Share my words as you will everybody’s got a hungry heart they all need to open up to the cooling and healing rain that is their legacy

Scott, April 1996

Channeled Writing

One evening a simple event unfolded in the library of my home that touched me deeply. As had become my occasional practice I invited clients to meet with me in my home, after traditional working hours, for a more casual setting to discuss the difficult issues raised in piecing together an effective estate plan for nontraditional families. That night I enjoyed the company of my friend Camilo and his life partner at the time, Charles.  Camilo, a respected psychotherapist and fellow board member with the Health Crisis Network, Miami’s leading AIDS services organization, sat with Charles on the library sofa as I interviewed them from the antique rocker facing them.

During the course of the conversation, he inquired “Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?” “Not at all,” I answered, “what’s on your mind?”

“A couple of board meetings back,” he said slowly,  “I thought I overheard you mention something very casually.  Something to the effect that you still hear from Scott.”

I smiled. “You heard right,” I told him.  As I had grown in confidence about this strange and wondrous journey that had now become my life, uncharted though it certainly was, I made a conscious decision to be open about the experience. Some people would think it crazy, I realized, or write me off completely as undone by grief, but it didn’t matter. I had begun to feel deep inside that I had been given a truly great gift, able to reach and touch me even through my pain. Just in case anybody listening needed to hear the message, which was not uncommon, I chose to speak it whenever the circumstances seemed appropriate.  The potential benefit to others so far outweighed any personal cost. it wasn’t even a question.

“I was just wondering,” he asked, “what did you mean by that?” As I knew from the interview, Camilo too had lost his true love to AIDS, his adored partner of several years. Himself very much a professional healer, called almost every work day to venture again into the fire to help another consumed by grief, he had long since reconciled himself to the pain of living with his personal loss.  That  heavy weight had become part of him, a sort of gray and irreconcilable ballast.

He sat looking at me intently, not sure what to expect. I drew in a deep breath and began, “Well, it’s a long story…but a beautiful one. The long and short is that Scott died on March 1, but the only thing he left was his body. His spirit hasn’t left me alone for a minute, and he’s reached me in so many ways to let me know that. It’s been a real trip. A real journey.” As I thought back over the months before and recalled exactly where I had been at its starting point, I experienced a “click” inside that told me I had been on quite a journey, indeed.  At the same time, though, I also saw that it was all just beginning. “Journey is really the only word for it,” I told Camilo, “but its one I’m very grateful for. I’ve been very blessed.”

“You know,” I continued, “just after he died I found a poem that he’d written, that said ‘Death ends a life but not a relationship.’ I was in such pain at the time, like I can’t even describe, but I guess I don’t need to explain that one to you. But those words, something about them moved me. And I mean that almost literally; something changed.  Part of it was the strangeness of finding that poem just sitting there, in that old desk,” I gestured, pointing, “just kind of like waiting for me.  I had never even laid eyes on it before.  I don’t know…”

“I guess I can’t even put the experience into words, really.  All I can say is that one afternoon I find this piece of paper, pick it up, and  boom!   Next thing you know, something has definitely happened.   It was one of those moments, the kind that I guess you can never see coming.  Until that point, I guess I’d assumed that I would have to leave it all behind me.”

“Everything that was living about it, anyway.  And since everything else seemed just grotesque, I was really up against a wall. Like, nowhere.“

I paused briefly, then went on. “Anyway, that was how it all began. Only in the months that followed did I come to understand just how true those words really were.”  Returning Camilo’s intense gaze, an idea suddenly occurred to me. “Hey, there’s something I want to share with you,” I said on instinct, rising from my chair and walking toward my desk to pull out the first channeled writing. “It’ll kind of be a shortcut.” Holding the two folded pages in my hands, I began to explain. “This letter came through on the Easter Sunday following Scott’s death.  It had been a month. I really believe it’s a channeling. That this is him talking, not me. This is a genuine message of love from the other side.”

As I walked back toward them with the letter Charles moved over on the sofa, making room for me to sit down between them. I had always felt the first channeling to be particularly powerful, an expression of love clarified and given focus in the pure intensity of Scott’s desire, and constantly found in its words new levels of meaning. Though I had shared the letter with many close friends, tonight was a little different. I had never before shared it with a client, especially in the context of a legal consultation. Also, I had always read the letter to my friends. Tonight Camilo instinctively reached for the pages and took them from my hands. After turning to his lover, as if to silently ask his permission to enter this new realm, he began reading out loud. I leaned back on the sofa next to him, watching as he began to experience the letter.

“I just want to touch you so bad,” he read, and slowly turned to me, his mouth slightly open. The look in his eyes told me that even the very first words were reaching deep within him in a way I did not understand. He had loved his partner intensely, and resigned himself even years later to living with the pain. What other choice did he have? But now, clutching the pages in his hands, he was like a man who had unexpectedly stumbled upon an oasis after a long, dry journey through the desert. He kept reading aloud, ever more slowly and softly, but seemed to withdraw ever more deeply into himself.  There he sat, yet it was as if he had been called into some other world, most private and demanding contemplation.

By the time he reached the middle of the letter, tears had begun to flow freely. I reached over and put an arm on his shoulder as he continued, realizing that an important process of healing was now taking place. For the moment, time seemed to stand still. Even through his tears he kept on reading, pausing occasionally to absorb like a sponge the message carried in and between the words. Neither he nor I consciously understood the process that was unfolding, but we both recognized its power. On a level of the spirit, an important exchange was taking place. The letter’s healing words had meant the world to me, and I was both gratified and deeply humbled to witness their power to touch another. Through Scott’s inspiration, and my fingers, we had been able to jointly bring through a promise of light to a soul desperately in need of it. If I’d had any doubt before that the message was meant to be shared, no longer. The writings had been for me, most certainly, but not for me alone.

When he finally finished, Camilo reverently folded back up the two pages and handed them to me. All he said was a whispered “thank you,” but his tears and the look on his face spoke more deeply and truly than any words. He had been reached at his core, touched by healing love when he least expected it. No other words were necessary. We hugged.

Pegasus     William Blake

I find myself with my arms thrust through gray toward the goodness in white…I reach and reach and reach to grasp the white. When the outward trek gets stopped and the black black obstacles overcome the absolute white exists within me the incarnation of God rests comfortably in my soul waiting for me to discover my own goodness…to shed the nefarious baggage of my pre-programmed past and look inward to find God and peace and me wrapped in whiteness

Scott, April 1989

Journal Entry

Even as I struggled with doubt and continued my battle with the daily grind, I knew that I had been forever changed by my moments of insight. On a deep level, often far beneath the shifting events of the day, I found myself awakening to a vast new realm of possibilities. A greater mystery was at play, and nothing was exactly what it seemed to be. Thinking back on the months since Scott’s death, I came to recognize the outlines of a process resembling a pendulum’s swing. First there had been utter darkness, then a sudden blinding light accompanying the first breakthroughs. The pendulum had since swung back and forth several times between those dazing extremes according to its own rhythm, accomplishing along the way a purposeful integration.  As I simply  my path, seeking a solid footing along the way, I began to see a larger picture.

There would be darkness, and then the light, and then the darkness would return again. In the beginning, believing only the darkness and living in terror, I clung desperately with numb fingers to the moments of light. Those moments of sweet reassurance would inevitably pass, though, leaving me again lost and abandoned in the shadows. Sick at heart, often feeling even worse off than before, I had no choice but to continue along my dreary way. Then, just when I least expected it but was most in need, I would again step into the light. As the months passed an idea slowly began to occur to me. The truth, a place of great peace, might quietly underlie the mercurial shifting of the tides that left me breathless, repeatedly lifting me high before again pummeling me into the depths.

Perhaps the darkness that so threatened me served some greater purpose. Could I possibly begin to perceive it as something other than an enemy, finding some measure of peace with it? Or at least a truce?  I recalled the line quoted in the first channeling, “The truth comes to the man whose eye is not clouded by longing.” In any event, if I paid careful attention, I noted that even the darkest of shadows became just a bit less threatening after each walk in the light. I still had no idea where I was heading, but could not doubt that I was indeed on the journey. Despite the fear that sometimes teemed in me during moments of darkness, there appeared to be no turning back.

Scott’s death had indeed initiated a process of growth for me, one of exquisite pain and unparalleled power. In a very real sense my old self had died along with him, and I had experienced the pain of that loss. The ride that followed was by no means gentle, at times feeling like my skin was being pulled from me, but I had no choice but to go where it took me. I was being reborn, transformed by a terrible knowledge, and had to trust that the excruciating process was meant to be. I had to take it on faith that the wave breaking over me, catching me up and tossing me within its wake, signaled transformation rather than extinction. I hoped, but could not know, that I would finally be set down on the shore, where I needed to be.

Late one October evening, pondering my experience and sitting at my computer, the following channeling broke through. As usual, the words answered a question, or a series of questions, I had not yet consciously asked:

Honey you see it’s called therapy. You souls in the flesh have the love of those on the other side. We are all playing the same game at the same time and that’s called the game of transformation. There is only one direction to grow and one direction to grow and that is where we are all bound. Yes it does deepen the perspective to know what’s going on on the spiritual level. Honey you can be academic you lovable thing You have been taught that learning is something you stop life to do. Well I’ve got another perspective for you it is the raison d’être it is what you are where you are for. Trust me honey nothing at all is wasted. Your soul knows just where to go, and it is through faith that the gloom of separation can be penetrated. It is not a matter of believing in things you cannot see it is a matter of opening up your eyes your heart and your soul But don’t forget to eat my love After all you are still in the body as well as the spirit

We make such a fine team together I always knew it. Think of the possibilities

Despite my moments of doubt, our journey together continued to unfold. As the swinging pendulum seemed to mellow in the medium of time, its sickening motion finally slowing closer to a peaceful balance, closer to still, I began to appreciate new nuances in our spiritual relationship. In a series of easy, quiet blessings I experienced communion with my beloved in dreams and channelings over the following weeks. I learned to sleep with a pad and pen on my night stand, since words would often flow out in inspiration immediately upon my awakening from a dream. Deep in the quiet of night I became strongly aware of Scott’s presence during such moments, and felt that a window was briefly flung open wide between us. Love had found me after all.

In earlier dreams the recurring theme had been communication between us. A larger and more central issue now took center stage: issues of relation, the challenges and frustrations raised on either side by the “mixed” nature of our relationship. Though I still longed from the bottom of my heart to see him again, to know togetherness as we had in the flesh, I knew that was not a present option. The depth and strength of my feelings, undiminished by the passage of time, stunned me. I began to recognize that I would need to let go in order to find. It would not again be as it had been on Earth, but maybe that was all right. Maybe something better and richer awaited me once I was ready to open up and receive it. But again, I couldn’t be sure. That’s so easy for you to say, I chuckled as I pondered his words in the first channeling, It’s just that our relationship has changed a little in its dynamics because of my departure from my body, but you know I will always be here for you, wherever you are. Come on, I thought, changed a little?

Uncertain of much, I had no doubt that the dreams of communion I was now experiencing were somehow more than simple dreams. On a level much deeper and more real than the conscious, I felt that the experiences brought to awareness a fundamental truth: that our journeys were still unfolding together. Though each dream took different form, they all boiled down to one essential, undeniable fact. We were together again, experiencing the challenges of life as a team. Separation between us simply did not exist. I found myself haunted by his words, Our whole experience together was dream reality was metaphor. If we had indeed been traveling a journey of the soul together while in the flesh, tasting divine lessons through the physical, might not that process now be continuing?

In one dream my anxiety built as one small thing after the other went wrong. I rushed to get on an early train, only to realize with horror shortly before departure that Scott was not with me as he was supposed to be. “My God,” I thought, “he must still be back in the hotel room.” It was unthinkable to go on without him, but my late arrival at the station had not left me much time before the scheduled 2:45 departure. Glancing quickly at my watch, I decided to make a run for it back to the hotel. I grabbed to take with me my most important piece of luggage, the large green backpack that had belonged to Scott, but that I now used in my real-life travels. Leaving the rest behind on the racks in the train, I sprinted through the crowded station back toward the hotel. As I ran on, breathless, I was filled with a mounting sense of dread and anxiety. I had to get back to the hotel on time, and get Scott back to the train.

By the time I finally ran up to the hotel, nearly breathless, I realized with horror that I no longer had my bag with me. I had been on a subway or taxi, and figured that I must have left it behind in my haste. In real life I have an irrational fear of losing my baggage, all of my possessions, while away from home on a trip. In the dream, I felt like I had inadvertently left behind a piece of myself. As I tried to make it up to the room where Scott was, single-minded in my intention, I encountered a frustrating series of roadblocks along the way that only increased my agitation. He was on the fifth floor, but the escalator had stopped working. When I made it at last up to the fourth floor, huffing and puffing at the top of the stairs, I learned that it did not connect with the fifth. I then ran into a woman who told me that we had been supposed to take the 2:45 train tomorrow. “No wonder,” I thought to myself, full of self-recrimination. “I was a day too early. My timing was off.”

Finally I ran into a friend, exasperated to the point of tears. “What a mess!,” I exclaimed in a jumble of words. “Where’s Scott? Is he O.K.? I know I’ve missed the train by now, and God knows if I can find my bag. Maybe I can check with the lost and found. I haven’t been able to get back to the room!” My friend quieted me down, telling me in a calm tone “No problem, of course he’s here.” The next thing I knew I was laying on a bunk bed, and Scott came walking into the room, quite naturally. I was comforted to see him, but had no sense in the dream that his being there was a big deal, any sort of epic return from the dead. Responding to the object of my greatest concern, knowing what a mess things had become, he looked at me and said “I can’t believe that you lost the bag.” His tone in the statement was not one of blame, but rather a voiced sharing of my experience. Just as when he was alive.

His words were almost irrelevant. It was his presence there with me, his being there to share my experience and thus soften its sharp edges, that deeply soothed me. Things had been tough, but at least I was not alone on my journey. Louder than any words, his presence and actions reflected a deep love, reaching me in my stress to reassure me that “we’re here together, baby. I’m right here with you. Where else would I be? Calm down, my love.” In my heart I suddenly realized that the lost bag did not matter at all; I had Scott. Despite my fears and anxiety I had nevertheless found my way home.

Upon awakening from the dream, the following channeling flowed out:

You fear my love that you have taken a train too early, that everything is a mess, you have worked your way into a state. Calm down, like I told you. I am with you. Your soul is great. You have not moved away never fear it is not your destiny to leave me You need not fear or strain You know where to find me when you need me.

In another dream that followed shortly, I sat reading an entry in one of Scott’s journals. As were some of the journals I’d known him to keep during the roughest of times, that in the dream had been written during a dark period in his life. He penned on paper his torment under the long and dark shadow of his encroaching mortality, and lamented that he would be unable to attend this annual event next year, or that one. Fearful of the transition looming, his heart heavy with the painful recognition that those experiences would no longer be his to share, I read in the dream “Today I guess I’ll have to cancel those checks.” (In real life, Scott had generally taken responsibility for managing the family finances, writing most of the checks, paying bills, etc.)

I then noticed casually that he was sitting next to me, and turned to ask “Did you cancel your checks, Honey?” In the dream’s logic, I meant “was it a practice of yours while you were alive?”  He responded simply “no.”

Brimming over with love, grateful to again be with him, I held his hand and said simply “Honey, it was never that hard to be with you.” For the momentary eternity of the dream I just cried, eyes closed, clasping his hands in mine. The feeling was beyond words, so deep and right. The experience cannot (and perhaps need not) be described, but felt very different from dreaming, as I know it.

Upon awakening I smiled as I reached over to grab the pad and pen I kept on my bedside table, thinking “So very good to see you, baby. We commune even on this plane.” The following words then flowed out:

Never far away always as close as your heart. These are trying times baby but trust me it’s all going to work out fine. They can’t get to you where it really counts where your real treasure is that is love.I’ve left Priscilla with you to love and you do you are doing everything you need to You are in the love loop I told you I would be there with you that’s all you need to know so you can move on

 

Priscilla, now with Scott.  R.I.P.  Her death came as no surprise, because she had grown so very old, and frail.  Her body was never found.  I always liked to believe that when the moment came she had run happily into Scott’s arms, and so she’d been tenderly passed “across the bridge.”    (Though she never liked being picked up, and was not shy in voicing her displeasure!)  The debt of love I owe that quirky cat who, for a time, was my living link to Scott and my salvation, is beyond calculation.

 

Listen to the voice of your soul you know what the truth is I told you the separation between us is an illusion there is no distance far enough to get in the way of love. That is the beautiful news  Let me lead you   you don’t need to try you have earned me your guardian angel and I will take you where you need to go Oh the places we have been together this is the point of our visit tonight Yes we had many great times didn’t we love but what you need to know my dear is that the times are not over In your deepest heart of hearts you and I share communion  This is not wishful thinking this is God’s plan I’m not going anywhere we are moving. Your love reaches me loud and clear that’s all you need to know my gift. Sweet dreams

No circuits remain uncompleted where truth lies

Up on the Roof   ____P. Crockett

In a similar dream the next week I happily climbed into bed with Scott, sliding toward him on my knees. As I repeatedly told him that I loved him, he smiled comfortably but had a look on his face that quietly urged me to calm down. “I know,” he seemed to say, “what’s the big deal?” It was as if I knew that he had died, that a vast uncrossable gulf had arisen between us, but he had no idea. From his perspective, neither of those phantoms had any reality. There was only love. As the dream unfolded in its purpose of healing, I told him “We’ve got to be glad for any time we’ve got together, because none of us have a right to any time at all.”

Even in the dream, comforted by the gift of Scott’s presence, I was enriched by an ability to put things into a spiritual perspective. I was empowered to start letting go.

To Chapter 53

_{Love Never Dies_______P. Crockett}

_{Scott died on a Friday.  The following Wednesday I headed out with my easel and paints, on a pure leap of faith.  There I sat splashing away, listening to a cassette tape of love songs that Scott once made for me, and wept my heart out.   That was my experience; above is the artifact that remains: a moment in time forever seared in color.}

_{Your pain is the flip side of your love and it must be and I understand that  I am so proud of you what you are doing and the way you are doing it}

_{Scott, April 1996}

_{Channeled Writing}

_{With the experiences of Washington DC and Pittsburgh behind me, I returned home and again plunged back in to the hectic currents of my life.  As October became November I returned to the duties of my law practice, set out to paint when I could, and worked on the final additions and revisions to the HIV Law manuscript.  At the same time, I kept up with my efforts at community education about the legal issues of AIDS, writing and speaking nationally and locally.  Though my schedule was exhausting and full of challenges, I continued in dogged pursuit of my goals.  I knew that I was pushing myself to the limit, but had my reasons.}

_{“So WHAT  if  they got it on Amazon.com now for a penny and up?  It helped people.” Even a moment later, the author couldn’t quite be sure whether he’d just thought the observation or gently spoken it aloud,  exactly as if someone else had been sitting there with him, listening.}

_{On a conscious level, I was driven by the importance of the task before me.  Even now, friends were still being hospitalized and dying.  People living with HIV were still suffering every day in a society hostile to them for a lack of understanding their legal rights.  Since the very beginning the epidemic had raised unique challenges, and in its unfolding given birth to an unending array of new legal problems.  People suddenly confronted with a diagnosis found themselves in a strange new world, painfully realizing their vulnerability in a medical/ legal/ insurance establishment generally stacked against them.  The world was no longer as safe as it had once seemed, and life became a literal battle for survival.  When Scott had been most ill, weakened and physically tormented by sickness, he had been forced to bear the heavy burdens of fear that his disability benefits might be cut off, leaving him with no choice but to return to a job he was no longer able to handle, and that his health insurance coverage would come to an end.  I tried to comfort and reassure him, but to little avail.  He understood the dynamics of the system all too well.  The hostility he feared was unfortunately no phantom, and his paranoia sadly justified.}

_{Scott was now beyond those fears, but legions of fellow sufferers labored under them still.  In his memory, needing a reason, I dedicated myself to the task of trying to even the odds for those still fighting the battle.  My law practice, helping one client at a time, was beginning to frustrate me with its limitations.  Many more people desperately needed this information than I was able to reach, and in any event I observed that by the time a client reached me with “a problem” it was often too late.  Often, the stress and expense of legal conflict might have been entirely avoided in the first place had the client understood the basics of the system, and his or her place within it.  By any means possible, in any available forum, I committed myself entirely to getting this information “out there.”  The forthcoming book represented the potential of an exciting expansion to a wider audience, far beyond any I had previously been able to reach with my lectures, workshops, and newspaper columns.  Carried forward by the momentum, I also made plans to set up a related web site on the Internet to reach still more.}

_{Just beneath the surface of my stated reasons, though, other forces were also at work.  On a deeper level, I was a man in severe pain, still reeling from the physical loss of my companion.  I desperately needed a reason to keep and hold me here, something to do.  The passage of time had healed those wounds closest to the surface, but I was still bleeding and raw within.  Even as friends offered me encouragement, telling me how well I was doing and praising me for my strength, I continued to wage an intense internal struggle for meaning as I lived from day to day.  Really, what did it all mean?  Why was I still here?  What could I really do for others if I was so lost myself?  As I faced the inevitable series of insults offered by life, I came to keenly appreciate its quality of absurdity.  But that somehow offered me no relief.}

Not until almost ten years later did I realize that I had painted a skull, in the very center of the painting.  When the painting hung under gallery lights at a showing done in 2003 at Key Biscayne National Park, the shadows cast by the textured painting helped the image “leap” from the canvas.  Once my friend Eric Raits brought it to my attention, there was no denying it.  Below, extreme close-up.

_{Despite the spiritual gifts I had received over the course of time in such abundance, my grief and pain were still more immediate and real to me than any intangible, invisible promises of life and love in another realm.  I was still very much here, cut apart and torn by doubt and grief.  If my ongoing contact with the realm of spirit had been genuine, and I was not participating in some kind of group hallucination, some indulgent orgy of wish fulfillment, then why was I in such pain?  Am I wrong, I wondered?  Or just totally thick?  I had no doubt that my experiences of communion had transformed and helped to heal me.  Even in my deepest darkness, I had literally felt divine light break through and touch my soul, quickening my being.  Now, however, sick at heart and exhausted, such moments seemed vastly distant, as shimmering and insubstantial as a fading dream.  From that perspective, clouded in shadow, they seemed almost cruel.}

_{Though my days and nights sometimes seemed long and alone, and the path before me not always easy, I came to realize over the course of time that it was indeed one of growth.  Reflecting on Scott’s reassuring message that Your pain is the flip side of your love and it must be and I understand that, it began to dawn on me that perhaps there was another way to view this experience.  Perhaps it didn’t help to beat myself up for sinking back into depression.  Maybe, just maybe, this too was part of a greater plan.  In moments of grace, I understood that the pain I carried within my soul was a form of tribute to my beloved, one he no longer needed but that I very much needed to give.  This is the way I carried on.}

_{“Maybe in good time,” I thought to myself as I lay down to sleep one night, “I’ll be able to give that up.  But I guess I’m not ready yet.”}

_{And I finally passed into the refuge of sleep.}
To: Chapter 52