Sarah's Corner

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<< An Elegant Spirit >>

The mystic melody went by
You murmured in this dark light

In this fleeting wind
You sing and reveal
A mystery of mysteries

Within the sorrow awaken
In these oversprinkled starry nights
Lives an ELEGANT SPIRIT
And an unforgettable dream
Darkened with age
Forever concealed in memory

~Sarah Cheung

Grandma died before I was born. When I was kid, I saw a portrait of her in the living room every day. My heart sank every time I passed by that portrait. Secretly, I knew there was a spirit living in that picture, a very serious spirit. However I was drawn to her at the same time. I would think, if I saw this person on the street, I would like to know her. I think I could learn a lot from her.

My childhood was lonely. I tended to think of Grandma when I couldn't stand the solitude. In the most mysterious way, I believed she cared. I like to flirt with things that were dangerous during my childhood: the dead, the funeral, the insane. All neglected children are obsessed with certain things. I was obsessed with the strange and the unknown, while my neighbor was obsessed with killing ducks.

People seldom talked about Grandma. She seemed to be a tragic figure who suffered with a long illness. However, they called her an elegant woman. Grandpa didn't talked about her much either. When he did, it was usually during the evenings that he couldn't fall asleep. He always talked about her in the dark. All I could see was the tiny shivering burning flame of his cigarette.

A year ago, near Christmas time, I flew to New York and stayed in the basement of my friend's apartment for a month. It was a very special time for me. Everything in my life was falling apart. My whole belief system didn't seem to work for me. Yet at least I also realized how much my beliefs were destroying me. I wanted to start all over again. I figured I had only two options: either I stayed home and threw up every day, or I got away. I got away. I had to because there were only self-destructive impulses left in me.

This was the time for me to get serious about finding out who I am, what I am meant to be and most of all how to hold onto love.

My room in New York didn't have a TV. It was kind of suffocating to stay there during the day, as there was only a tiny window in the upper area. I spent most of my time reading in the library and watching TV in my friend's apartment.

It was a different kind of spirit in New York. It felt more romantic, cultured, yet for me mostly sad.

After the first week in New York, something happened.

Around three or four in the morning, my lung started to swell and air stopped coming in. An excruciating pain came in instead and cut every nerve. There are no words to describe that pain. All I can say is if I have to kill myself, I would never choose hanging or drowning. The pain would be such that it would go on to another level of life and one's soul would be forever tormented.

This continued for a couple of days. I suddenly realized that I could die at any point. Immediately, I called up everybody in my family and told them I love them. My loving words sounded like screaming, though.

Hopelessly, I prayed. I really prayed. Suddenly, a revelation came: my Grandma died from a severe lung problem.

That following evening, I kept all the nights on. I decided to pray for healing for my Grandma. I kept the room as bright as possible. Although Grandma might be gracious to look at, I was not ready to see a ghost with my two human eyes yet.

I kept my eyes open and prayed. There was a moment when I felt my body was chilled and I started to shake. But I didn't care. I was not scared either. I had to end this physical torture or I might kill myself.

I didn't  know when and how I passed out and fell asleep. When the tinkling warmth of the morning sunlight caressed my tired face, I heard a soft, elegant female voice gently blowing in my ear. She spoke crystal-clear Cantonese. She pronounced every word slowly and clearly. She sounded eloquent and educated. She's got a spontaneously delicate yet deliberately soul-breaking voice.

She was telling me that she already had three things well arranged and taken cared of. These were her EXACT words: Your paintings are already placed in your car. About boyfriend, I already introduced him to you. He is taller than you. (That's it?) About where you live, they already built...I woke up right before she finished that sentence.

It was Grandma speaking to me. I wished she could talk to me more. Yet at the same time, I felt she was gone, really gone this time. She was released.

At first I was quite concerned about the boyfriend she said she had introduced to me. I kind of resisted the idea. I have a feeling that we have a different taste in men. I know what she is referring to is a kind of tough love. Ironically, I tend to love the ones that are self-destructive and dysfunctional, those who resist everything and accept nothing, and those who go west when I ask them to go east, most likely, those as wounded as I am. We are most attracted to our shadow self. There is a reason we are attracted to each other. It is to provide an opportunity to heal ourselves, the part of us that is lost.

I guess Grandma can't stand this anymore. I have a feeling that she wants me to be with someone who is just like my father.

However I don't know how to love my father like most daughters do. My father and I were separated for too long during my childhood. I didn't even know what he looked like. The only contact between us was when I took a two-hour bus ride with my mother to the city and spoke to him for a few minutes in a registered phone cube. For some political reasons, he was not allowed to come home and visit us.

He bought me a lot of things, probably too much for a kid.

I daydreamed about him a lot. I was so in love with the dream of him that I completely lost connection with the real man. When I finally met him, he felt like a total stranger. All my dreams and hopes were broken right at that moment. It was painful. Even these days, he feels like a stranger. The only father figure I have is in the most remote dreamland. My father is so loving, so giving, and so impossibly generous. But there is something lost between us. I don't know why I couldn't bond with him authentically.

Why I am so HOPELESS?

Perhaps for every woman, the road to finding true love is ultimately a path of reconciliation with her father. It sounds really odd, really impossible. It is something I was incapable of yet.

All family relationships are creepy in some way. Mine are no exception. I used to avoid coming home until everybody was there. I couldn't stand staying in the same room with my father.

Oddly, fate took a strange turn for my redemption. I have started supporting my father since he got into an accident last year. I have become the sole provider for my father, the parent of my own parent. Such a role reversal changes my psychology quite a bit.

Anyway, I was able to breathe again after that night. I slept heavily afterward. I had a lot of dreams. I was shown the austere beauty of heaven, and a glimpse of the brutality of hell. Both were too much for my physical being to handle. I felt like I was stretched too wide, too big and too deep, that I was forced into this total nothingness, yet also all-togetherness at the same time, both breath-taking.

Surprisingly, this trip gave me all the answers that I have been searching for: who I am, what I am meant to be and how to hold onto love.

I am meant to heal. This revelation came from the phenomenon of healing my Grandma in spirit, through awakening the pain in me and experiencing the extreme physical torture that my Grandma suffered for years. The only thing I couldn't understand was: why me?

Perhaps the answer is obvious: I am a very broken human being.

Paradoxically, it is this high capacity for brokenness, which provides the greatest lesson to be learnt and the most amazing opportunity to heal. There is great wisdom, healing power and inspiration in our wounds.

It is our wounds, our suffering and pain, which drive us to an inner journey that becomes the transformation itself. One liberates himself from the selfish, ego-based feeling of being alone in his wound and expands himself to see his own pain and suffering in others. When this leads us to a decision to change our role and help one another, we reach a transcendence that successfully leads us to a path of SERVICE.

God enters through our wounds.

Last night I heard this hauntingly soul-breaking voice again. It still chills my heart, but I am more capable of handling it now.

I know she is holding me, under the oversprinkled starry night.

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Sarah's Writings:

A Few Words

Poem: The Song of Freedom

I died on the October 27th of 2006

Sarah's Poems

A Love Story

Healed

Presence

Million Dollar Baby

Love Makes Me Exist

Violence

Movies

A Breath of Paradise

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