The promise of the book I am reading, The Choice – Embracing the Possible by Dr. Edith Eva Eger,is that it will leave you changed forever. The alchemy of the book is working on me. Here is whats happened.
Edith is a surviver of Auschwitz and the Holocaust. She lost her parents and barely survived herself, eventually immigrating to the US. She suffered for years from what we now know is PTSD. Her healing journey led her to become a therapist, specializing in PTSD. But it is when she is invited to speak to a group of Army Chaplains in Germany that she faces her final challenge. She is terrified to return. But she asks herself these questions; “What will I leave in the world when I am gone? I have already chosen to relinquish secrets and denial and shame. But have I really made peace with the past? Is there more to resolve so that I don’t perpetuate more pain?”
To answer these questions she accepts the invitation. The meeting is in Berchtesgaden. The location where Hitler built his grand estate in the mountains. It was destroyed during the allied invasion, but she is staying in the hotel that housed all his high ranking officials. She is very unsettled being there and takes a walk up the hillside and feels herself face to face with Hitler. She is looking over the mountains he viewed, she is walking where he walked. She realizes he isn’t here now but she is, she has made it. And in that moment she feels some of the old sorrow melt a bit and she forgives. She does not forgive Hitler because she should or he deserves it. She forgives to be free.
I close the book on this page and fall asleep. I dream of my father. In the dream I am coming into a restaurant with my niece and her baby son. He needs his diaper changed. As we walk by tables to find our seat I see my father and Marcia (my stepmother) sitting nearby. I quickly look away hoping to ignore them and not be noticed. In the next scene in my dream my father is changing the babies diapers and the two of them are having fun together.
When I awake I immediately know it is important that my father was in my dream. He died 16 years ago and it is not often I think of him or dream of him. During my morning meditation I imagine being free. As I sit considering forgiving my father, his most grievous crimes come marching into my thoughts — full force. The one rising to the top of my list: he kept my mother’s dying a secret. He and the doctors all told her and everyone else she had arthritis. We never got to grieve together, say good-bye and get some closure. One day my mother (bedridden) had arthritis. The next day she was dead. I have tried to hold this charitably throughout the years. It was 1969. Cancer was kept a secret, the diagnosis a shameful malady. But in 1984 my father and I got on the subject of my mother’s death and he said he would do it the same way again. I was never able to tell him how much I regretted his decision and the price I paid. I was in too much shock.
Today, meditating, I realize my father kept this secret as a form of protection. He worked so hard and such long hours for the family he wanted to protect. He fixed everything around the house that broke. He built furniture and a beautiful patio all to keep us safe. He was always trying to protect us and the secret was one more way to do it. Ultimately, his protection failed but his cause was just. Later in the afternoon I go to the Edgar Cayce A.R.E. for some bodywork. In a basket on the counter are rolled up pieces of paper with colorful rubber bands. An invitation to take one— see what quote Edgar Casey has for you. I open my quote and it says, “Hold no grudges. Do not find fault in others. Do show appreciation for all efforts“. I tell my friend at the A.R.E and he says, “Edgar Cayce said forgiveness was one of the great tasks of each lifetime. It held the key to reincarnation.” I could not have dreamed of this synchronicity.
