When I received the late Sunday night phone call, my heart pounded as I raced to answer it. Customarily, this was my day of rest, after a typically relentless week of fielding numerous pseudo-emergencies, both personally and professionally. Instinctively, I knew that this urgency was very real.
Disbelief and panic echoed in the voice of my caller, the husband of a dear friend of mine, informing me that she had just been in a tragic accident. As the details filtered in, our male egos dissolved, through the catalyst of his grief and my shock: in a coma… critical care… near-drowning… possible brain damage. My inward response to hearing this was a bold proclamation of dissociative denial: ‘No fucking way!’
I learned that my friend Amara had been walking on the beach near her tropical home when she encountered a young boy flailing in the surf, trying to rescue his small dog. Being the patron saint of both animals and children, Amara didn’t hesitate before jumping in to try to save the pair. Perhaps because she knew this stretch of ocean so well, Amara was able to pull the boy and his dog from the water separately and escort them to safety. However, she had nearly drowned in the process of doing so. If not for the boy’s quick thinking (calling emergency from her cell phone, which he’d retrieved from the purse she had flung onto the sand before delving into the water), she never would have even made it off the beach alive.
After I hung up the phone, my eyes darted to an aesthetic greeting card next to the phone on my desk. I had been saving the card specifically for Amara. Impractically yet instinctively, I filled thee blank card with a written invocation: ‘You will wake up. You’ve come too far to let go of the promise of your purpose.’
I had no doubt that if Amara died now, she would do so fully at peace with the life she had thus far lived. I supposed that her richly cultivated spirit might even manifest in another blazing reincarnation. But I wanted her here and now: in this body; in this life. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to continue living without her; it was more that I simply couldn’t imagine the world without her in it.
Amara had saved my life emotionally – at one point, we were lovers for a brief time – and I knew that this was my chance to return the favor, albeit psychically. Deliberately and forcefully, I retracted my energy deep within me. Projecting my consciousness several thousand miles away, I envisioned myself entering the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital where Amara was being monitored. Just as my awareness entered Amara’s physical space, the alarm bells on the vital statistics monitor beside her bed went ballistic. In a flash amidst the cacophony, I witnessed her unmistakably diminishing signs of life and the chaos of the medical rescue team as they converged upon her hospital room.
Amara herself was completely detached from all the earthly commotion. Immediately, I sensed that she was preparing to leave this corporeal plane. Instantaneously, I reached out for her mind and spirit in a gentle yet profound psychic choke-hold. Reiterating the same command that I had written only minutes earlier, I said aloud “You will wake up. You’ve come too far to let go of the promise of your purpose.”
As I reached for and held Amara’s essence, I felt her rise to meet me, letting go of her blissful free-fall into the Void. I felt her serene smile subsume me in a nodding acknowledgment of my passionate command, and I knew in that moment that our sacred filial covenant for this lifetime had been restored. Every fiber of her being responded to my implied reminder, echoed in the clear recognition of her one-word answer:
“YES.”
