Remember The Moon (23 page)

“It’s good to see you, Maya.”

She patted Marcus’s back absentmindedly as she might a stranger’s, before allowing herself to remember who she was with and relax. She sighed. Then she seemed to remember herself and stood back.

“It’s good to see you too, Marcus. It’s been a long time.”

“It has. Do you want to sit here by the fire or take another seat closer to the bar?”

Maya looked toward the bar. A couple perched together on stools, leaning in close and laughing. A few more people sat at tables nearby. “This is kind of in the open,” she said. “Maybe over by the bar would be more... private.” Marcus gestured for Maya to proceed and followed her to a table in the corner of the room. A waiter appeared. Maya ordered a Shiraz and Marcus ordered a ginger ale for himself before he leaned back into his chair, assessing her.

“You look really good, Maya.”

“I look like a drowned rat. This rain. It’s impossible to keep my hair from having its way.”

“You look ravishing,” he said. Maya blushed.

“Thank you,” she said looking down into her lap.

“I’m glad you found me on Facebook,” Marcus said.

“I don’t know what made me do it. I’m still married. It probably wasn’t appropriate.”

“Perfectly appropriate to me. I was surprised to discover that you lived in Seattle now. So close.” Maya nodded her agreement and took a sip of wine. She was already halfway through her glass.

“Is Jay well?” Marcus asked.

“Yes. Busy.” Maya paused. “What are you doing now? I’ve heard through my mom that you own a restaurant in Vancouver?”

“I’m a part owner. It’s a happening place. Chaos on weekends. It’s sort of Argentinian tapas. I came to check out some bars here in Seattle to get new ideas. My partners and I are thinking of opening a restaurant or bar in Seattle.” Maya’s eyes widened slightly. “Plus, there are some restaurant supply stores here that are cheaper than in Canada. I come down every few months or so to stock up.”

“Sounds like you will be in Seattle more often then,” Maya said into her nearly empty wine glass. Marcus waved the waiter over and ordered another round. When the drinks arrived, they sat in silence, each deep in thought.

“Yes. It’s looking that way. So what made you contact me again, Maya? After all these years?” Marc asked. Maya looked away.

“I don’t know,” she whispered, still not meeting his eyes. “Are you unhappy?” Marcus asked.

Maya looked panicked. “I shouldn’t be here. I should go,” Maya said, finally turning to look at him. Her eyes glistened with tears. Marcus leaned across the table and took her hand in his. Maya blinked, a look of surprise, fear and anticipation captured in her expression. Abruptly, she stood up and began to put on her coat. “I have to go.”

Marc dug into his pocket for his wallet, pulled out a fifty as he stood up and left it on the table. They stood looking at each other. Maya made no move to leave, despite having her coat on and her purse slung over her shoulder. Marcus said nothing as he took her hand and led her to the elevator.

The image disappeared. I sensed Maya's reluctance, her desire, and our combined regret and shame. I felt Marc’s disbelief, adoration, love. These emotions swept across my soul-spirit in an instant and then were gone. I felt weakened, understanding for the first time the ongoing resonance of my neglect of Maya in life, my inability to love her the way she needed to be loved. In recent years I had stopped really seeing Maya. I wished I had loved her more, but I was so focused on that one goal – being materialistically successful. I thought success would bring us happiness. Bring me happiness. I missed a lot of opportunities to wake up and see other people. Really see them. To have empathy for them.

Despite his behavior in Italy and his apparent disregard for Maya at that time, these were qualities that Marcus possessed, emotions I had never sensed from him when we were kids, possibly because I found them threatening. Marcus’s passion had always unnerved me – his love of beauty, his expensive clothes, his ability to not care what others thought of him, his love for Maya. I never realized that perhaps Marcus had gone to Italy because he loved Maya so passionately as to follow her there. I never knew of his devastation when Maya asked him to leave, but sensed it now.

“Why does Maya marry me?”

Because I love you.
Maya’s thought was clear and immediate.

Calder, who until now had been hovering away from the viewing panel, not participating, came closer.

I chose you to be my father. I need to learn from you, and you specifically, to understand what drove you to work as hard as you did, to experience the effect of losing a father at a young age so that I can forge ahead and become who I am through your loss.

All I have to offer you as my son is my loss?

It is what you teach to your son after your death that becomes crucial to his life later on. Through you, he learns to take more risks. He learns to help others. Life is about being in tune, compassionate, being “other-focused” rather than self-focused. In death you are learning to have great compassion and will come to understand some of the things you did in human form. In death, you teach your son that we cannot be perfect, but we can be better – better to ourselves and to others. Life on earth moves faster and faster with advances in technology. So many people are denying their souls, not understanding the preciousness of their lives. Children are becoming aware of this and are doing amazing things to overcome the hatred in the world. They will become the teachers to the adults who have forgotten their soul-spirits. We are all pieces of the Divine or God or whatever humans want to call it, but until humans treat each other as such, feel that Divine in their very own DNA, they will not survive. Humans are made to not forget they are bound to their souls. They are reminded constantly. Calder will learn to be aware, will teach others that whatever the heart experiences, the soul experiences as well.

At that moment, I saw a human form, a woman dressed in a long, purple dress. I sensed that she was Maya's spirit guide. I wanted to know her name.

My name is Penelope. And yes, Jay, I am here as Maya's guide. I will be with her throughout her lifetime, throughout her many lifetimes. I think you have questions.

Yes. I guess I do. What was I supposed to learn from all that?
I asked her.

Your inter-connections, of course.

And my father said something about my sense of pride holding me back from being able to help Maya.

Yes.

You’re going to make me figure this out for myself, aren’t you?

Penelope was silent.

OK, so my interconnections with Maya and Marcus and Calder are meant to help me help Maya?

Yes.

I wanted this riddle solved.
So how is Marcus going to help me become free from Maya?

Penelope just smiled at me, watching as the obvious dawned upon me. I hadn’t wanted to see it, but had known since my death that the reunion between Maya and Marcus was inevitable.

And you will be a part of that inevitability,
Penelope’s thought interrupted mine.

Me? Why?

Because it’s part of your evolution.

I have to set my wife up with an old rival because it’s part of my evolution? That’s insane.

The problem is neither of them are ready, Marcus especially.

Why?
I asked.

Jay, as you are learning the hard way, what matters in this plane is who you were on Earth. What you did – your goodness, mercy, compassion, love, joy. These states of being are all choices we make, choices about who we want to be in the world. Our earthly selves don’t understand the consequences of our choices in the spiritual realm. When you cheer someone up, for instance, there is a deep spirit-level purpose that you often don’t recognize when you’re in human form. That is why the core of your spirit is so important, so powerful. Most humans don’t realize how much of this spirit resides within them, but that’s why it’s so important for humans to share themselves with others, in whatever way possible. It is the community of humans that teaches their soul-spirits and allows them to truly evolve as spirits. We cannot attain that knowledge in any other way.

So you’re saying Marcus and Maya have ignored their spirit selves?

In a way, yes. Maya's condition is a temporary one, brought on by grief. Marcus’s is also brought on by loss – your father’s death and the loss of Maya – that he used to hide with alcohol, but now hides through his sexuality and workaholism.

So he’s depressed? That seems like a human condition that’s not a person’s fault. It’s a chemical dysfunction, is it not?

Yes it is and certainly being sad and depressed makes your soul darker in vibration. But even in the midst of altered brain chemistry you have a choice. It’s the striving to escape that darkness that counts. Life on Earth has nothing to do with providing for your family with money or possessions. It has to do with learning to provide for your soul-spirit. If you can’t do that, you have nothing.

I can see now how bankrupt I was in my life.

Yes, Jay. That’s why you’re now having to learn these lessons in spirit form.

So I’m like a remedial spirit?

You could say that. You are just learning these lessons in spirit form rather than human form.

How would things be different if I had learned my lessons in human form?

Your entry back into spirit form would have been a much smoother transition. You wouldn’t have had nearly as much difficulty remembering who you were before you were Jay. It’s been much more difficult for you to let go of Jay and your human-ness.

What do you mean?

You are still very connected to Maya and Calder.

They need me.

They need the spirit Jay, not the human Jay.

But I want to provide for my family. Isn’t that a form of love?

Of course, Jay. But your human emotions and jealousies are getting in the way. Even in life, you worked hard to provide for your family, but was it really for Maya and Calder or was it for you?

Penelope was starting to annoy me now.
I did it for my family!

Yes, of course. But if you were to be perfectly honest with yourself, don’t you think that you were also doing it for the prestige, the nice car, the respect that owning your own company afforded you?

Yeah. Maybe a little.
This was a very difficult admission for me. I felt deflated.

You see, Jay, that’s what so many of us spirits are trying to help people on Earth to understand. We guide the production of the books and movies and through all human creativities that help people to see the simple truth that they must care for their soul-spirits by sharing their gifts with the world, whatever those gifts may be. Most of the tangible gifts we as humans offer the world are products of our love, our passion. Through these gifts, we offer other soul-spirits a piece of our love and passion which may manifest in love and passion within them.

Sort of like passing the hot potato of love.

Very poetic. But yes, something like that.

I was pleased that Penelope had a sense of humor.
So what are we as spirits supposed to do to help humans?

The spirit guides are the ones that set up those little connections that humans often call “good timing” or “coincidences” to ensure all the right people and ideas come together at the right time. Every voice we have out there affects different people in different ways. The exact words in those books, stories, and movies may vary, but the message is fundamentally the same: it’s a passage of love from one human to another. You, Jay, have been given a voice that will help people on the earth plane. You have already spoken a little through Maya's paintings.

With the words “Maya's paintings”, I transported to her. Wrapped in heavy sweaters, she stood beside her easel in the tiny sunroom that she had claimed as her “studio” for its light. Her tea was cold in its mug on the windowsill, her paintbrush hovering over the canvas. Oddly, I could see the finished painting, though the canvas was only partially painted. Maya rolled her brush in a blob of turquoise paint and applied it in just the spot I’d been looking at. After a while, her painting began to resemble the finished one I could see in my mind. This surprised me and yet the phenomenon felt completely natural, as though my seeing finished paintings before they were painted and then influencing my wife’s hand as she painted them was completely normal and natural. Flecks of white and blue transformed into what looked like a speck of dust under a microscope, a black background, impossibly infused with light. Blue, red, and pink infiltrated the white blossoms, giving them both complexity and simplicity at once. Maya painted with gusto, forgetting time.

I felt most connected to her when she painted. There was little division between our thoughts and our frequencies. Her passion became embedded into the paint of each daub, its energy encapsulated within the paint’s molecules. When the paintings hung on the walls at the show, I could see this energy flowing off the walls as vapors of color, and these vapors merged with the energy of the viewers in astonishing ways. At the show in Vancouver, I stood near that same painting as a woman looked at it, and the colors of the painting began to bleed into her aura, creating ripples like a stone dropped into water. The electrical energy that Maya had unwittingly infused into the painting with each brush stroke worked its magic. I saw the woman become deeply moved as she viewed Maya's painting. Something in her seemed to release and she appeared close to tears as she surrendered to her emotions in awe. I heard her thoughts:
The truth is so simple
.