Open Writing

It was the drought which finally tipped me into the abyss of despair. It was no ordinary drought. It tortured us, slowly, cruelly for five gruelling years. It swallowed up every last shard of hope for the future within me just as assiduously as it sucked up every last drop of moisture in the rivers and the sky.

The clouds would muster themselves into teasing clusters of cumulonimbus, taunt us, make false promises and then, without releasing their precious load, float mockingly out to sea. Burly, invincible farmers were sobbing, nightly, on television. Stoic gumtrees were crinkling to brown and dying all around us. Parks and playing fields deteriorated into grassless moonscapes. Nature was severely distressed, collapsing before my very eyes and desperately crying out for a help which I was powerless to extend. Imperceptibly, inside myself, I began to shrivel up too.

All of this churned me towards a desperate climax. The date, here in Australia, was the 28th December 2006. As I watched my son playing with his beloved dog and I observed their interactions of unconditional love for each other I was suddenly infused with an overwhelming sadness. I had lost hope I realised, hope of any sort of future for my son and my unborn grandchildren. Death hung morbidly around me wherever I turned. The incessant forebodings of climate change, which emanated incessantly from every form of media, echoed back and forth across my tormented mind. My inner being had been steadily ground down into tiny pieces and for the first time in my life, with a clammy shiver, I faced death truly head on and contemplated the reality of what it would be like for every one of us humans to die, more or less at once.

In my absolute anguish I closed my eyes and silently implored the universe, or some greater consciousness, to please ease the pain and suffering. I begged passionately for answers to my nagging questions about the purpose of life. I had an aching yearning to connect, a fervent wish to communicate with a higher awareness and, in my intense sincerity, I must somehow have broken through because I instantly received another of those unmistakable, clairaudient messages. I was stunned.I immediately recognised this as a repeat of the phenomenon which had occurred all those years before.

The message itself did not initially make much sense.
"Sandra, this is Norah from Morecambe," was all that the telepathic voice said.

Norah had been a kindly neighbour of my mother's when she was growing up in Yorkshire. It had been Norah who had suggested to my mother that I be called Sandra. I remembered meeting her once many years previously but she had since died. If you had asked me, on the spot, where she had lived in her later years I would have been hard pressed to recall that it was Morecambe. Although Norah had been a very special friend to my mother, I had seldom, if ever, had any reason or inclination to think of her.

You can imagine my shock then when my son turned the television on less than an hour later and I overheard the news that a helicopter had crashed into the sea in Morecambe Bay, killing all seven men on board. I was gobsmacked. I had to sit down. Disasters, it seemed, had a way of triggering an undeniable, static- charged communication in my brain. The messages were not yet highly detailed but they were pertinent to the situation and were definitely penetrating through to my unconscious mind.

NOW I was tuned in and listening. Up went my spiritual antennae. This unseen presence had my full attention at last.

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To be continued next week. DON’T MISS THE NEXT EPISODE.