A Parentheses In Eternity

Life is one long, long sentence, and I am not speaking in Prison terms, but a sentence that is used in writing. And the beginning of our Sentences started with The Big Bang, whatever that was, and continues on.

There are no Periods in this Sentence. Not a one. There are thousands of commas, semi-colons, dashes, exclamation points, pauses, and all else, but not a one Period. No end to this Sentence we experience, and makes no difference what Belief System we belong to, either. Just one Sentence.  

My Birth, when I slipped from some unknown Room into this Mortal Room where I dwell as Ethel Ohlin Bradford, was not the beginning of my Sentence, but prefaced, perhaps by a Comma, or Dash, a Semi-colon. Who knows?

And when what we call Death arrives, it will only be the end of the body I’ve used these long, wonderful years, and the  part of me that never dies will just slip joyously into the next Room. There will be no Period, maybe an Colon? Exclamation Point? I don’t know, but certainly not a Period.

I know, well, not first hand, but often my husband told me of when as a 17 year old, he died from pneumonia. This was before the age of Wonder Drugs, and he lay deathly ill, so sick, so tired, in the upper west bedroom of the Bradford home, and a Registered Nurse with him.

Oddly, my older sister, Amber Ohlin Bodine, worked at Thornton-Anderson Drug Store at the northwest corner of State Street and 4800 South, and where it was easy to hear any doctor’s conversation with the Pharmacist, and she came home one day, and at the dinner table told that the ‘Bradford’ boy would die that night. I did not know ‘the Bradford boy’ or certainly not that he would one day be my husband. But I remember her words. Life is odd.

But my husband later told me that ‘suddenly’ there was Light. A soft. wonderful Light, and with it, all feelings of sickness and weariness were gone. He was himself again, with not even a memory of sickness, happily running free, and overwhelmed with unbelievable Joy! He said The Light permeated his every cell and never before or after did he feel such utter happiness than what was then his.

But suddenly there was someone, (something?) wrestling with him, trying to pull him away from that Light. He fought back, but his opponent was strong, and then he was shocked and taken further out of the Light, by a sudden sharp bitter taste in his mouth (what mouth?), and the wrestler and the horrible taste, had taken him out of the Light and back to his bedroom, his bed, his sick, tired, weak, and unhappy body. And the ‘unwelcome’ Nurse was gripping him.

 He said, “My first thought was that it had been a struggle between me and another force, and that force had won the battle. I was the loser.”

 How marvelous that Next Room must be when an 17 year old would fight to remain There rather than here. For the rest of his life, he remembered that Next Room, the Room of Light that he had been a part of, and then being ‘pulled’ back from it.

 He later found that the nurse had poured a spoonful of some alcoholic stimulant between his lips and the glorious wonder that had been his only a moment before, was gone. And he repeated, “She won the battle.”

 So, with his story, my own experiences, and having the blessing of Classes with Dr.Ushurburg Arya, all, in their own words, told the same Truth, that there is no end to this Sentence that we are living right now.

 I, as we all do, have had flashback moments where I’ve been in different countries, cultures, and ages. Sometimes I’ve been male, sometimes female. And different roles, such as Kind, unkind. Pure, sinful. Wealthy, poor. Ruler, serf. Warrior, farmer. Sailor, store clerk. I’ve ‘clicked’ into many, and they were all Me. No, not the ‘Ethel’ me, but that Inner Being,  we all are.            

 Joel Goldsmith, penned a wonderful book entitled “A Parentheses in Eternity” and his words made me more certain that my ‘flashback memories’ are valid, and that this life really is a parentheses in Eternity.

 When we are in bodies, as right now, we are wearing Blinders. We can not see (except in wonderful moments) what we were ‘before’, or what we will be later on.   And it’s the answer to such unanswerables as when we meet  some ‘stranger’ and know that we know each other.

 And Einstein, the supreme Physicist of our time, told the same in his writings, using words I had to read and re-read to understand (?), but according to him, that when we have learned enough, or wise enough (who knows what the requirements are?) but we will experience the reverse of The Big Bang, and become again One with The Source of All.

 I write of my husband’s experience and my learnings  telling of how our lives are one long, long sentence, with many punctuation marks, but nary a Period. Even the event I wrote of in the last paragraph, will not be the End. but a most wonderful continuation.   TYG.