Thank you Deeya and Charley

Deeya at Robert's Condo--Woodland Hills

Deeya and Charlie have taught me a deeper meaning of service.  It is living in grace and humility. It is living deeper into the Self of All.

I used to wonder and even question Deeya’s emphasis on service to others, whether hospice work and healing both as she did, or caretaking for a friend or relative, or giving a homeless woman a meal, or providing medical care for children in India.  Others even questioned her motives saying a life of service like she provided was just to make herself feel better by knowing she was better off than those she served.  This, of course, was the most cynical comment.

Deeya during her hospice work was always given or just took the role of being the caretaker who spent the last hours and seconds with a dying patient.  She would be holding their hand and looking deep into their eyes as they passed out of this realm into the Emptiness and beyond.  She would feel their Life Force come into her and then pass through.  No one else would accept this role except she.  No one else had the courage or heart.

But Charley is teaching me that deeper meaning of service through direct experience.  Providing hospice care for Charley, watching him bond in love and dependence ever more closely with Kerima and me, caused me to want to devote myself ever more deeply to this brave and hearty lover who just did not want to quit life or stop loving.

Washing him because he cannot preen himself becomes an anointing. Waking in the morning finding his slim body resting against mine brings a deep happiness.  Awareness of the ebbing and flowing of his energies causes a spectrum of emotions to play through my heart, body, and especially my legs and feet as an electric tingling.

Resting in the Void next to him while lying in my recliner, I reach out to find his presence and try to give him that same ease of being.

Every moment he is awake he watches me.  If resting, he raises his head to see if I am looking at him or going somewhere.  If going, he follows me.  Such love we have; two sentient beings entwined in deeper awareness of Self, an awareness so deep it feels like a pool of Pure Life Force, utterly clean and uncontaminated.

Charley and Deeya I thank you from the bottom of my being for showing me the way to such amazing grace: a life of grace by living in service to others.