IT’S
A WONDERFUL LIFE
a
true story
by Jay Frankston
Little
did I know it, when I made my reservations to fly to London in January, that I
was going on a far different trip, that I would travel much further, reach
greater heights, and experience more serious encounters than a trip to Europe
would have afforded me. You see, sometimes life takes an unexpected turn, and I
went to the edge of mine and looked out into forever.
Although
I went with it, I conveniently avoided any thoughts of what they would do to me
in that operating room. I knew of course, but I didn’t allow myself to dwell on
it. Now that it’s over, the thoughts come back. I no longer fear them, nor the
details of the trip.
In
order to work on my heart they had to disconnect me from my body. They had to
put me on an artificial heart which would pump the blood. They had to put me on
an artificial lung, a respirator. My mouth was taped up and a tube took in the
air for me. I truly felt that they had disconnected me from my body, and my soul
was elsewhere for a time. A time which cannot be measured in hours or minutes.
An elsewhere which cannot be translated into words or described. But I have a
deep awareness of the “elsewhere” as a place of knowing, and of having
re-established there my long lost contact with God and the universal energy.
And all this took place in an immeasurable moment of time in which I was
suspended.
No!
I wasn’t suspended. I was upheld. Upheld by the voices, the energy, the concern
of a lot of people to whom I owe my rite of passage. Let this be my fare!
I
remember warm sunny days with a pot-luck and a boogie at Stan Grossman’s land
on Navarro Ridge Road. And then someone would say that George was going through
hard times and wouldn’t it be nice if we made a circle and sent him some good
energy. And we did that. We stood around in a large circle and held hands and
closed our eyes and took deep breaths, and sent George good energy to help
through his personal storm. And in that circle there was always a skeptic. Usually
it was me. Oh! I didn’t break the circle. I made the effort but I had my doubts
about its effectiveness. I KNOW NOW THAT IT WORKS. No! I wasn’t suspended. I
was upheld.
When
I first came out of the anesthetic after the operation, it was like waking from
an earth-shaking dream, a dream I did not want to forget. My eyes were closed
and my mouth was taped shut. I was still on an artificial lung and a tube was
helping me breathe. I began to feel my hands and feet though the rest of me was
still under. I could sense the presence of two or three people leaning over and
working on me. Still I felt the intensity of the dream which lay just on the
other side of my consciousness.
I
agitated the fingers of my right hand and heard someone say “He’s coming to”. I
continued to agitate my hand, joining my thumb and index finger. “I think . . .
he wants . . . a paper and pencil”. I did and they brought it to me. Then,
while lying flat on my back, unable to feel or see, I scribbled through closed
eyelids “It’s . . . a . . . wonderful . . . life”. I would have left it at that
but I somehow felt that they misunderstood me so I wrote “Jimmy . . . Stewart .
. . movie”. That’s what I brought back from my trip and I want to share it with
you.
The
movie starts in late evening in a small town. The camera pans the quiet street
to a lit open window from which a voice is heard praying: “Dear God, please
help George. He’s a nice man and he needs your help”. Then the camera pans over
to another open window across the street and there’s a voice coming from it.
“And please dear God, see if you can do something for George. He’s in a bad
way”. And so to several other windows emitting similar pleas. Then the camera
pans up a tree and to the starry sky where all these voices blend and rise like
a stack. From the brightest of those stars comes a deep voice: “It looks like
there’s a lot of people down there praying for George. Maybe we’d better send
somebody”.
Well
that’s what happened. There were circles and hope teams, thoughts and voices,
and I knew what they had done for me. While the doctors worked on my body in
that operating room . . . my soul was held up by a lot of caring people who,
alone or with others, thought of me and wished me well. And well I am . . .
THANK YOU. It’s a wonderful life.
Jay Frankston -
4 Jul 84
First published in A & E Magazine -
August 1984
Published again in The Common Thread
Winter 1995 issue
THE LIGHT
NOW with all my senses trembling, NOW with a fever in
my soul, NOW with a suddenness that leaves me faint, it has come. It is here. It
is upon me and I am blinded by its brilliance. It is all around me and I am
lost in its totality. It is within me and I am bewildered, and I am
overwhelmed, and I am exalted. And there are no boundaries, and there are no definitions,
and all barriers have tumbled, and I am free and undefined.
And it all comes together like a gigantic melting of
all the colors of the rainbow into one luminous ray of light, like a harmonious
blending of all the notes of the scale into one cosmic note that pierces my
being, and penetrates, and vibrates, and resounds,
and echoes in my soul. And I am transported to another
dimension on wings of luminescence. And I am sparked by an astral beam. And I
am electrified and the particles
come shooting out like darts from every pore of my being.
And I am magnified and amplified. And there is this weird sensation that I see,
. . . and I see that I see; that I know, . . . and I know that I know. How
vivid, how clear, how simple it all is. What depth the revelation of the
simplicity of life.
Bright is the light that comes out of the darkness, a
blinding flash of omniscience, of the totality of the essence of all, of the
unity and the continuity, in time, in space, in foreverness. And words become
inadequate. And the eyes cannot take it all in. And the soul cannot absorb it
and is absorbed by it. And the mind is in abeyance, as if suspended
and held aside by this moment of transcendence when all is
pure light, when it is high noon and there are no shadows to cast shadows, and
all is revealed, and all is exalted, and love seeks no companion for love. And
I am love. And all that is, moves through me as one big stream and sweeps me
along with it in a continuous flow of timelessness, of spacelessness, and it is
gone. A sparkle and a glow, and it is gone. A touch of brilliance at once
subdued. A force is guiding. There is no force. It is gone.
Now all that is left is the essence. It is present in
the air and in all things around me, and they take on a new dimension, a new
significance. There is more depth, more understanding, more acceptance, and the
knowledge that all is in its right place, even though I do not see it. That
things are more meaningful than they appear to be, and the tree is more than a
tree, it is part of the forest. And the forest is more than a forest, it is
part of the totality of which I am a part, and I am a part of the forest, and I
am a part of the tree. That there is an order in the order of things and I am
part of the order.
And I find myself at peace with the world. And the
moment is brief, yet the moment is eternal. And it leaves me humble, and it
charges my battery, and I have the love that I need to go on, to go forth and
go on until the next time, if ever, that the light shall be upon me.
