Leaves of Tears

by Dion

2017

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When my son Josiah child of light was born I planted an Italian Stone Pine sapling in front of my house and I placed his placenta beneath its roots.

A few weeks later a Native American healer warned me Josiah’s soul spirit was dangerously exposed with the placenta so close to the city street. I took no heed and forgot the warning for 30 years. When Josiah was 30 years old the tree was cut down because the tree was pushing up the driveway and the sidewalk with its roots and a few weeks later Josiah died of liver cancer. I killed that tree by planting it in the wrong place and I killed Josiah because of this and in other ways I put his soul in danger. 

From his death in 2012 till this day I write this I have not cried for or dreamed of Josiah. 

A few months after Josiah died the preschool at my work purchased a flat irregular shaped memorial flagstone remembering Josiah and the church where I am a caretaker purchased and planted a Rosebud sapling by the memorial stone. Though the species is drought tolerant and I watered the tree moderately as my job of caretaker of the church, the tree died a year later. An other year passed and another Rosebud sapling was planted by the memorial stone and though I watered the tree carefully and I talked to the tree, a year later this tree also died. This dead tree that is six feet tall - tall as my sapling Josiah was - this dead tree has remained in the ground there now for three years. 

After many months since last noticing - though I walk by the memorial stone and dead sapling every day - yesterday I saw and remembered the dead Rosebud sapling and last night in a vivid dream my conscious mind connected the two dead saplings Rosebuds with the placenta Italian Stone pine tree for the first time. 

This morning at the Berkeley Acupuncture Project clinic by coincidence a dear sister soul friend came in next to me and laid down to my left and also had her treatment. She fell asleep and I could hear her gentle breathing. Though I just want to be friends with her - still I bother her sometimes with my intensity at times and she pulls away. I have been feeling sadness lately because I feel she will soon or has - fallen in love with another and though I always move into breathing gratitude for everyone I love finding the love meant to be for them I am sad they pass from my life and that perhaps I myself am not meant to ever have a twin flame. Though I saw my friend sleeping - perhaps because of his love for her she sleeping deeply and very  peacefully - though I looked at her face imagining she dreaming of her perhaps yet unmet soulmate - i breathed Tonglen to her my spiritual friend - we on our lifetime paths of healing together and I felt still loved by her and by all in these rooms on our recovery and transformational journeys and I saw she and I are lifelong friends and my small i felt the love stillness of the Energy of the Universe with no need for me to speak or to be heard to know and feel this love.

Then to my right a woman stranger laying there with her acupuncture needles started quietly crying and I closed my eyes and I sent my breath - I breathed Tonglen compassion to her and I fell asleep to the peaceful breathing of my friend to my left and to the unknown woman gently crying to my right and... I dreamed.

I saw Josiah’s dead body looking the same as when his mother and wife washed his body a few minutes after he died. This time I was alone with him at his deathbed and in this dream that I dreamt sleeping on the bed at the acupuncture clinic this morning I cried for Josiah for the first time with real tears that flowed in tiny delicious rivulets into the far edges of my mouth and in big drops down my cheeks onto the body of my son Josiah laying there. Then from my tears falling upon his body out of Josiah grew a sapling tree and it grew strong and though the sapling was still small many leaves grew and the leaves turned silver and gold and as my tears first of sadness and then joy joined the leaves of the Josiah tree - each leaf with a drop of my tears now all of rainbow colors and then leaves of tears from heaven also rained on us and all the tears of leaves sang whispering songs to each other and I awoke crying softly with my friend and the sad woman stranger sleeping on each side of me and I remembered that Josiah when he was a child had first taught me to love and then in that room where I awoke this morning from this dream - I saw my soul and all the souls in a moment of echoing stillness and i felt in my physical body and in my soul body the touching tendrils of everyone’s and everything’s love everywhere. 

This is a true dream.

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Still in my waking life I have not yet cried for the death of my son Josiah. It appears I have more dreaming and breathing to do.

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Tonglen:

https://tricycle.org/magazine/tonglen-spot/

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https://www.lionsroar.com/how-to-practice-tonglen/

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonglen

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{All Dionysos Maskaleris writings copyright or copyright pending}