Scott, September 1990       Journal Entry

Along the Way 2003            P. Crockett

Over lunch the next day, Jeff and I talked.  As fellow sojourners on spiritual journeys of our own, we shared a common, burning question.  What did it all mean, and why was this happening to us?  He, as a man open to the spirit, increasingly aware of the power of the invisible, speculated that Scott and I were apparently completing some dance of the soul, and that he had either always been or somehow recently become part of it.  I reminded him that his name had come up, in no uncertain terms, in my last session with Dee.  “Your spiritual growth has been certified”, I laughed, “by virtually all of my dead lovers.  They said ‘he’s really different; you should go see him.’  With all that’s happened, I can’t believe that it’s any accident I’m here.”  He listened for a moment, deep in thought.  From his perspective, too, the entire experience was highly unusual to say the least, a provocative lesson.  Exactly why had he run into Scott’s soul on his journey, prior to my arrival?  What was the meaning of the trance state he’d experienced the night before?  Why had Scott’s form become visible to him, and his message so clear?

Though clear answers remained elusive, we shared a sense of having been jointly handed keys to a great mystery.  For some reason beyond our conscious understanding, Jeff had assumed an important role in the unfolding spiritual drama of my life.  In so doing, he had broken through the limits of his historical placement in my mind under the fixed label of “first lover” and rapidly assumed a vital and dynamic role in my life as both a real friend and fellow explorer in this shared new adventure.  My expectations and preconceptions fading fast and rapidly dropping by the wayside, Jeff had become a bridge to the missing piece of my heart, part of the promised bridge to span the gap.  We were on a new journey together, with no map.

Nevertheless, we seemed to be finding our way.  As we talked that afternoon, Jeff suddenly paused, sinking deep in thought.  “You know,” he said, “I’m thinking about that dream I had.  What it might have meant.”  My curiosity piqued, I asked “what dream?”  “Don’t you remember?,” he asked, “I told you about this right after Scott died.”  Although merely the slightest shadow of a memory now tentatively began to come to mind, the days after Scott’s death had mercifully become a blur to me, the pain too much to bear.  I had called my closest friends during the weekend that followed to break the impossible news, crying from my gut, hardly knowing what I was doing.  I remembered that much.  I had talked to Jeff, I knew, but the substance of the conversation was lost to me.

Looking into my eyes, seeing that I was lost, he said gently “I’m not surprised.  You weren’t really with us then.”  After a moment, he continued.  “But I did tell you about this when you called.  This dream freaked the hell out of me.  It was so vivid, so nerve-wracking.  I dreamed that I was sitting by your bedside, and you were sitting upright in bed, your legs out in front of you underneath a blue-stripe comforter.  You were leaning against the headboard, and had a glass full of some kind of clear liquid in your hand.  I was filled with sadness, sitting there by your bed.  You were obviously so sick, so near death.  And there was nothing I could do about it.”

Quiet for a moment, appearing pained by the memory, he turned to me again.  “Just sitting there by your side, I really felt the need to reach out to you, to say something.  In my mind I was thinking, and meant to say, something like ‘Gosh, Paul, you’re really ill, aren’t you?’  Instead, I came out with the words ‘Paul, you’re not very solid, are you?’  You looked at me, then down at yourself.  With this expression on your face I’ll never forget, you said ‘No, I guess I’m really not anymore, am I?’

Suddenly, I had this sense of crying, that everyone was just crying.  A feeling of deep grief.”  As Jeff spoke, his words triggered distant memory.  He had indeed shared the dream with me, but I had been entirely unable to deal with his disturbing vision at the time.  Even now, separated from the trauma of Scott’s passing by time and distance, I found its imagery horrifying.

“Then I woke up,” he continued, “and I was a wreck.  The dream had totally shaken me up.  It was a really nerve-wracking experience.”  Even now, months later, amidst a lunchtime crowd, he seemed haunted by the memory.  “I remember looking at the alarm clock in the darkness, and it was just after 6:00 in the morning.  It was that same Friday morning, before you called.”  “Oh, my God,” I said slowly, a realization dawning.  “You had that dream on the day he died.”

“I know,” he replied, reflecting, “I told you that when you called.”  As he looked over at me, I began to make a stunning connection.  “Did I tell you that Scott had died just after 9:00 that morning, in bed?  That was Eastern time.  But you were asleep in Seattle, on Pacific time.  You had that dream at the exact time he was dying!”

Jeff looked at me, his mouth falling slightly open.  Immediately, our minds reeled with the implications of this new mystery we’d been handed.  In my mind’s eye, I recalled Scott in the moments before his death, laboriously pulling himself up to the bedside, blue-striped comforter twisted up beneath him, reaching for his glass of Gatorade.  What could it mean, this extraordinary communication between souls, one deep in dream on the West Coast and the other awakening from his dream of life on the opposite side of the country?  Could Scott’s soul, suddenly free of all blinders at the moment of departure, have left this message for me as a gift, to be discovered in the fullness of time?  Or had he for some reason needed to share the powerful experience with another, as graphically and as literally as possible in the world of dream?  Or had the message perhaps fulfilled some deep need of Jeff’s soul, still unknown to us?

Though easy answers eluded us then and defy us still, we could not doubt that Jeff’s extraordinary experience that morning reflected an important connection, an expression of the spirit as richly loaded as poetry.  As always, I interpreted this dream, tendered back to me by another, as a message and a gift.  He had dreamed of me in Scott’s place, I felt intuitively, because our two souls were so intertwined.  Also, had part of me not died with my beloved that morning, leaving me less than solid?  Strangely, the dream warmed me, reflecting the same sense of wonder at his transition as that raised in his first message through Dee, “He’s surprised that he went so quickly.”

We talked at length, digging for meaning and exploring the potential significance of the dream against the larger backdrop of Jeff’s shamanic sojourns, his encounter with Scott’s soul, and his visitation of the night before.  The answers were far from clear, but it was obvious that the three of us shared a soul-level connection.  Scott had pointed me toward Seattle for a good reason, and had been busily breaking down walls between Heaven and Earth ever since, pointing us toward greater lessons.  It dawned on me that Jeff was even now serving as a bridge between us, in the sharing of the experience.  For some reason unknown to us, both Scott and I, in our ways, had communicated with him about the momentous experience of his passing.  Yet another connection had come full circle.

In a later telephone conversation with Jeff’s life partner Dean we further probed the mysterious occurrence, and I mentioned some of the avenues Jeff and I had explored in seeking out the challenging depths of its meaning.  At some point into the conversation, I asked almost rhetorically “What exactly was it that could have drawn Jeff and Scott together like that, at that time on that morning?  What was the link there?”  With virtually no hesitation, Dean answered my question with a simple response that rang true even as it somehow deepened the mystery before us and raised still more unanswerable questions.  “Well, Paul,” he’d responded easily, “that link was you. You called him.”
How or why, I didn’t exactly understand.  But I felt that his answer bore on the truth and offered a rich source for mining.

Following our lunch together that day Jeff and I made our leisurely way home,  both of us quietly watching the city pass by through the open windows of Jeff’s truck as we listened to the music playing low on the radio.  Suddenly he turned to me and spoke.  “I don’t think I’m going to be able to let you leave Seattle,” he said, a look of concentration on his face, “without doing a journey for you.”  I returned his gaze and nodded, comfortable with his instinct and judgment.

Then, as if to himself, he said “Scott still wants to get through.  There’s more he has to say.”

Scott, April 1996    Channeled Writing

“O.K.,” I breathed, having no idea what was coming.  Jeff appeared to briefly ponder, then said “After you told me you were coming to visit, I had a little bit of trepidation.  I don’t know,” he paused, “it’s like I felt there was something unresolved with Scott.  The last time we visited you guys in Miami, the time Dean and I came down, I felt like something was off.  I knew that you guys were getting ready to take off for a trip to New York that weekend and things were a little hectic, I guess we really hadn’t planned the trip that well, but I was getting strange vibes from Scott.”  He glanced down, as if looking within himself.  “It was like he didn’t have any time for Dean or me.  But what really bothered me was that I felt that there were a couple of times when Scott had been literally trying to keep you and I apart.  That really pissed me off.”

I thought back to the time, and was not surprised by Jeff’s words.  Scott had indeed loved me with a passion, and at times acted sharply possessive.  Especially as his illness progressed, and his body began to change, his insecurity grew and he feared that I might abandon him, leaving him sick and alone.  Though I tried my best to reassure him of my love, that there was no place else I’d ever want to be, the doubts he carried within him skulked in a shadowy realm of inner emotion, impervious to logic or reason.  It would make sense, too, that Scott’s fears would be heightened by the presence in our home of a man whom I had once loved, and lusted for, and who was still healthy and strong.

“When you told me you were coming,” Jeff continued, “I decided to do a journey, for purposes of purifying.  The first thing my helpers told me was ‘You should get clear with Scott.’  I asked them to help me do that.  The next thing I knew, I was taken to a place where I saw a lot of light, and felt a lot of beautiful feelings.  I knew that it was Scott, that I was in his presence.  It was an amazing feeling, like I can’t describe.”  He took a breath before going on.  “Scott communicated with me, loud and clear, and I felt nothing but love.  It really blew me away.  He told me ‘That was what I had to do.  It’s completely unimportant now; it no longer need be a barrier between us.  That’s just what I needed to experience at the time.’”

“And I understood.  After encountering this soul, I can’t even tell you how beautiful it was, I was totally at peace.  I just knew that this trip was going to be blessed.  I knew you were coming out here for a reason.”

To:  Chapter 33

Scott, November 1996    Channeled Writing

Following Dee’s suggestion, and Scott’s instruction, I continued reading carefully through his voluminous writings. He had indeed left a rich legacy in the written word, and some of his writings seemed to speak immediately to me in my current state of affairs. I first became aware of one special communication as I watched a video that had been made the day of the memorial gathering. After people had been given an opportunity to speak publicly and the eulogies delivered downstairs, the video camera was made available upstairs for anyone who had more to say in private. Scott’s dearest friend, Laura Beth Slobin, read to me from a letter he had written her early in 1993. What I heard took my breath away.

Laura had played a unique role in Scott’s life, throughout its phases. Originally a student in one of his English classes, their relationship blossomed over the years into one of deep friendship, creativity, and mutual inspiration. He took vicarious pleasure in her creative leaps as she moved to New York City to pursue her talent for writing, and in the adventures she found there. In two of the peak experiences of his life, Scott traveled there to act leading roles in plays she had written. I had never seen him more joyful, nor alive.

Visiting Laura in Amsterdam

Finally, the two co-authored a play called Aftershocks, an autobiographical tale reflecting the relationship between an HIV-positive schoolteacher painfully coming to terms with his disability and a former student dealing with shakeups in her own life, starting with an earthquake that had destroyed her home. Essentially the play dramatized the give and take of an evolving creative relationship, and during the months of its writing ideas and e-mail correspondence had flown back and forth in a frenzy of mutual creative inspiration. Now, on the video, I heard Laura read an excerpt from one of Scott’s letters.

Exactly when I was most thirsting for a message from him, these words reached me for the first time:

I wanted to do this now while I still looked good…not as good as I once did of course, but I suppose that is the nature of the “problem”…anyway…HI, here I am…and you know I never have thought that I would spend any time at all at 33 years old making a last will and testament…but then 33 seems to be a good year for that…Jesus was 33 when he was crucified…Alexander the Great was 33 when he was felled…I’m in good company…Ugh! But death has a tendency to demand profundity…When I take stock of my “stuff” I realize that I have collected more experiences than tangible goods…and I think about so many people who have touched me and impacted me and loved me…boy that list goes on…and all the people I have loved, if only for a night or an hour…the experience has been a sensual one…Obviously, right!…Paul, honey, you have been the most sensual…you know my stomach still goes flip flop when I even think about your body and your smell…It’s kind of stupid really but you make me giddy…I can’t imagine my life without you…It has been such a completing experience…Those moments lying in bed at night before we drifted off to sleep with your leg thrown over me and feeling the rhythm of your breath…it was always so safe and comfortable…like you…my gift…You’ve had all of me and continue to possess me even now…

I found the entire message comforting, but the last sentence especially haunting. Was he now telling me that the spiritual fruits of our relationship continued, reminding me that our journey was still a two-way street? In my heart, I felt that indeed he was.

Despite the recurring dark anguish in my life, it seemed that as my path unfolded I was being given message after message, clue after miraculous clue, a key to every lock, just as I was ready to receive and to use them. I suppose spiritual awareness, like grief, is a process into which one must grow, sufficiently vast to require time for processing and for healing. A few weeks later, on a day that I very much needed to hear the message, I found the following entry in Scott’s journal, dated March 19, 1990. Written shortly after our meeting, penned during class at his teacher’s desk in the classroom he had showed me with pride the weekend before, his thoughts had wandered back to the memory of that sweet sharing. In a free-flowing language of love that I now heard with new ears, he wrote:

Your consciousness pervades and when I look at the floor I see that your spirit remains and smiles up at me and beckons and I come and I look to the corner where you stood and again you are there and pull me into your arms and the room fills with wind and we are linked by the kinetic message of our psyches and the physical embodiment of commingled truth and the impression of your body lingers and tingles…knowing we could renovate the past to a glistening reality in the present and buy the memories of a house to become a home and live happily ever after amen

In this new and rich world of poetry and love messages from the hereafter, neither time, place, nor distance played starring roles. With no regard whatsoever for boundaries, our love for one another appeared to continue unabated. But if we did continue to haunt each other with our waking dream of love, I began to wonder, what was the reason? And where would it ultimately lead us?

To  Chapter 16