SOUL

That within you which seeks Union.  The inspired energy that vibrates beneath

each heartbeat

and can do no harm.

Your true self that is never sick, wrong, unforgiving or separate.

Make room for this magnificent light to radiate beneath each foot step, every touch,

behind all thought, for you will recognize….

IAM the part of you that is one with All.

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     Soul….the part within me that is part of the greater whole.  Soul…the part in you, in Ghandi, Motzart, Joan of Arch, or a stranger across the room.  We all share the same origination (birth) & destination (union).  What happens in between is our own peculiar, crazy, magnificent journey.   This story is about the soul of  my daughter Alex, who was born with a significant heart defect & is profoundly deaf.   The part of her that is one with me, you and all there is.

   The call from the Texas School For the Deaf, where my daughter Alex was a resident student, came mid morning.  The school nurse was calm, but I could tell she was perplexed with Alex’s condition.  “Alex is very tired, and having difficulty this morning.  I checked her pacemaker rate and it seems to be ‘ok’. but I’m not sure. Something doesn’t feel right.”   After a quick call and advice from her cardiologist in San Antonio, I grabbed her cardiac monitor and drove to the school in Austin….. about an hour away.  Once there I did the phone hook up and test of her pacemaker with Medtronic, the designer of her pacemaker.  Something was amiss and I was told to drive her to San Antonio to her cardiologist. We loaded up and headed out.

  While zooming down Interstate 35, I glanced over at her from time to time, smiling at her to give her confidence.  I wanted her to know that everything would soon be ok.  But about half way to San Antonio,  I watched her slump into oblivion. Only the seat belt was holding her in place.  Did she pass out?  Oh God, is she dead?  What is happening. ….Do I pull over?  What do I do?  were all thoughts racing through my mind.  I could now feel my heart pounding as I frantically jumped from one thought to the next.   ‘Oh God, please, not now…. not like this.’

                       Within in seconds,  she slowly  lifted her head & opened her eyes. She was bewildered

                        I sped up, knowing the pacemaker was failing and that she needed help now.

    The Medtronic representative met me at the cardiologist’s office and upon further examination by both of them, I was told that the problem was with her heart, not the pacemaker.  You see, Alex had survived numerous heart operations and pacemaker implants over her 14 or so years, and that left her body with internal scar tissue.  These scar tissues can interfere with the electronic impulses of a pacemaker, eventually rendering it useless.  And Alex was totally pacer dependent…. meaning she needed it to make her heart beat.   In the doctor’s mind, it was NOT the pacemaker.  So there was nothing more that could be done.  We were being asked to accept this & simply go back home.  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

            I didn’t budge… I told them they were mistaken.  (Can you imagine?)  I explained again that I had seen her collapse in my car while I was driving  75 mph  down the expressway.  That she appeared to regain consciousness and sit back up.  It couldn’t be her scar tissue that was creating this, it had to be the pacemaker.

 “No Mrs. Rodriguez.   There is nothing wrong with the pacemaker.  See…. (they pointed to the checking device)  we checked it out thoroughly, and it is set correctly and doing its job.  What you saw happening was not due to the pacemaker failing.”  They both nodded in silent agreement.

   My voice became stronger as I responded, ‘I don’t believe that.  I KNOW it is the pacemaker, I am sure of this.”   Noticing the doctor’s stiffness at my response, I proceeded. ” Am I pushing you too hard?”                  The physician came back at me with a steely response, “Yes you are” and turned his back on me.

    At that point, he left the room and made a call to someone I later learned was employed by Medtronic.  He brought back in a phone and asked me to speak directly to who was on the other end.  The man on the line was an electro-physicist who was probably asked to answer my questions and help me understand that I was surely mistaken.  But again, I firmly told this person it was the pacemaker that was failing, not my daughter’s heart.  After handing back the phone, I could hear them saying to each other, ‘Why don’t you send her daughter home with a halter monitor, then check it tomorrow. That might satisfy the mother’.   Soon after, we left the doctor’s office with a halter monitor and its multiple electrodes attached to her chest.  Alex was tired and wanted to go home. Her deafness within the flurry of heated and emotional discussions, left her mostly unaware of what happened.   I was drained, discouraged, and heart-broken.

    That night I tucked her into my bed for the night.  If that damn pacemaker failed again, I  didn’t want her  to die alone.  I wanted to be present. To hold her. To let her know how much I cherished her.  After she quickly fell asleep, I slipped outside into the silence of the warm night to talk to the heavens.  Sitting alone under a vast dome of stars that only the country side can reveal,  I wept. And when I was finished riding those waves of grief, I suddenly reached a moment of clarity.   It was as if my emotions needed to be cleared first in order for me to open to such a prayer.  I invoked the Divine.  I prayed for strength, for wisdom & compassion.  I prayed for her & her sisters.  I decreed out loud into that night,

   “Holy Creator of all there is, I ask for not one more day, not one moment more than what is Your grand design for Alex’s Soul.  Just as when I lost her father Robert, I again ask You, give me the strength required to move through this heart-break in my life.”                                                                                                                          Complete surrender.

     I awoke the next morning to a frail young teenager curled up against my body.  For a moment I felt a deep level of gratitude.    But that quickly changed to laser like focus as I gently nudged her to wake up.  We had to move quickly…. it was early and we needed to get back to the cardiologists office for a reading on that halter monitor.  The device that the physicians felt would prove to all of us, it had to be her failing heart, not the pacemaker.   We arrived at 8am and as we entered the building elevator, I again closed my eyes to recall last night’s invocation. “I only ask for strength to move through this…..nothing more”

   We stepped into his office and were ushered into the same room as the day before.  But this time what happened was beyond anyone’s expectations.  This time she collapsed into unconsciousness in their presence.  Upon that examination table she lay in complete stillness.  I felt as if my heart stopped along with hers.  The cardiologist and Medtronic representative moved into crisis mode.  Alex was rushed to the hospital across the street while a nurse secured the thoracic surgeon. The Medtronic rep grabbed a new pacemaker from her car trunk…. yes, her car trunk and raced over to the hospital.  I must have dropped into some kind of ‘protective zone’ that parents move into when their child is dying because my next memory is just before dawn the next morning, sitting quietly at her hospital bedside.  A dim overhead light cast just enough glow upon her so I could watch as she lay silently breathing.

    Signaled by a change in the doorway light, I glanced up to see two men standing within the threshold to Alex’s hospital room.  From the hall light behind them, they appeared featureless and motionless, but I could tell who it was.  The cardiologist and the surgeon arrived early that morning.  They stood for a moment, as if to gather their thoughts and words, until the cardiologist blurted out, “Your daughter gave us all quite a scare yesterday.”    I could sense his nervousness.

             I responded softly,  “Yes she did.  But please tell me.  What did that halter monitor show you?”

      He then walked over to sit at my side, while the surgeon remained in the doorway, and said, “I have known you for many years and someday I will share the halter monitor results with you, But I want you to know this now…..(with a huge sigh)….. There was more than one unusual episode that registered on the monitor tape.  During those time frames,  no heart beat registered at all for a very long time.  I mean, a very long time.”

      It was then that the surgeon join in, “We don’t know how this could be possible… How a heart could stop and start-up again on its on.  It is not possible.  We just don’t understand how this could happen” 

                    Together we sat in silence.  And I knew then that it was the pacemaker that failed, and that it had failed multiple times that night.  I could tell they were stunned as well, perhaps even speechless since we were all probably thinking the same thing.   She survived in spite of them.  But even more revealing to me was knowing that her soul’s decision to live was far greater than we would ever understand.

Unknown to us for over a year, Medtronic had its very first pacemaker recall following Alex’s extraordinary event. No one thought to tell us.   It wasn’t until over a year later while we were sitting again in that same cardiologist’s office, that a Medtronic nurse representative shared with me what had followed. I bless her for that.   But, it is this next part of the story that made such a lasting impression upon me.

   After returning home and Alex’s quick recovery,  I wrote a lengthy email to about a dozen friends, describing what happened to her.  About a week later, the story made its way to a woman I didn’t know and she emailed me this question.  ‘Were you spooning the night you slept with your daughter?   Spooning I asked, what is that?  She described it and I responded back to her….. Yes.  What she next stated to me sent a rush of energy through my body.  A physical sign of affirmation I had learned over the years, that would happen to me when ever I heard or encountered a truth.  She wrote,

               “In my native tradition, when a child’s heart has stopped, such as your daughter’s, it is the Mother’s heart that beats for the child.”

                                   Closing my eyes, I gave a silent offering to Creator, that this humble yet powerful statement had found its way back to me & Alex.  Not to prove who was right or wrong.  But to lift us both to a higher understanding of our Soul’s experience in this lifetime.    The line in the Emerging Soul card above,  ‘inspired energy that vibrates beneath each heartbeat’  demonstrates the part of her and that part of me that is one with all.  It transcends medical definitions, and lifts our human understanding of the experience to that of the Soul’s Divinity.          You, Me & Alex are one with all there is.

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