia spoke of rushing her daughter to the emergency room at O’Connor Hospital in Santa Clara. “They got her on antiseizure medication, called a pediatrics specialist, and sent her to San Jose Medical Center with the specialist at her side. Kelly met me at the intensive care unit after he had telephoned his sister Natalie to come take care of Aaron. She was right there. From that moment on, Kelly and I knew Myriam’s time on earth was over. We spent the whole night crying and consoling each other.”

Diane, Lydia’s mom, struggled with the specter of blame. “When I told Kathi, the doctor I work for, that Myriam’s brain had herniated into her brain stem sometime after they did a spinal tap, she responded that this was a risk with spinal taps. I have dark thoughts about that and felt the doctors made a horrible mistake, that perhaps Myriam would be here if they hadn’t done that. I was sobbing, inconsolable. Kathi held me in her arms, trying to comfort me, and said, ‘Don’t even go there. The doctors had to do what they did.’”

John, Kelly’s father, grimaced. “I felt hurt when I heard the news. Deep! You’re so helpless. My granddaughter is dead. I was here with my wife, Anne, a little over a month ago to celebrate our birthdays. Myriam was two and I was seventy, sixty-eight years’ difference to the day between our ages.”

So it went, with each person taking turns weaving emotion into a single tapestry of sound-threads.

Our family, once we were notified of the impending crisis, called every prayer group we could locate. Thousands of people responded. In less than a heartbeat, the oneness of family grew to embrace loving, caring people throughout the entire nation. Affiliations or religious beliefs were never questioned. All that mattered was the life of this precious child. We prayed for a miracle, refusing to think a single negative thought. But the miracle never happened.

A senseless tragedy?

Yes, it was. Yet there is far more to Myriam’s death than the pain of her sudden passing. Most of us received intuitive warnings in advance about what was coming. There were spirit visitations and past-life connections and otherworldly revelations that centered around a larger-than-life truth: Death ends nothing but the physical body.

This challenged us to embrace a greater vision of what we thought we knew. It stretched our family, bringing us to the point where we came to realize that through the simple acts of being born and dying, we each, as “givers of gifts,” enrich all that life is. We give the gift of our potential at birth, what we can become. At death, we leave the gift of our achievement, what we did with what we had.

Two gifts: one we bring in with us; one we leave behind after we’re gone. Whether coming or going, we bless this world with the gifts that our existence bestows.

Myriam’s potential from the moment of her birth was as bright and beautiful as she was. There’s no doubting that. But what she left us with, well, that caught everyone off guard, including me. Myriam’s gift, the sum of what she had to offer, was uncompromising honesty. Never could she tolerate pretense, denials, anything hidden, anything avoided. It was as if she possessed X-ray vision and could see right through you—as if the sole purpose of her brief stay on earth was to insist that those who were touched by her life should release whatever it was that held them back from recognizing and expressing the fullness of their true authentic self. No excuses. No exceptions.

The repercussions of Myriam’s gift were as startling as the probe of her gaze.

In our family, Kelly and Lydia admitted their marriage was miscast from its inception, and they divorced. Natalie, possessed of new courage and faith, stepped forward into marriage and motherhood, and found a happiness never known to her before. Paulie confronted her past and uncovered the reason behind her many heartbreaks. John returned to his home in Washington more appreciative of the life he and Anne enjoyed, and he rededicated himself to helping others, especially immigrants to this country from war-weary nations. Diane grew wiser as her focus shifted to the deeper reaches of strength and vision within her. There were others, additional relatives and friends, whose lives were transformed as well.

And me?

My change came when the full impact of Myriam’s insistence on complete and utter honesty demanded that I face what I had been sidestepping for years: taking a personal stand on what death had taught me; in essence, owning my own truth.

You see, for a quarter of a century, I have devoted myself entirely to researching near-death experiences. I have said no to most of the invitations I have received for rest and recreation, turned away from opportunities that might have led to careers I would have preferred, and immersed myself instead in the rigor of objective observation and analysis. For the most part, the three near-death episodes I had in 1977 and how the aftereffects affected me were stored away on the back shelf of my mind, used only in brief as examples in the six books I wrote about my findings. What mattered, all that mattered, was what I could substantiate from the thousands of experiencers with whom I had had sessions. Allowing myself to be too personal would have biased my research. My job, as I saw it, was to become a blank slate on which others could “write” their story.

I do not regret the sacrifices I made in this pursuit or what I went through to produce the books I have written. But Myriam stopped me short. She flung wide the doors of my heart and validated the songs my soul sings.

Thanks to the gift of Myriam’s life, what made her special, I can now share the gift of my many moments at the edge of death and beyond. Strange as it may seem, however, death has been my teacher for a long time—since I was a child.