Some years later my therapist and I were in uncharted territory. I was for the first time broaching my deepest and most secret fear that I might one day stab or otherwise slash myself with a knife. As I gave voice to the words something I can only describe as an other self erupted from me sending me and my chair skidding backwards. It could not have been any more dramatic than an exorcism. My slack jaw therapist had to ask, "What the hell was that?"
At the end of our fifty minute hour I lumbered away from the office of my therapist. I wanted only to sit in the sun for a few precious moments to regain my equilibrium. Fortunately the Boston Common was only a block away. When I got there I started to lower myself on to a bench that I had picked at random when an inner voice said, "Not this one. That one." There was no difference between the two but I listened to that voice and took the other bench some twenty feet away. I collapsed into a sitting position with my elbows on my knees and my head hung down. In this way I noticed something between my feet. I could not believe my eyes. I bent down and picked it up. It was a toy knife, one that a child might get from a bubble-gum machine. The blade I noted was folded safely away.
Some time later in a ritual of self cleansing and opening the soul to unconditional love I took a moral inventory by writing down every aspect of myself, both good and bad, on several sheets of paper. I shared this with a mentor who suggested that I offer my reckoning to the gods and then give light to all that I'd written. I did so, placing the pages in a tin can sitting on my kitchen table. I gave light to my inventory which was shortly ablaze... and smokey too. My two fire alarms went off. I fanned at the smoke and filled a glass with water and poured it into the can. After quieting the alarms I looked inside the can. All was ashes except for a speck of paper the size of my thumb nail. I scooped it out and gave it a look. On it was a word and one word only. The word was "love."
A couple years after that the temp agency I was employed with sent me to work as a courier at the Deaconess Hospital. It just so happened, as coincidences do, that my mother was receiving experimental out patient treatments there for a lethal lung ailment. Two weeks into my job my mother was admitted to the hospital with the understanding it was for a short stay, just until she regained her strength.
Because of the nature of my job I had lots of free time. I spent quite a bit of it at my mother's bedside, at times holding her hand. As the days progressed I watched her weaken. At night after visiting hours I blubbered in the arms of friends, "My mother is dying."
There was so much to be said, grievances to be aired and rectified, apologies for past rancor and misunderstandings, grudges and hurts and words hurled in anger that needed to be addressed. But my mother was on oxygen and struggling to breathe. The last thing she needed was an emotionally charged exchange. I held my tongue. On one of the last days she was alive as I left her at the close of visiting hours I said "Sweet dreams, Mom." Removing her oxygen mask she replied,"Then I will dream of you." What a balm that has been over the ensuing years.
I have read that using words to describe magic is like trying to carve a pot-roast with a screwdriver. And surely if anything coincidences are magical. They appear out of the ether as if guided by a deity, and this is how I have come to see them, as gifts from a Higher Power that I can not explain or adequately give voice to. I can not make plain the mystery of coincidences. I can only revel in them and give thanks humbly before the great unknown which I choose to see as the nature and embodiment of God.
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