Everyone has free will.
Everyone has a right to make their choices.
There are repercussions for these decisions, and it is the soul who takes on full responsibility for them.
What happens to an asthmatic who gets triggered by allergies? They can't breathe.
Air hunger is one of the worst forms of suffering on earth.
Going from most recent to oldest, let's review the ways the souls wanted to experience shortness of breath to even things out at the end.
Mom had kidney failure, fluid overload, and survived a twelve minute Code Blue. Every rib and probably her sternum were broken after that, since she had osteoporosis. When we drove in the middle of the night, and saw her, Anthony and me, I noticed her wiggling to get the weight off her back while her wrists were in restraints and the breathing tube was in. I wasn't talking about that breathing tube because I knew even with it in, her life was very short for this world. I was thankful for the people who made this goodbye even possible. It's hard, tiring work to run a Code Blue.
She wanted the tube out. So, twelve hours later, one sister and I were in the room and the third one was on video call to be with us (Covid restrictions). The whole time mom faced my sister who was on her right, I guess the way the nurse had her laying it was like that. Mom mouthed some words when we first saw her. Vanessa said mom said 'I am ready'. I saw mom mouth things twice.
Even though the morphine drip was on, I saw a look of shock in mom's eyes when she realized how she couldn't breathe and get enough air. We'd talked about it, not being able to get air--I knew for her it was the aortic stenosis at home. I have that too, ever since my pneumonia I had last year. My lungs aren't right.
Perhaps there was five minutes, then her eyes couldn't see, her breath turned to agonal (irregular gasps of the dying). And the next ten minutes was waiting for the heart to stop on the EKG. It came back twice, much to my surprise. But she really wasn't breathing any more.
My Nana Angelina, had dementia. In her case, she got to the point in the nursing home where she couldn't swallow. She had an aspiration pneumonia. We decided to let her go. Nana was able to breathe but had terrible fever. I was at the bedside with her the whole day. I held her hand. I massaged beautiful scented lotion on her arms and feet. I mopped the sweat off her brow. I sang to her. I gave Reiki. I had been closer to Nana in life than to my mom, because Nana never yelled at me. She was gentle and kind. She passed beautifully, of a pneumonia, but never with the air hunger.
My father used to lecture me about my allergies. It was bedtime, I wanted to sleep, and he would go on and on the only way an elementary school teacher can. These allergies were 'all in my head' . If I worked hard enough with my mind then I wouldn't experience them.
As an aside, my father had eczema, which is classic atopic disease. Allergy. I had inherited it from him. And also, from my mother. My grandfather, Nannu Filippo, had terrible asthma, and was on theophylline for it. I had a double dose. This I can tell you now, I'm a doctor. But back then...
All I could do was to be quiet, pretend I was paying attention, and secretly wish he could understand my suffering and be nice about it!
In later years, dad developed pulmonary fibrosis. It's a terrible disease. It really it. If he was younger he would have qualified for a lung transplant. The lungs turn hard from scar tissue inside. At first he couldn't exercise. Then he needed the home oxygen. It got so bad he couldn't drive. He used to show me a 'game' he'd figured out--he didn't need the oxygen and would only put it on when his fingers turned blue--which would be a matter of minutes.
I understood the plastic nasal cannula were bothersome (he got a notch in his nose from them) and that the oxygen was very drying.
I'd tried so hard to warn him, back in the days when he used to sleep with mom at my house, that his 'invention' was in fact dangerous and he should stop at once!
Dad, like myself and everyone who has ever been in his side of the family, snores. We snore bad. I even had a surgery to fix it and my sister did too. The problem for him was the dry mouth in the morning. So, to fix that, he started to tie a long cloth to hold his jaw up, wrapping it around to the top of his head with a knot.
Snoring lets air go in and out. Having the mouth closed lets the tongue fall back onto the airway, and closes the air. So when you take in a breath the negative pressure doesn't have airflow. Then fluid rushes into the interstitial space in the lungs (area between lung alveoli). It's very bad for the lungs.
Pulmonary fibrosis is an interstitial disease.
At the end, he got short of breath even from brushing his teeth. Mom had to brush for him. He liked clean teeth.
My sister, who wanted the cat, had a son who is allergic to everything, even food allergies. He was raised on rice milk and non-wheat bread. Once at my house he ate a candy and we had to take him to the emergency room for an allergic reaction. That's when we learned he was also allergic to nuts.
My other sister, the one who grew up with Pyrite and loved him, always had wanted a pomeranian dog. So, once she was out of the house, she got herself a puppy. She named him Fievel from a movie back in the eighties (as it turns out, I think that name also means 'demon' or something like that too).
The boyfriend who got her the puppy, turned out to be abusive. So she and the dog went to the first sister's house to live until she got back on her feet. Everyone in the house loved the puppy, his face even was on my niece's birthday cake when she turned twelve.
Getting back on her feet meant moving in with mom. Mom and dad enjoyed Fievel too. And I had no problems with it.
Fievel wasn't well housebroken. Mom's house always had little blue puppy pads everywhere and even still there were accidents.
By some twist of fate, my sister believed my nephew was allergic to the dog, and that my nephew couldn't go into mom's house. It was sister against sister at that point. Human or animal? right?
Again, mom defended the dog, not the grandson, much to my sister's dismay.
Fievel was actually at the bedside next to dad when he passed, years later. And Fievel himself had a massive heart attack weeks before my youngest niece was born. Fievel and my niece would have been 'brother and sister'.
Ironically, my nephew never said he was allergic to the dog! He could visit, there were no problems, and he actually loved it. But the tension between my sisters and my mother over that pet was totally real.
I watched all of this. I wasn't really engaged emotionally with any of it. None--not mom, not dad, not sisters--was even a blip on my radar. It just WAS. You know how they say, it is what it is?
I didn't feel anything. The only thing I was glad for what when Pyrite was gone. It had been many years, I think twelve or thirteen. I was so grateful dad did what he did. Even though it wasn't for me. I benefited from it.
We are living in times where you will be able to see the choices, and the repercussions, of people who are in 'leadership positions'. Actually, if you keep your wits about you, you will see many in your life with this pattern--decision, and eventual repercussion--all is made on a soul level for learning and growing. There are no mistakes, only lessons. But many a soul wants to experience the effect it had forced upon others. As awakened spiritual observers, we can visualize the cause and recognize the effect, even over a lifetime...
A long time ago, when we were kids, and we would fall, my mom would hit the thing we bumped into and tell it it was 'bad'. I don't know if it's an Italian thing. I thought it was bizarre. I'd much rather be consoled than see the offending 'furniture' being 'punished'. After all, I was the one who bumped into it, right?
Look for the consolation that only Heaven and Divine Creator can give.
Remember the verse, 'If a mother forsake her child, I will not abandon you'.
I had the good fortune to speak with Blessed Mother for many many years, even now from time to time. If my own mother had been kinder to me, if I had been the favorite, I don't think I would have been as ready to answer Blessed Mother's call. And she trained me for my work I had ahead of me. She really did love me like a mother, and in fact, we are family by marriage. Only I didn't know. But SHE always did, so did Joseph, and they helped me until the time came where I was able to know too.
One day, I would like to be able to breathe well, and be in Heaven with normal, healthy lungs! Until then, I do the best I can...and give thanks for each breath, as well as the incredible love from all of my families.
Humans are flawed. It's part of the human experience. They rationalize too. So when mom said she loved me, she DID, as much as she could, within her own set of rationalizations. And I loved her too, purely, as only a child can love a parent. Even when the parent isn't the best to them, the child still loves.
Mom got dad to let me go away to a good college, and not to have to put myself through college like he did.
I couldn't be here where I am, nor the mother I am to my wonderful son, without her.
It's not our place to judge.
It is our place to realize our feelings are important, they are valid, and in fact, my wanting to escape that household by studying and going away to school--was a healthy reaction to an unhealthy emotional situation for me.
What better validation for this than the whole Pyrite ordeal? right?
Ultimately, we are our own advocates.
Today there is a surgeon who is very cruel. He won't let the one neuro nurse talk to the other one in the room. I had run ins with him. So with my emotional fragility from mom's passing, I wasn't in a good place to do a case with him on holiday coverage, when during the week, he refuses to work with me. He's told my boss I'm too old to do the 'Big Cases', and my boss told me! So a dear friend is covering a long case for me. Yes, she's making money from it. That's not the point.
The point is, I'm worth it to protect myself from abuse and harm.
After that case, I come in and do the rest of my shift. I'm in my scrubs now.
Ross
I'm going to report on how Carla had fun yesterday.
It was eerily post-apocalyptic. The place she and Anthony have been members and gone many times before, was newly opened with the precautions for the Covid. Plus there was terrible heat, well over one hundred degrees most of the day.
It worked out.
They were happy to see it open again.
Carla was happy and actually bought herself something, which is a first--a stuffed animal just for her, without explanation. This one brings her memories of Hawaii, the place where she longs to be, one day, and that snorkeling she so very much loves to do. It also helps to support the facility where they went, since it's been without revenue for a long time.
Carla had tears of joy from one show. The performer, who is comedic in every way, did the same routine as before, singing through the mask. Even the prop doll he dances with had on a mask!
That one human, incarnate, would wear the mask and make a fool of himself and dance around in the heat, only to make people in the audience smile and forget the terrible times with the politics and the Covid--was so authentic and courageous it brought her to tears. Tears of relief. Tears of joy. Tears of her memories of me, when we were both in Life together as One....
For all of you who choose to do your best to relieve suffering, remember, there are 'repercussions' for that type of decision too, and they are very worth doing the work to receive!!!
Our thanks to you, all of you, who help to support the morale and assist the weaker ones and the troubled ones to find their way. To believe in themselves.
For only then do they know, through you, that God indeed loves them.
It is for times as this, you truly wear the face of God, to the one who is suffering and in need.
Thank you.
clap! clap!
Aloha and Mahalos,
Namaste,
Peace,
Ross and Carla
The couple who go a long way back and stretch even further into the future in one another's arms.
