Duda and the Angel

While my mother was living in Florida, she had a Boston terrier named Duda, a serene, Zen-like dog, atypical for a terrier. Duda was so calm that I used to call him Duda the Buddha. He was a beautiful lean and stocky dog, whose paws were white up to the ankle. He had a patch of white that ran from his jowls up the front of his face to the bridge of his nose and up to his forehead. Duda wanted nothing more than to be petted and to curl up in your lap. One of my brother's friends gave him to mom and told her that he would be responsible for all vet bills, a wonderful gesture, given mom’s fixed income. Mom loved that dog. She took him to the vet faithfully for his shots and his heartworm medication each year. Duda and she walked the grounds of her mobile home park three times a day, every day. He was good company.

All went well for about two years; and then one heartworm season, a new vet gave mom medication for Duda that was calculated for a fifty pound dog. Sadly, Duda only weighed fifteen pounds. Mom hadn’t noticed the dosing information. She simply followed the vet’s instructions. After dosing Duda for a while, mom noticed that he started having seizures. She took him back to the vet, but the vet could not find a reason for Duda’s seizures, although he noted that the heartworm medication was the incorrect dosage for a dog Duda’s weight and cautioned mom to stop giving it to him. Mom was convinced that the seizures were caused by an overdose of the heartworm medication, something to which she was sure the vet would never admit.

Anti-seizure medication did nothing for Duda’s seizures. They got so bad that mom eventually started pulling him around in a little Red Flyer wagon, because he couldn’t walk long distances without having a seizure and collapsing. Whenever I spoke with mom on the phone, she lamented about Duda’s seizures and wondered whether she should put him down. I encouraged her to either put him down or get another opinion, because Duda was suffering. Mom said that she just didn’t have the heart to put him down.

During that time, mom had to have minor “female” surgery and was due to spend a night in the hospital, so a friend and I went to Florida to be there with her. Mom lived in a small single-wide mobile home that could not accommodate more than one person, so we made reservations at the Holiday Inn across the street from where she lived. We arrived in Florida early in the day, checked into the Holiday Inn and then went to see mom. When I entered her mobile home, I took one look at Duda and told her that he needed to be put down. Mom trusted me and asked if I would take him to the local humane society. I said that I would. We took Duda that day. I explained to the vet there that he had uncontrollable seizures and that we thought he should be put down. The vet examined him and agreed. I was escorted to a room in the back of the office and was allowed to hold Duda while he was euthanized. As I stroked his head, he was looking up at me with huge black eyes. The doctor injected him with lethabarb, a popular euthanasia barbiturate. Duda was gone in seconds, his eyes still wide open. I closed his eyes and wept. The vet tech wept too. Mom was waiting for me outside the room where the euthanasia occurred. When I came out of the room, I told mom that Duda was gone. Her voice cracked as she said, “He’s better now.” I thought about what a burden this would be for mom, who was having surgery the next day. I worried that it might affect her recovery. As if she could hear my thoughts, mom said that Duda was ready to die. She felt that his seizures were his way of letting her know that he had done everything he came here to do. Mom seemed at peace.

That night in my hotel room, I lamented over whether I’d done the right thing, whether every opportunity to extend Duda’s life had been examined. My travel companion suggested that I ask the universe for a sign that I’d done the right thing. So, just before I went to sleep, I asked for a sign. I awoke in the morning feeling more relaxed than I had since I arrived in Florida.

My friend and I went to the hospital to visit mom, who was out of surgery and resting when we got there. As we entered her room, she was being tended by a male nurse named John. He doted on mom, repeatedly coming in and out of the room to either bring her something or fluff her pillows. When he spoke to mom, he rubbed her head and smiled. We were about an hour into our visit, when John, who had entered the room for the seventh or eighth time, faced me and smiled. I smiled back at him, wondering why he was facing me smiling and saying nothing. I made idle conversation with mom, occasionally looking at John, who was still facing me smiling. I glanced at him again briefly and noticed that, just underneath his first name, which was printed in big block letters, was his last name, printed in smaller letters. I leaned in and squinted to read it and then gasped. It said Duda. John’s last name was Duda. I excitedly told him the story of Duda the Buddha. He said nothing and suddenly left the room, still smiling. I had gotten my confirmation.

The next day I called the hospital to find out where I could write to nurse Duda to thank him for being so attentive to mom. I was told that no such nurse worked at the hospital. I insisted that he took care of my mother the day before and I even indicated what floor he was on, but the person to whom I spoke insisted that no nurse by that name worked there.

Mom spent most of her adult life fiscally poor but rich in so many other ways. Never did she face a difficult time without an angel who showed up to ease a burden. Duda was one of those angels.

Mom and Rasputin

One early fall evening, I took mom, who was 90 years old at the time, to a channeling session with me. This was her first experience seeing a channel, so I had no idea how she’d respond. For those who’ve never seen a channel, the person who channels goes into meditation and brings through an energy from another realm, sometimes a person of note from another generation, such as Albert Einstein, or Buckminster Fuller, or a guide, an angel, or even a master, such as Jesus or Buddha. The person doing the channeling that evening, whom I’ll refer to as GD, was explaining about what the evening would entail. As he spoke, mom kept nodding off. I nudged her with my elbow, telling her to stay awake. My nudging was to no avail. She repeatedly nodded off, her head dropping forward. We were sitting in the front row directly in front of GD, so I was embarrassed at her seeming disinterest in what he was saying.
Eventually, GD went into a brief meditation and Rasputin came through. Despite all the history about Rasputin’s mysterious and sinister relationship to the Russian royal family (Czar Nicholas, et. al.), those of us familiar with him through the channeling, got to know about his energy as a healer and mystic and we loved him. He was irreverent and outspoken, yet, loving. When Rasputin came through, he said, “Hallo” in a thick Russian accent. Mom immediately came to attention. She lifted her head and leaned forward in her seat as he spoke. I don’t recall the details of what Rasputin was saying, but it was an opening statement, during which mom blurted out, “I feel that I’ve known you before.” Rasputin, amused, paused and said, “Oh yes, we’ve known each other for about eight billion years.” “Oh,” mom said, “I didn’t know I was that old.” I sat there shocked, because mom seemed to know the difference between GD’s energy and Rasputin’s, and she was no longer disinterested or bored.

As Rasputin lectured on the beauty of love, mom said, “What if you love everyone?” Rasputin knew she was asking about herself and said, “Yes, we know you love everyone. That is what the people here are trying to learn. They want to know how to love everyone.” Mom said, “Just do it.” Rasputin laughed and said, “Yes, just do it. You heard her.” As he spoke about judgment and how it related to duality, mom blurted out, “Oh I would never judge anyone.” Rasputin said, “We know. You are here to heal the people on this Earth with your love.” Then mom said, “Sometimes I feel like the mother of the Earth,” and Rasputin said, “You are the mother of the Earth. You are Earth mother.” Mom sat through the rest of that channeling without falling asleep, hanging onto every word Rasputin spoke.

At the end of the session, GD came out of trance and mom seemed to know the difference, because she said, “What happened to the other guy?” I explained that he had left GD’s body. She said, “Oh” and went over to GD and hugged him, thanking him for a lovely evening. A couple of other people went over to talk to mom. GD moved aside and excitedly called me over to him. I asked what he wanted and he said, “You have no idea who you have with you.” I said that I did and he said, “No, no. You don’t know what I mean.” I said that I did, that I knew my mother was open, which was why I brought her to the channeling. Then GD said, “You don’t understand. I couldn’t tell the difference between your mother’s energy and Rasputin’s.” He explained that any time someone asked a question, he could always see the polarity in the other person’s energy as it related to Rasputin’s energy, which was not polarized. GD said, “This time, I couldn’t find a line of demarcation between Raz’s (those of us familiar with Rasputin’s energy called him Raz) energy and your mother’s.” I said that I wasn’t aware that she would come across that way energetically, but I knew she would make an impression.

I knew that mom had a way about her that was healing. People who spent time with her always felt better afterward. In fact, whenever someone I knew was not feeling great emotionally, I’d say, “Come with me to see my mother.” They’d always ask why and I’d say, “You’ll feel better” and they always did.

Mom was open to everything and she was filled with wonder. She even used to let me do energy work on her. She’d get on my massage table and say, “Do that thing you do,” and then pretty quickly into the session, she’d be gone, out cold, asleep. Mom trusted me without reservation and was open to anything I wanted to do for, with, or to her. She experienced a lot of alternative healing in her later years, and I think it, along with her own ability to love, was responsible for her complete healing from cancer without the benefit of chemo or radiation even though the doctor felt that she should at least have radiation.  I said no. She was already 89 years old and I didn't see the point.  She had CHF, so chemo was out.  She had a lumpectomy, and eventually a mastectomy of her right breast.  The doctor was certain that the cancer would return without the radiation.  It did not.  She recovered quickly from bypass surgery and a valve replacement. She never experienced pain during those times either.  In addition, mom’s short term memory was bad, and that, coupled with her lack of pain, she quickly forgot that she had cancer and heart surgery, so she never focused on those things. Instead, she was busy enjoying life.

It’s a wonderful thing to have a mind opened by wonder rather than one closed by belief. To mom, everything about life was wonderful or interesting. She used to say, “I love Earth and the people and animals on it.” I always thought that was odd phrasing.  It was as if she were from somewhere else and knew that she was only visiting this plane of consciousness for the experience and to share her love. I’m not saying that mom was perfect all her life. She wasn’t. She made some mistakes, but she learned from them, and in doing so, she aged her soul. You age your soul over a lifetime, but it takes only a moment of knowing to reach full realization of your own divinity. Mom’s moment of knowing came in her late sixties and she had the good fortune to live within that fullness until her death.