Dearly Departed (9 page)

The airline had one ticket left at a sale price, and after that the prices doubled. I was heading off in peak season and I needed to pay for the ticket within the next two days to secure the seat and price. But it was a heavy week for outgoings. There were bills that had to be paid—don’t you just love it when they all come in at the same time? I knew I’d be struggling to pay for the ticket that week along with my other financial commitments. On checking my bank balance, I found the magazine had paid me double, not for one week’s column but for two. This was most unusual—or could I say divinely contrived by my new guide!

Nevertheless, it gave me the flexibility to pay for the airline ticket immediately, securing the cheaper airfare and with the bonus of some spending money. I had a mate from Aussie radio, Shorty Brown, who had broken into the comedy world in LA and was living there. Perhaps she could meet me at the airport and we could catch up between flights. I emailed her immediately.

‘Sure, but you’re going to come and stay with me. Not just overnight, come for a holiday—it’ll be a blast! I’ll show you the sights of Venice Beach and Hollywood, and you can see my comedy act in Santa Monica. Stay as long as you like. You can get a local flight from LA to Cincinnati no probs from here, just come.’

I was starting to get very excited. This was my first trip to the USA, things had fallen into place very quickly and I felt divinely led. Yet, it still wasn’t clear why I needed to go all that way for a workshop. What had Spirit in store for me?

I had forgotten Shorty was such a live wire, and my five days with her were a blur as I was whisked off to the sites, senses and scenes of Tinseltown. Celebrating my birthday at the Hard Rock Cafe, I think I could easily have hidden under the table as the crowd sang ‘Happy Birthday’—yes, Shorty had dobbed me in big time!

Cincinnati was hot. Their accents were stronger and my Aussie twang stood out a mile. Steve Irwin, the late great Crocodile

Hunter, had just died, and everyone was keen to connect and speak with anyone Aussie—they loved Steve and he was their hero.

The workshop was amazing—Roslyn was more than I could ever have hoped for. I found it refreshing to sit in a workshop, where no-one knew of my reputation, and just be one of the ‘crowd’, rather than the presenter. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that many attending the three-day workshop were from medical disciplines—nurses, chiropractors, energetic healers and those working in palliative care. So highly regarded are these workshops, points for attendance are awarded towards their ongoing educational requirements in updating their career qualifications.

One of the incredible women I met at this workshop was Elaine Grohman from Michigan, USA. Pairing up together in an exercise, she was bold enough to say she had noticed my leg condition and would I be open for a healing? After dinner that night, she came to my hotel room and worked on both of my legs; one in particular was very swollen. As she placed both her hands on my legs, gently rotating and massaging the skin, I could feel a tingling under her hands and an emotion welled up within my spirit that reduced me to tears.

The next morning it was as though a miracle had occurred. The swelling had subsided and I could walk with ease! Our friendship was cemented. Over the days, we discussed our lives and our careers. We had similar philosophies and interests. It was most evident to me that Elaine was a woman of great compassion and deep insight. Although her background had been in design and graphic art, now she worked as an intuitive and healer with a passion for palliative care, helping the dying make the transition from this world to the next. How had she been led from one field of endeavour to something so uniquely different?

Elaine’s story

Experience is our greatest teacher and at times, through adversity, we will be led to a new understanding or experience that has a profound effect on our current and future lives. For Elaine the passing of her dear aunt would change her life for ever.

Gloria was my mother’s younger sister. She was hospitalised as she was in the end stages of diabetes. She was signed on to hospice care and sent home. It was apparent that her time was slipping away. The hospital staff gave a prognosis of two weeks. She lasted almost six. It is truly between God and the individual when their life will end.

On one particular day, my cousin, her daughter and caregiver, was in need of a bit of respite from caring for her dying mother, struggling with the emotional turmoil that care-giving can create, on top of having estranged family members coming into town to be together. Although the dying process can be lengthy, it is a blessing when those that need to make amends are given the opportunity to do just that, to the best of their ability. So, on this particular day, I suggested to my cousin that she take a break and go do something for herself, assuring her that I would sit with her mother until her return.

As I sat in the small room at the bedside of my aunt, I was fairly sure that her time on this earth was rapidly coming to an end. She had been in and out of consciousness that day, and for the most part had been non-responsive. I simply sat by her bed, holding her hand and telling her that if she wanted to go, all would be fine. For quite some time she lay there, seemingly unaware of my presence. At one point, she opened her eyes and said, ‘I see my sister.’ I said, ‘Then honey, you go to her, because she will take good care of you.’ That sister was my precious mother, who had died 27 years earlier.

After those words were spoken, she gently closed her eyes. At that moment, I felt a very tangible movement in the room. I can only describe it as a ‘whooshing’ feeling, gently moving back and forth from side to side. It was a momentary event, but one that would change my life. There was no fan blowing or open window, yet there was a distinct movement. I still can feel the tingle of electricity throughout my body as I recall this movement, intangible yet palpable, in the room. I now know that I was privileged to feel her spirit begin to separate from her physical body. As it turned out, it was just a day or two later that she passed away.

This was a very moving moment for me, since her only sister, my mother, had died when I was thirteen years old, when she was only 47. My aunt and my mother were very close, and I always knew that my aunt was never quite the same after the passing of her dear sister. My world changed forever on that day.

I was very moved by the care that my aunt received, along with the care that the family received. Through the difficult time of impending death, hospice care and the marvellous people that provided it made a lasting impression on me. So much so that shortly after my aunt’s death I decided to become a hospice volunteer. From here I enrolled in a two-and-a-half year course of study in Polarity Therapy. It assisted me greatly to understand the energy of the dying process. The most profound understanding was the changing of the human spirit when one has knowledge that their life is coming to its conclusion. The energy of the physical body is beautiful and awe-inspiring, but the unique and mystical spirit and mind can grow and mature in beautiful ways, even as the physical body declines.

I relished in the knowledge of Elaine and others present at the workshop, and was inspired by their great work assisting those who are in the process of making the transition of spirit from this world to the next. This trip had been meant to be. The vision of the caduceus, the medical model, Hermes the conductor of death and White Buffalo married beautifully together.

Through Elaine’s knowledge of Native Americans, she felt the visit from the two spiritual masters, and in particular the hollow branch passed over my body by the American Indian chief had more significance than I’d first thought.

‘Georgina, American Indian medicine people referred to themselves as “hollow bones”, meaning they were like hollow tubes in which energy could pass through to the people they were healing.’

There’s a marvellous book called
Fools Crow:Wisdom and Power
by Thomas E. Mails, in dialogue with the great Sioux holy man, Fools Crow. The cover of the book describes Fools Crow this way:

Frank Fools Crow, Ceremonial Chief of the Teton Sioux, is regarded by many to be the greatest Native American holy person of the last 100 years; a nephew of Black Elk, and a disciplined, gentle spiritual and political leader. Fools Crow died in 1989 at the age of 99.

The book states:

All medicine persons are hollow bones that Wakan Tanka, Tunkashila and the Helpers work through. In any event, you are being made into a ‘hollow bone’ or they are acknowledging that you are already one.

During the workshop, Elaine received a spiritual visitation from a Native American chief who called himself ‘Cesar’. Elaine later learnt through a friend who had a guide named Apollo who Cesar was and how important he was to his people. Cesar was of the Adena people who populated the Cincinnati area from 400BCE to about 500CE. They were also referred to as ‘Mound People’, since they built ceremonial mounds and burial mounds.

‘Perhaps Cesar is coming to work with you, Georgina, since he was considered a very revered medicine man to his people,’ Elaine said.

It still feels strange to have had a very strong Native American vibration surrounding me in so many directions. As I discussed the complexities of all that had happened and the new vibration with my mum, she reminded me of how I came to be born in a very special hospital, with a unique physician, Dr Rivett. Her story gave me goosebumps!

The Cabarisha connection

Originally my birth was to take place in a public hospital, but my mother had such a bad experience with the nursing staff while visiting, she came home in tears to my father. She told her experience to a couple at the local beach one weekend, and they said there was only one hospital where she should have her baby delivered, and that was Cabarisha. It was a very small private hospital, about 45 minutes drive from my parents’ home. It would be expensive, yet my father felt they had been given an answer to their prayers. He was a man of faith, and he and my mother both believed their paths were always divinely led.

An appointment was made for my mother to meet and discuss her confinement with the new doctor at Cabarisha. As she sat patiently in his surgery while he made numerous notations, she observed that on the top of each page of stationery he turned over was a picture of an American Indian.

Mum asked him several times why he used this emblem, and each time he avoided her question. Finally, as I could well imagine Mum wouldn’t let up until she found out the reason, he declared, ‘This is an Indian, Cabarisha’. Remember, this was back in the 1950s, when there was no New Age openness.

On learning about my birthplace, I discovered Dr Rivett was deeply interested in homeopathy, colour therapy and hypnotherapy; he prepared his own herbal medicines until WWII and experimented in mental telepathy and extra-sensory perception.

Had I gone 360 degrees, from a physical birth with an American Indian guide as the spiritual mentor for a medical establishment and doctor, to an American Indian spiritual mentor guiding and working with me now? Yet, just when I thought I’d had my fill on learning new spiritual wisdoms and insights, Spirit opened another door. All was to be revealed as I travelled in June 2007 to visit my son Brendan and his partner Latoya.

Old Age Wisdom

It was true that I had learnt much about our indigenous Aboriginal population while I lived in the outback, running a drop-in centre for the Aboriginal youth from the local mission. Then when I moved to Dubbo, I gained a reputation for my sensitivity and cultural understanding working with the local Aboriginal community and was offered casual work at the local TAFE college, teaching workplace skills to indigenous people who had recently been released from jail.

Now my breadth of understanding was to incorporate another part of our indigenous culture—to extend and embrace the mystical components that surrounded the Torres Strait Island people, who lived in a cluster of scattered islands off the northern tip of Australia, some reaching as far away as Papua New Guinea. Many had migrated to the mainland of Australia, bringing their cultural beliefs, wisdom and ancestral heritage.

It was on one of these islands that Latoya’s mother, Mary, had been born and raised. She was from an island that was known in the past for fierce warriors, headhunters and a tribe who possessed great magical powers that many Islander folk feared.

Both Mary’s grandparents were considered ‘medicine people’— her grandmother was a healer and her grandfather was a powerful man who had the ability to focus on someone living on another island then conjure and sing a song that would see this person die.

It was indeed a practice of magic that you would liken to the magic of Haiti or the West Indies, not associated with somewhere so close to Australia.

I was told stories about the water, sky and land spirits—how some men had the ability to ‘shape shift’ from man to animal, just as I’d read of particular tribes in the Amazon. I pondered—what was the link between these distant lands and people? Why had this craft gone underground, hidden from western understanding?

Mary explained that the majority of Island people were scared to speak of this magic as it was thought that talking about it could in fact attract ‘the magic’—which I would describe as ‘black magic’.

And with the coming of ‘the light’ to the Islands, brought by Christian missionaries, the populations embraced Christianity while still maintaining their mystical and ritual beliefs. Their culture was about reading the ‘signs’ of the land, sea and sky, and their psychic and intuitive ability was highly evolved. It had been and was their gift of survival and it hadn’t yet been suppressed like in our western culture.

Mary explained that when Latoya moved away there existed some tension between the two of them that gave way to distance and non-communication. So Mary spoke to her mother in Spirit, telling her in Islander English: ‘Mum, Toya not ringing me, what is going on? You go to her and make her ring me.’ The request was as simple as that—the belief that Spirit had the potential to deliver such a powerful message.