UNDER THE JUNIPER TREE

Sitting on the bench and staring at the marker for her beloved husband’s grave under the juniper tree, Cheylene smiled as a gentle desert juniper-scented zephyr caressed her cheek making her remember her beloved’s last touch. The memories of that time in her life came like a movie flowing through her mind in exquisite detail with color, sound, and emotion.

She saw herself sitting beside her beloved David in stillness, her breathing slowly moving in and out while his right hand rested in the palm of her left hand. He could still connect with her through his right hand. His left arm was bent at the elbow with his left forearm and hand resting on his chest at heart level. It was frozen there and without feeling after the grand mal seizure he had experienced eleven days ago in his eighteen-month battle with a brain tumor. The seizure had left him unable to speak and only able to answer yes or no questions using the pointer finger of his right hand. One finger-tap for yes and two finger-taps for no. She remembered being so glad they had discussed all the important decisions in those last six months after his oncologist told them there was nothing with respect to treatment medicine could do anymore. The glioblastoma in his brain had not been eradicated by chemo or radiation, only slowed down.

The scene shifted and Cheylene saw herself driving him home from that appointment when that news was given.

“Baby,” he said after riding for a while in silence. It was spring and the canyons were abloom with flowering trees and bushes. He continued, “Look at all this beauty.”

Cheylene smiled and replied, “It is a gift.”

“Yes, Baby, as are you.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, “ditto.”

He smiled his well-known grin and remarked, “So, we’re on our own now.”

“Yes,” she replied.

“Well, it’s always been us and God. Do you remember my "Checker for the Lord" phase and the stories from that time? Oh, of course you do. So, since this will be the last trip of our life together, let’s fill it with as much joy and love as we can, agreed?”

She saw herself vigorously nodding in agreement with him, keeping her hands on the wheel and her eyes on the ever-winding canyon road. That scene in the memory-movie fades out.

The memory-movie faded in and played on in her mind. Fast forward to the actual day he died. Cheylene saw herself sitting in her chair by his bedside listening to his steady breathing. She was holding his right hand in her left palm. A hospice nurse had visited them a couple of days prior and given her a pamphlet to read about the visible signs of a human body shutting down and approaching the exit door marked DEATH. Her beloved David was showing many of those signs and yet he still breathed. The pain medication was keeping him comfortable. Though he could no longer speak, he still had fleeting alert and wakeful spaces of time. She kept him company waking or sleeping except when she had chores to do or needed to rest. She had hired day and night nurses to be with him at those time. She had given them her express wishes to come and get her if anything changed while they kept watch in her place.

As the memory-movie continued, she relived the conversation they had about the third month after his diagnosis when his treatment began. That conversation had strengthened them both, and they were able to speak about what he wanted when his death was nigh. He had told her he wanted to stay in their home so he could be near her day and night. He trusted she would know somehow when he was knocking on heaven’s door and he wanted the last thing he heard to be her singing “Amazing Grace.” She saw herself in the memory-movie telling him the first request she would certainly fulfill gladly. As to the second request, she heard herself saying that if she knew the moment when it came, she would definitely sing “Amazing Grace” as he exited the life they had so joyously shared and flew away to the Beyond and... whatever came next.

David had thanked her and vehemently and assured her that he would find a way to communicate with her from the Other Side. He did, but that’s another story.

The memory-movie flowed on unremittingly. She was reliving all of it there under the juniper tree looking at his marker.

The next scene revealed them at the brink of that monumental crossing over occurrence. Cheylene reflected how odd it was that the mundane details of that day remained clear to her. She saw Linda, the day nurse, coming into the room explaining that a friend of hers was here.

She heard herself say, “Please sit with him, Linda, while I go see my friend. Come and get me if anything changes.”

“I will,” Linda replied.

She saw herself leaving the room and greeting her friend Carolina who had come to help her unpack a few boxes from their recent move into the condo about a month ago.

“How is he today?” Carolina asked quietly as she undid a box marked linens.

“The same,” she murmured in answer to her friend’s kind query.

Then, she saw herself opening another box marked linens. The two friends worked in silence pulling linens out of the two boxes and stacking them categorically on the couch to be put away when they were done. Bath towels, face towels, wash cloths, kitchen towel, and potholders.

“Where are the bedsheets?” Carolina asked.

Cheylene saw herself peering into the deep recesses of the tall box she had been unpacking.

“Here they are at the very bottom,” she said, relieved to find them.

She started to pull one out of the box when she heard her beloved’s voice loud and clear inside her head.

“Cheylene, come NOW!”

She dropped the sheet back into the box, raised her head and asked, “Carolina, did you hear that?”

“I didn’t hear anything,” replied Carolina.

“I must go to him,” she said firmly. The memory-movie showed her hurrying back to the bedroom where her husband lay immobile, eyes closed, and yet, breathing. There followed an exchange between her and Linda, the nurse.

“Linda, you can go out and help Carolina with the boxes.”

“Nothing changed,” replied Linda.

“He called me mentally. I want to be alone with him. You are not in trouble. Please help my friend in the living room. I’ll call you when I need you.”

The intensity of the moment built as the memory-movie played on. She saw clearly her beloved lifting his pointer finger of his right hand. She stood by his bed and held his right hand in her left palm.

“Is it time for me to sing?” she asked quietly.

He tapped her palm once.

She shuddered and then straightened to her full height, and spoke aloud the following words: “All angels not on duty elsewhere available to be here now with us, we would appreciate you lending me the courage and strength to sing “Amazing Grace” as requested by my beloved.”

Suddenly, the room was filled with the Light of many powerful, benign, and invisible presences, angels indeed, she remembered tingling from head to toe feeling their loving energies flowing through her. She heard a sweet voice in her head say, “Keep his right hand in your left and put your right hand atop his head. That is the doorway he seeks. We are all here for you both. Sing.”

She watched the memory-movie show positioning herself as directed, taking a deep diaphragmatic breath attuning herself to the inhale and exhale of her beloved’s breathing. They breathed together briefly, in-out, in-out, in… She began to sing on that third out breath. Sitting on her bench Cheylene heard herself as she sang with herself, buoyed up by the immense love, she was feeling engendered by the memory-movie playing in her head.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound

           That saved a wretch like me!

           I once was lost but now am found

           Was blind but now I see.

Breathing… another tap on her palm from her beloved. She sang on.

“Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,

And grace my fears relieved,

How precious did that grace appear

The hour I first believed.

Breathing… another tap on her palm from her beloved. She sang on, picking up with the 4^th verse.

           When we’ve been there ten thousand years,

           Bright shining as the sun,

           We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise

           than when we first begun…

Before the last note faded away, she felt his Spirit brush right through her hand resting atop his head like in a special effects miracle. The angelic Spirit presences in the room were magically palpable in their Beingness. Captured and entranced by the lived through experience in sharp focus through the memory-movie, she whispered gently, “Thank you. Farewell, my love.”

In the very next moment that measured a heartbeat, a light juniper scented zephyr like the sweet breath of an angel, caressed her left cheek tenderly. Of its own volition, her left hand placed itself on her left cheek where the breath of the angel had just touched her.

Another heartbeat. She feels the climax of the memory movie coming.

And then, they are all gone. The angels and her beloved had flown away. She looked down and there before her lay her David’s beloved Self in the flesh. Still…Peaceful…and Breathless. Flown away.

She heard a chorus of angelic voices (bass to soprano) singing a musical gift.

I’ll Fly Away

Song by Alan Jackson

Some glad morning when this life is o'er

I'll fly away

To a home on God's celestial shore

I'll fly away.

I'll fly away, oh, Glory

I'll fly away

When I die, Hallelujah, by and by

I'll fly away

Just a few more weary days and then

I'll fly away

To a land where joy shall never end

I'll fly away

I'll fly away, oh, Glory

I'll fly away

When I die, Hallelujah, by and by

I'll fly away

Yeah, when I die, Hallelujah, by and by

I'll fly away

With the last note, the memory-movie closed with a montage of beautiful skies fading to black fading to the following location written across a star-filled midnight sky above Sedona, Arizona, USA, North America, Earth. (Included purposely so there would be no doubt of the vibrational ramifications of the location of the Sedona setting, which is high.)

Cheylene emerged from the memory-movie and found she was still sitting on her bench under the juniper tree looking at her beloved David’s marker. She felt a Sedona juniper scented zephyr touch her cheek and fill her being with its cleansing, uplifting perfume. She was tenderly holding her left cheek with her cupped left hand covering the spot where she mentally and physically received miraculous vibrations of magic which were communicated in the language of the human heart expressing the last farewell from her David to her at the exit of this most recent past life where he was known as David. His Spirit guide from The Guardian Angels guides him in his human form in this lifetime, had just occurred fueled by the powers of Love, Light, and yes, Magic.

She reflected possibilities and understandings found in the afterglow of the beautiful memory-movie that the Universe had just sent to her. Her take away: Gratitude Supreme and Growth in Understanding Diverse Possibilities embedded within the story of “Under the Juniper Tree.” Her grandest best lesson that is optimized in her story that she has shared with you here is: Knowing in one’s heart that love outlasts death.

The beginning of the author’s conscious awareness of Such An Immense Truth was first revealed to her sometime in the late seventies or early eighties by the following quote from Paramahansa Yogananda :

“Love outlasts death and the ravages of time.”

This story "Under the Juniper Tree" is also part of her journey Toward Conscious Awareness, which is decidedly continuous like an ever-flowing river.