Game of Thrones

My family's Gift

It is the stuff old tales are made of, something so spectacular it’s hard not to divulge the account, yet ours is nothing people are proud of or brag about. No, in my family, it has quite the opposite effect and literally scares people unnecessarily. Sad really, that people run from the unknown, instead of learning what they don’t and at the very least, embracing something new. It is said that when a person dies, they move on to heaven or hell, depending on how they lived their lives. This is the working theory of centuries, from religions and agnostics alike—our souls move forward, onto the next life, growing and learning from one lifetime of experiences to the next.

What if I told you my family secret, carried down from one generation to the next as far as we can go back into our lineage? What if I told you that though the soul leaves this realm, this earth, they linger and stay nearby watching us, helping us, interacting with us? What if I told you that we can intermingle with them whenever we want, as if we picked up the telephone and made a call to them? Would you believe me? Would you call me crazy and a liar?

Oh my family has heard it all before, been called every name in the book for generations, but I’ve seen things that make no sense, that defy logic, that connects every single soul ever created throughout this vast universe. Now I admit we are outcasts, have been for decades, shunned by most people who live in our little town, and I’ve learned to accept that. I never went to school, never had a formal education, like my mother before me. Why would I bother when there was something new to learn just being around my eccentric family?

I can tell you that the one incident that stands out most in my mind, over all the tales I’ve heard of my family’s idiosyncrasies, was when our neighbor’s son had a heart condition that was too dangerous for the city doctors to fix. Those city doctors with their degrees, machines, medicines, and battery of tests didn’t hold out much hope. My mother just happened to be outside that day, collecting her healing crystals that sat all night under the light of the full moon for cleansing and recharging purposes when she stumbled upon Miss Jasmine crying at the back of her property, screaming up at God. Now my mother is an extremely sensitive woman, intuitive, gifted. Why she will cry at the drop of a hat over a commercial or sappy movie, even a sad news story that most people just shake their heads at. She feels things deeply, emotions from others as if they were her own, sees shadow people, as I like to call them, but you’d consider them to be ghosts or apparitions.

Anyway, she spoke to Miss Jasmine about her son, and within an hour, our neighbor brought the boy over for my mother to take a look at him. I hadn’t really seen him much over the last year, though we lived next door to one another and were the same age. When he walked through the door, looking more like a shell of his former self, his body pale, sickly, and way too thin I couldn’t suppress a gasp. My mother gave me one of those hush your mouth scoldings with her penetrating eyes from across the room. That woman could spear anyone in place with a look, believe me. I don’t know how Allen managed to walk that distance on his own two feet, but he succeeded, the sweat beading his forehead as if he’d been walking out in the hot Arizona Dessert for hours.

My mother escorted him to the couch and had him lay down. I knew she would call upon me soon to help, to bring certain crystals to her, as she worked with her sandalwood incense, and special scented candles. My mother lived for those candles and swore by their ability to aid her in the healing chants she did. Once Miss Jasmine moved closer to hold her son’s hand, my mother quickly escorted her to a chair across the room.

“I’m sorry, but your energy signature is scattered right now. It will only interfere with his and I need to be able to focus,” my mother said, as if it all made perfect sense to the woman who wore worry on her sleeve.

Tears welled in her eyes, and somehow my mother managed not to see them, not to react and identify with our neighbor’s emotions, as if a shield suddenly went up around her keeping her separate from everything but the task at hand.

She then turned to me. “Jenna, run and fetch my leather bag.”

I rushed out of the room, eager to do my mother’s bidding and curious to watch her in action with someone other than a blood relative. I had only ever seen her heal family members and I’d wondered all these years if that was the trick. Did she need a blood tie to work her magic? The candles were already lit upon my return, as my mother sat on the floor before Allen, a lighter in her hand bringing the stick of incense to life, the burning of the scent billowing a thin stream of smoke into the air. She circled it around his prone body, her lips moving, almost in a trance. I set the bag beside her, moved back to the wall and waited.

She set the incense down in the small ashtray on the floor beside her and dug into the bag, pulling a handful of crystals out. It wasn’t long before she found the one she was searching for, a beautiful green emerald. Holding the stone in her left hand, she raised up on her knees, rubbing the emerald with her thumb, before holding it above Allen’s heart, just a few inches. For five minutes the room remained quiet, my mother’s rapid whispers inaudible.

When she was done, she sat back, held the stone close to her heart and smiled, her eyes off in the distance. “Thank you,” she said.

I looked to my left, expecting to see someone else in the room, but that space was empty. Now I know my mother talks aloud, carries on conversations with shadow people, but this was the first time I could remember her doing so while working her healing magic. It hit me then, that our ancestors she spoke of so often aided my mother in her healing rituals, directing the healing energy, keeping both my mother and Allen safe while she worked with all of that energy.

Every day for the next four weeks my mother did the same ritual, and each time Allen came back for another healing session, he looked a little better than the day before. His color returned, gone was the pale face with the haunted expression that first came through our doorway. Miss Jasmine even looked better, telling my mother that his appetite had returned and that he had more energy than ever before. Five weeks to the day that my mother started her healing chants, Miss Jasmine showed up at our door, coming straight from one of Allen’s doctor appointments, talking a mile a minute in an excited rush to get the words out.

“They can’t believe the x-rays,” she squealed. “They say that it’s impossible. The doctors were arguing over botched test results because there is no explanation for the hole in his heart to have closed and the scar tissue to be there now.”

My mother reached out and touched her arm. “I’m glad he is healing.”

Miss Jasmine threw her arms around my mother. “He no longer needs ablation surgery, but they are worried about the thickening of the scar tissue. His irregular heart beat has returned to normal.” She pulled back, looked up at my mother and then stared at the floor, wringing her hands.

I moved closer to them, not wanting to miss any of their conversation, in total awe of my mother and what she was able to accomplish in such a short time.

“I can never thank you enough, and I’m so sorry, but I told them,” she mumbled. “I told them what you did for my son.”

I expected my mother to be angry, to toss Miss Jasmine right out the door, but to my utter amazement she burst out laughing, the sound echoing off the walls. I just stared at her right along with our neighbor, unable to hide the shock at my mother’s sudden fit of laughter.

“I’m so sorry,” Miss Jasmine repeated.

My mother shook her head. “Don’t be. I’m sorry you tried to tell them because medical doctors never believe that someone without a degree can do just as much good as they can with their fancy equipment.”

A smile enveloped my mother’s face as she stared in my direction, but I quickly realized she wasn’t smiling at me, but at the empty space beside me. I looked from her to that spot, wishing I could see what she did, and then I slowly reached my hand forward. The air in that space dropped, my hand meeting cold as a tingling sensation raced up my arm and I snatched my away. I felt it! I felt the energy of the person standing in our house, the shadow people and had to ask her about it.

The second Miss Jasmine left, I told my mother what I experienced.

“Yes, Jenna, you felt your grandmother’s presence. We all have a unique energy signature. You have the gift too, and once you embrace that knowledge, I will start teaching you all that I know.”

I swallowed hard, wondering if were possible. Could I be like my mother? Could I learn how to heal others like all of the women in my family before me? Only time would tell, but my mother seemed certain of it, and that was enough for me to begin to believe I had the gift as well.

In the coming years our neighbors became our friends. Anyone that was in Miss Jasmine’s inner circle stopped to take notice of us now in town, and not in a turn up your nose sort of way either. They actually said hello, smiled at us, eager to ask my mother questions about their own ailments and genuinely wanted to know what my mother thought and recommended. I couldn’t believe it. All the stories, all the years my family endured the insults and suddenly people in our town showed my family a semblance of respect, and all because my mother healed a boy when modern medicine could not.

I didn’t want to like them, to let anyone into our family circle, but my mother swore that I couldn’t live my life that way, closing off my heart, not growing from adversity and becoming who I was meant to be. At first it was hard, I wanted to let that anger fester and find ways to return the hurt they’d caused us for generations, but I just couldn’t do it. Once I opened my heart, realized that people could change their way of thinking and step outside of the box society puts us in, my life became full in ways I never dreamed. Energy is a funny thing, the more you embrace the positive, the better you feel, and dwelling in the negative only affects you negatively. I needed to follow in my mother’s footsteps, needed to explore this aspect of our family to the fullest.

Oh and that little boy, the neighbor who didn’t have a chance of living a full a life. I married him.

WC:1973