The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light (57 page)

It’s a memory I will never be able to get out of my head. Just thinking about it now still gives me chills—some of us cannot know how lucky we are in this world until we meet someone who
has been through devastation and seen what hell looks like. You can’t help but think about what we have in this country, and I believe too many people think that opportunity is something you get and then keep to yourself. How did you get it in the first place? You had to take it from someone who didn’t want to share it—so now everybody has to do that?

America takes what it wants and says that’s the right thing to do without looking at the consequences. But all those justifications come from fear and prejudice. We might like to think that we have God on our side, but if you start with fear, it can only lead to negative justifications and lost opportunities. There’s no consciousness in that, nothing divine. Look at all the disasters that have happened recently, such as 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and Hurricane Sandy. Even then we had trouble getting it together and helping each other. On the government’s part, there was more fear—about people taking too much and about who should pay the bill—than there was an effort to do the right thing and help out.

What we need is to be free from fear and prejudice. That’s a blessing everyone can use.

In 2006 a few things happened one after the other, even before we went to South Africa. Deborah came out with her book,
Space Between the Stars,
which spoke about her life and our family history and brought many things about us into the light. I supported her and did interviews with her to promote it—that’s when I walked the red carpet with her to help celebrate her honesty in writing it.

A few months later, in the middle of summer, her mother passed away. SK was already gone, and I knew Deborah would need some time to heal. At that time we were in the middle of so many things—a worldwide tour as well as the ANSA trip to South Africa coming up.

I had just spoken to Jo a few weeks before—she had called the house one night, and I answered. “Hi, Mom. How you doing? Let me get Deborah.” She said, “I’m doing fine, darling—actually, I
want to talk to you. I’ve never said this, but I wanted to tell you that ever since the first day Deborah brought you to our home, you brought me a quality of peace of mind, because I knew that you would always take care of her and protect her.”

Deborah and I had been together almost thirty-four years by then. I think the examples of both sets of parents played a role in the way we handled our marriage. They helped us to be wise and not get caught up in little stuff. They also taught us the importance of constant maintenance—paying attention to the inner romance and honoring each other’s feelings—because unconditional love comes first before our individual stuff.

Through 2006, Deborah was as busy as I was—taking care of the family, promoting her book, and overseeing Santana Management. As she later told me, I was the one who came up with the ideas and visions for projects, and she was the nuts-and-bolts person: “I’m the one dealing with the agents and lawyers and accountants. I’m watching over everything—the business and the royalties and the houses”—by then we had a house in Maui—“and it’s just too much now.”

This was in February of 2007, and I remember it very clearly. We were in the house in San Rafael, and I was playing guitar when Deborah came in and started telling me how she was feeling. “Your world is crushing me.” That’s how she described it. “I need to find myself and do my own thing. I need to take care of me now, because I feel like I’m disappearing in your world.”

I said, “Damn, Deborah, what can I do?” and she told me, “You’re not doing anything wrong. It’s just the way things have come to be. I need to do something for myself now, because I’m sinking under all these duties—taking care of the kids, the business, your family, and my family. I need time away for at least six months. I need you not to call or contact me. I’ll be at the office once a week to take care of stuff, but please don’t be there when I am.”

I did not see this coming, not at all. It was totally out of the blue for me. We had decided to put Santana on hold for most of 2007—no tours or albums, just a few shows—so I was thinking this
would be our time together. Deborah could tell I wasn’t expecting this. She said, “I know this is a surprise. Why don’t you go to Hawaii for a week and see your friend Tony Kilbert, and let’s you and I think about things?” So I went to Hawaii.

I was only there a few days with all these thoughts in my head, going through these dimensions of pain and frustration, not knowing what was really happening, when one night a storm came that was brutally loud. It hit the house, and everything was shaking without mercy. I was by myself, facing all these fears, wondering whether any of the windows would break, and when it was finally over and the sun came out the next day I felt so good to be outside and alive that the fear of facing what could really be going on with Deborah was lifted. So I called her that morning and said, “Hey, what’s going on?” She said, “I told you: please don’t call me for a while.” I had to ask, so I did. “Are we getting a divorce?” The tone in her voice changed right away. “Well, do you need to know that now?”

I thought to myself, “Damn.” I had not heard that tone many times at all—it sounded like something she had been holding inside for a long time. There was part of me that wanted to say that she always had help in the house and with the kids and that she had people in the office to help her. I had been wanting to say this even before I left for Hawaii, but thought she might not be ready to hear that then, so I didn’t say anything. Now I was thinking, “Wait: you knew who I was and what I did before you married me—the music and the touring and the commitments.”

By then I could see it didn’t matter. For a few days I was hoping that there was still a chance things would get better right away, that Deborah would change her mind about the six-month idea. Even during the following few months I kept hoping that this was just a trial thing. I did what she asked and stayed away and hung out with my friends, who did their best to keep up my spirits. “This is about her, like she told you,” my friends would say. “So don’t make it about you, man.” Still, my mind would not stop going around and around, asking, “What does that mean? What went wrong? Why can’t she live with me anymore? Why is it so unbearable? Why, why, why?”

When I got back home, Deborah had moved out, and all the kids were away at school or living their lives, and that was the worst—the darkest night of the soul. Things got really intense—I remember it was a beautiful summer, and I would get up in the morning and the sun was shining and there was an incredible smell of flowers when I’d come into the kitchen, but there was nobody there to enjoy it with, no one to share it with. Things were getting really, really intense. The whole house started to feel like a coffin, and I was the only one in it.

I had my brothers and sisters, who were constantly calling me and checking on me. I had my friends, whom I’d get together with even though I knew I wasn’t always good company. I had old friends, such as Quincy Jones, calling. I had one friend who told me it was time to get on a plane with him and go to a place in Brazil, because he had some girls he knew I had to meet. “All you need is some…” I told him, “Thanks, but no thanks. I need that like I need a hole in my head, man.”

I remember my mom’s reaction was, “What did you do to her? What did you do to Deborah that she would do this?” I said, “Mom, why don’t you ask her?” I had enough to deal with just keeping my brain from torturing me, from taking on all that guilt and shame.

It was a few months later, when Deborah and I were talking on the phone, that she said she wanted to talk about what we needed to do now that our marriage was over. That was the first time she used those words. I said, “So you’re going to pull the trigger?” She didn’t say yes or no, just, “We’re going to need to do this, and go through this procedure, and…” I remember asking, “Where are we with love—do you still have any feelings for me?” She said, “Well, I don’t need to tell you that.” I just said, “Okay.”

I never really got a clear “I don’t feel anything anymore” or “I’m not in love with you,” and what made it more difficult, I think, is that we never really fought or argued or let our emotions go.

But that was when I finally told myself it was over, period—when it’s broken, it’s broken. We were talking about stuff we needed to figure out so we wouldn’t have to do the whole thing
through lawyers, and I kept hearing a voice inside saying, “Just ease up on this. Don’t fight, don’t resist, don’t argue, and don’t bargain. This is not about money for you, and it never has been. Give her what she wants.”

The kids knew about the divorce before anyone else did. They had known about Deborah moving out and getting her own place, and they all had their own way of dealing with it. From the start I told them that I’d be calling and texting them just as much as before, no matter how they felt, and if necessary I was ready to wait for them to get to a point where they could ask me anything they wanted and I would answer as honestly as I could. Even when things were getting bad and I was feeling depressed and angry, my plan was just to believe that anyone can make each day the best day of his or her life, even though it might be in another configuration. I always believed that was the best way to show your kids anything, really—by example rather than by talking.

In a way it was good that they were not around and were doing their own things. Salvador came around a lot to check up on me, and he was like the Switzerland of the situation—very neutral and not taking sides, just wanting to be there for both his mother and his father. It’s not that the girls weren’t that way, too, it’s just that Sal was older and more able to demonstrate wisdom and compassion and fairness. That really affected me and helped a lot. He had really gotten into Keith Jarrett at the time, and he’d come over and play piano and just transport me. Keith was already one of my favorite pianists of all time, and he could be the spiritual deliverer of such romantic, raw, beautiful melodies. There’s something very therapeutic and healing about them.

I remember driving through Napa by myself around this time when Keith’s version of “It’s All in the Game” came on. Suddenly I started sobbing and had to pull over. Whatever I had been going to do wasn’t important anymore, so I turned the car around and went home to spend some time alone, look for some inner guidance, and heal some more.

Divorce is a very personal thing, and I had no experience dealing with something like that in public. Talking about stuff that happened to me years ago was one thing, but talking about personal things going on right then—things that can get the TMZ treatment so easily—was another. No one wants to feed that machine. I had the feeling that somehow Deborah and I had earned enough respect from newspapers and TV programs to keep them away during this period—they didn’t feel the need to get in our faces about it. I also think we both consciously made a commitment to take the high road for the sake of our kids and our families. When it was finally announced that we had broken up because of irreconcilable differences, I took a long, deep breath. I consider it a blessing that it didn’t get played out in the media.

Through the end of 2007 time moved very, very slowly. I was still in recovery, man—it was all a blur of pain. I was doing a lot more inner work, doing what Wayne Shorter likes to call inner gardening—pulling out the weeds. I was reading a lot, just to keep my brain from torturing me with guilt and shame and all that ego stuff, and was finding wisdom in a lot of different books. In one magazine,
Sedona Journal of Emergence,
I found a line from a Persian poem: “The sun will never say to the earth, ‘You owe me.’ ” Can you imagine benevolence or light that is more supreme?

One night around Thanksgiving I lit a candle and started reaching out for help, and that inner voice came back again, saying, “I’m right next to you: isn’t that enough? You need to let go of Deborah and your kids. They’re fine—I got them, and they’re okay. Take care of yourself.”

That was around the time I got in touch with author Marianne Williamson. She and I first spoke just before Deborah left, and by the end of that summer, after we were separated, something told me to reach out and see if Marianne could help me. It was like I was scuba diving into a big lake of pain, and I really needed lessons on how to breathe again. She listened to me and heard something in
my voice, and right away she referred me to Jerry Jampolsky and Diane Cirincione, who are married and live in Sausalito. Jerry and Diane are therapists who use the book
A Course in Miracles
in their work. They also run a network of counseling centers that help people by giving lessons in spirituality and transformation.

I went to visit Jerry and Diane at their house, and they really saved my life. I remember that the first time we sat down together Jerry asked me to define myself—separate from my siblings and family and friends. I said I saw myself as the one puppy that gets away from the rest of the litter because he’s distracted by something to play with, such as a slipper, and then goes from playing with it to tearing it apart with his teeth—
grrrr
.

Jerry said that was pretty interesting. Then he said, “But why don’t you see yourself first as a child of God?” It was such a revelation to me, the way he opened my eyes to how far I had drifted away from the path of divinity, especially after the breakup with Deborah. He also opened my eyes to how much I was fighting and struggling with everything, both within myself and within the situation. I said to myself that it had been a long time since I looked at anything from that perspective. Other people may have said something like that to me, but when Jerry said it things really shifted for me, and I began to heal with honesty and an energy I didn’t have before. I got back onto the track I had been on before—holding my wholesomeness together.

We began to talk almost every day, reading
A Course in Miracles
over the phone, which became a source of inspiration and guidance, with Jerry and Diane’s coaching. We still do it—I think we are on our fourth or fifth reading of the book. They call me every morning between seven thirty and eight, whether I’m at home or on the road, which is amazing to me because sometimes my morning will be the middle of the night in Sausalito! We read the lesson of the day together, lessons that I apply to whatever is going on in my life. It was Jerry and Diane who were finally able to get me past my anger about being molested when I was in Tijuana and forgive the man who did that to me. They asked me to imagine him in
front of me, and turn him into a six-year-old child with a divine light shining behind him. I looked at him, forgave him, and sent him into the light, releasing both him and myself from the past. Finally, I could breathe—it felt like that chapter of my life was over.