Chapter 11: Escaping Pain

16 September 1974, Minneapolis

THERE WAS AN AIR of expectancy in the apartment as they all gathered in the living room with coffee or tea. Judith offered Serepte and Paul the loveseat but Serepte pushed the young man into a large overstuffed chair and perched on his lap. Judith and Wayne took the loveseat while the other three huddled together on the massive sofa, leaving plenty of room for Judith and Wayne if they decided to join them.

“I need to tell you a story,” Serepte began, looking first at Paul and then at her roommates. “I’ve walked around this carefully for too many years. I nearly missed my initiation into the circle at Lughnasad five years ago because of it.” Paul shifted and brought his arm around the young woman who had already captivated him. She cuddled to his side, drawing strength from him. “I determined that I would not tell it until I felt it was critical. With Paul holding me, I believe I have found the strength.”

“Serepte, you don’t have to go on,” Wayne said softly. There was a tone of sadness in his voice. For the past five years, when something weighed heavily on his young friend’s heart, she had sought the comfort of being held by him. Now, she was truly in the arms of the one he knew would take on that role. As if reading his mind, Judith stood and pulled Wayne with her to the sofa so they could cuddle with the others. It was a tight fit, but none of them minded. “The night you recovered was the night this circle formed. Our first act was to create a bridge for you to return to us.”

“It was not just a recovery. I died,” Serepte whispered. “That’s the story neither my mother nor I have ever told you.”

I’d been sent to Doc and Margaret to keep me away from the dangers Mom detected. You’d experienced attacks in the theatre and Mom had been attacked, too. She wanted me somewhere safe while she performed the final rituals for summoning the tools at Litha.

While Margaret and William, Doc’s butler, were both kind and thoughtful, they were old. And Doc was bedridden with cancer that was eating away at him. It wasn’t like I had no sympathy for the old man, but it was so depressing to be in a house where death was just lingering somewhere in the corners. I did what I always did and played my flute for hours. With the door open so Doc could hear me.

We had our own Litha ritual while you were scrying in the cauldron. Everyone thought it might be Doc’s last night with us. I was shocked at how the disease had ravaged his body. It was clear that he was in pain. I became angry. The disease had no right to take Doc. As I stood before him, I could feel a pulsing strength flowing into me—directly from the Great Circle, I believed.

I took Doc’s hand, but before he could speak, I felt the ripping attack of the disease. I felt it—inside myself. I felt the pain as if it was in me.

I was terrorized. I couldn’t escape from the pain and disease. I screamed but I couldn’t let go. I just kept taking more and more into me. Sick. I was so sick. Color returned to Doc’s face and he looked like he’d just been resurrected. He flexed his hand in mine and then the pain overwhelmed me and I guess I passed out. They say I went into a coma.

When Mom got back a few days later, I was still in the hospital. Physiologically, the doctors said, there was no sign of injury or illness, but symptomatically I appeared near death as if I were eaten by cancer. And Doc stood next to my bed, miraculously healed of his cancer. Those are things you know, or may have assumed—that I healed him. But that day I crossed into a different world. That’s the only way I can describe it. I sure wasn’t in Kansas. Or Indiana or Connecticut.

The sun was brighter than I’d ever seen. Birds sang songs I’d never heard, and I saw colors more vivid than any I’d seen before. The flute note I’d been holding in my head suddenly burst into a whole song and I moved my fingers, even though there was no flute in my hands. I could hear a symphony. Beings more beautiful than I can describe floated from place to place. How can I ... I saw pain and suffering as ... beautiful creatures, caught in ... or birthed in the wrong world.

It was so beautiful!

And they loved my music. When I played ... when I breathed another note of the strange music in my head ... illness, disease, and pain left me and entered this beautiful world where it belonged. As it slipped out of me, it bowed gracefully and thanked me for releasing it to its true form. It prayed that I did not find it too much of an inconvenience and apologized for any suffering it may have caused.

If you could see the pain of our world as I saw it then ... when it was free in its own world ... My words aren’t adequate to speak of such beauty. It was alive and loving. The beings meant no harm, but they suffered from being captured in human hosts and longed to be free.

The problem was, I’d entered their world and I didn’t know how to get back. I could fall asleep there and dream of my body in the hospital, but I couldn’t touch it. I wasn’t there. I just floated in the room looking at my body, watching doctors and nurses and Mom. Even Doc and Margaret hovered around, and Doc begged me to give the pain back to him and let him be the one to die. But I couldn’t even feel my own body. There is a Sanskrit word for different planes of being. I was in a different loka.

Then I heard music—a counterpoint to my own. Someone else was playing at the edge of my consciousness. One night I swung rapidly toward the music and shouted, “Who are you?”

It was as if I walked out of a fog into a beautiful garden with all the things of home in it. Everything had a magical glow but, unlike the beings of pain, the garden was earthly. I saw the world as if through the eyes of the creator who thought it into existence.

And I saw my house. Or at least it looked like my house. I could feel an invitation to enter, and like Alice in Wonderland, I went in. There were lots of familiar things. It was my home except it was a little grander. I could see some of Doc’s home in it. The detail of William’s carvings was ultra-sharp and clear. The pictures looked alive. It’s like I was in the essence of the house, not in its embodiment. A fire was laid in the fireplace and a man stood there in front of it looking at me.

He held out his arms and I just flowed into his embrace. I found my father—or he found me. There was so much warmth and love and comfort in his arms.

“I have been calling for you, my daughter,” he said softly. “You have been so wrapped up in the pain of your body and the beauty of the other world that you could not hear me.”

“Father? Daddy? Where are we?”

“In my head, I guess. In my world. I can’t leave here without bringing this world to an end. Can I do that? Perhaps I can if you help me.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“You will discover it eventually. For now, what you must do is learn to release the pain and suffering without crossing into their world. You are as much a foreigner in their world as they are in yours.”

“I don’t want to cause them pain. They’re beautiful,” I said. “What should I do?”

“Use your music like your mother ... like your muse did. It is your great gift and even greater burden. You can accept the pain of others into yourself through your intense empathy, but you must learn to release it quickly so you can survive.”

“It hurt, Daddy,” I cried.

“One day you will find that it is not duty that impels you to accept the suffering, but love. When that day comes, I will be waiting for you and will join you in your world,” he said. “Now, my daughter, before it is too late, play for me.”