Jasmine's Story

Hola Everybody,
During a speech I gave last night (on racism), out of nowhere, I came out with the line, "... making the impossible, possible and the possible, inevitable." I don't know where I got it from (it ain't mine!), but it was pure genius! LOL

I will probably post a version of the speech sometime this week, for anyone who's interested.

This is a repost...

* * *

“The power of love to change bodies is legendary, built into folklore, common sense, and everyday experience. Love moves the flesh, it pushes matter around… Throughout history, ‘tender loving care’ has uniformly been recognized as a valuable element in healing.”
-- Larry Dossey

Life never ceases to amaze me: the cliché that life is stranger than fiction is true. I guess that’s why they’re clichés! When I first started school and beginning the process that eventually led to a career as a “healer,” I went through an experience that would forever change the way I look at healing.

Early in my recovery, I received a phone call in the middle of the night. It was an old and dear friend who had actually stuck with me even during my darkest days. She called to tell me that a former lover was on her deathbed at a nearby hospital. I’ll never forget her words. She said, “Eddie, I know you and Jasmine did a lot of fucked up shit to each other, but they don’t expect her to last the weekend. If you have anything you want to tell her, now is the time. They’re giving her last rites as we speak.”

I thanked my friend and as I put down the phone, I didn’t know what to think. Here was someone who had caused me great pain, who had been the object of numerous homicidal fantasies, who now was dying. As I thought of her, it was hard for me to feel the old resentment and anger without a pang of conscience. After all, I thought, I was equally cruel to her. I decided then that I would visit her that very moment.

As I began to get dressed (it was about 2am), I had reservations. Her family wasn’t too fond of me. In fact, the joke was that they wouldn’t even mention my name, and when they did, they whispered my last name as if actually calling my given name aloud would evoke me! So, in essence, in that family anyway, I became “Rosario” in the shushed confines of their home.

I decided that I would go anyway and that if there were any objections, that I would just leave and at least know in my heart that I attempted to make amends.

That Serenity Prayer actually does come in handy, folks.

As I rode the bus to the hospital, my mind kept coming up with various scenarios: the mother would curse me, I would make matters worse, or my presence would only magnify the pain.

I finally arrived at the hospital and, after locating the room, I entered the dark room quietly. The room was full of family members all huddled around the bed where a wasted and frail young lady lay seemingly unconscious. No one noticed me, as I listened to the priest murmur some last rites. I waited for someone to recognize me and, as the priest finished his ministrations, the mother turned and looked at me and with tears in her eyes cried, “Eddie! Oh Eddie, mi hijo, lo que a llegamo!” And she took me in her arms and sobbed. I could hear murmurings as my presence was made known.

The mother explained to me in hushed tones the situation: her daughter had fallen into a coma after a long bout with HIV and it was expected that she would die soon. I tried to apologize and explain that if my being there was inappropriate, I would leave, but the mother stopped me and led me to Jasmine’s bed. It was hard to look at Jasmine, lying there now wasted by disease. Her mother spoke to her as if she could hear her and said, “Mira nena, look who’s here to see you – Eddie!”

Honestly, I didn’t know what the fuck to do, but something told me to take her hand, which I did. Then I bent over and whispered to her, expressing how sorry I was for the things I did to her and how we hurt each other; that I was now living a good life free of my destructive patterns and active addiction. Her hands felt cold so I rubbed my hands together to generate heat and warmed her hands. I kept this up – talking to the unconscious Jasmine and warming her hands, and then her face, her arms, etc.

When I felt I had said what I had to say, I began to walk away and then I heard Jasmine whisper, “Eddie?” Everyone in the room stopped talking and when I turned around, there was Jasmine smiling at me weakly, whispering my name. At that point, everyone in the room started doing the sign of the cross and Jasmine’s mother was praying and saying that it was miracle and people were just running around calling the doctors and there I was in the middle of that whole scene wondering what the fuck was going on!

Jasmine would live for about four more months. I don’t know if I had anything to do with that, but Jasmine said that it wasn’t until she felt the heat from my hands that she began to regain consciousness. Before, she said, she felt she had settled into a form of resignation of meeting her fate. It’s hard to describe what Jasmine said, but I now think she was on her way to meet her maker. She had lost all hope for life, she told me, and had deteriorated rapidly. She said feeling the heat from my hands awakened her to the fact that there were certain things left undone that needed doing.

During her last days I became of a primary care-giver to Jasmine in that AIDS ward. In fact, the nurses called me Jasmine’s “boyfriend” and would arrange her hair in pigtails and her face would beam when I entered the room. Me? I resolved to do what I could – to give what I could to a person in need. Not only because Jasmine needed it, but because it was what I wanted to do – what I had to do.

And she would often request, especially during times of extreme stress, that I use my hands in the same way I did that first night. I never got it at the time. And when I would ask her, she would only say that my hands ran hot (which they do) and that the heat would lessen the feeling of numbness that would overwhelm her body.

The doctors could not explain. Indeed, what I witnessed during those days in that ward was that the doctors were often at a loss for answers for “prescriptions.” What I learned at that time was that a healer, whether she be a doctor, therapist or whatever, must act as a channel, or conduit of a healing entity or force. I don’t care whether you call it, God, Goddess, Christ, The Great Spirit, Chi, or whatever. Furthermore, in order to become such a channel, there are four essential qualities a healer must possess: trust, faith, love, and humility.

Though different healers may channel this healing energy by different techniques, none of them can heal – no matter what their technique – unless they use it with love and humility. Out of all of these qualities, love is probably the most troublesome because all healers have days when they are not open to love. There are no recipes or formulas for staying open that way. To love also doesn’t just mean loving others, it means loving one’s self too.

I learned in those days that healing does not necessarily mean to become physically well or to be able to get up and walk around again. For me, healing means achieving some kind of balance between the physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual dimensions. For example, Jasmine would never walk again, and her T cells were, like, nil. Doctors were at a loss to explain her existence and just resolved themselves to minister to her while she was still alive. However, Jasmine became spiritually awake and though she was young (she was 33), sometimes she gave the impression of a very wise, very old soul with far more knowledge than her years. I believe that suffering kicks up the spiritual dimension by a lot of notches.

Don’t misunderstand, Jasmine, like many AIDS patients – even more so than patients suffering from cancer or other life-threatening illnesses -- was lacking in qualities of self-worth, self-esteem, and self-trust. At one time, she told me, she felt these qualities were blocked by a lot of guilt, shame, and ambivalence. There were issues Jasmine never had a chance to address, that she took with her to her grave – such as her addiction and deep-seated feelings of guilt. But we did what we could, – she and I. In some ways, we were like ships passing in the night. I was reinventing my life, starting anew, doing the things I never get a chance to do. Sometimes I would forget this. For Jasmine, this was as good as it was going to get. She was on borrowed time and that sometimes worked to minimize her motivation. I have friends who say that they were living with a disease, not merely dying. I don’t know if Jasmine ever got there. But we learned to trust one another, one day at a time -- together -- and laughed many times at how easy it was to revert to old patterns. However, Jasmine also had a seven year-old son she had to say goodbye to.

Jasmine’s “healing” didn’t occur at an individual level, because we are all connected through a vast network of relationships to an infinite number of people and creatures on the planet. The process of healing even one person has consequences for all of us. It did for me: acting as a channel for this energy, I now know, looking back, that Jasmine’s situation had a healing purpose for me.

As Jasmine began going about resolving the issues in her life, especially with her son, she seemed to become more at peace with her illness. There were days that her smile would remind me of the Jasmine I had known – beautiful, alert, intelligent and spunky. But those days became more and more rare. Eventually, taking care of Jasmine became a job that took priority over everything else in my life, threatening to burn me out. A part of that had a noble purpose, sure, but a part of that was also my codependency issue. There were times I would forget that I was but a channel through which some of this was happening and I would also forget that Jasmine would not get better.

She took me hostage, Jasmine did. She was afraid of dying alone in that cold, sterile hospital room. One day, after a particularly rough night (I had obtained special permission from the hospital administration), I was irritable and tired. My life had been consumed by Jasmine’s disease and I was feeling spent, confused, and sometimes angry – all triggers for my addiction. Jasmine hadn’t even spoken for days and if I wasn’t there doing it, she would not be cleaned in a nice way, so there I was cracking jokes about cleaning Jasmine’s ass and laughing about it. Sometimes I swore I saw a grin on Jasmine’s face during those times.

Anyway, I was tired and I wanted to go home, shower, and re-energize myself. I tried calling her sister, but she could not be reached, so I turned to Jasmine and told her I was leaving and would be back as soon as I could. I hated doing this because she would become agitated if I left the room, let alone tell her I was leaving. Jasmine’s greatest overriding fear – her horror -- was to die alone.

As I left, I turned to look and there was this look of stark fear on Jasmine’s face. I blew her a kiss, my anger gone now, and promised I would be right back. She was upset… but I reminded myself she always got upset when I left the room. I took the elevator to the lobby and just when I was about to leave, something almost physical stopped me dead in my tracks. It was as if I had run into an invisible wall. And it hit me, I realized I had to rush back to Jasmine’s room.

I knew what was happening.

Jasmine passed away as I was entering her room. When she saw me, the most beautiful smile of gratitude and contentment came over her face. She couldn’t mouth the words, but the look in her eyes -- I’m sure if she could she would’ve said, “Thank you, Eddie.” I stood by her, heard the death rattle, and she was gone…

The only difference between Jasmine and us, I came to understand, was Jasmine’s degree of illness. It seems to me that the whole planet is going through what Jasmine experienced with her terminal illness. My conclusion is that there must be a way to for all of us to go through a cleansing process to eliminate the hatred, greed, pain, grief, and rage that has been repressed for so long.

The thing is this: there is a way to do this if you only give yourself the time and space required to do it. There is a way to tap into the healing energy.

Love,

Eddie