STUDY - Technical - WRITING

a nEW mORNING for a new family

The Beginning of a New Family

The meeting was to be held... The tribe was unhappy with everything that had happened. The shaman, my mother, was to be judged.

The bad weather and the cold had been going on for too long. Hunting had long since brought no prey; it was no longer accessible, and the last deer in the community was to be slaughtered.

But this time not to ask the spirits of nature for something specific, for us, the tribe, but to feed us.

Everyone was waiting for this ritual without hope.

Just hungry, just waiting for the small portion of meat that will satisfy their hunger for a few more days... Just hungry, avengers of my mother and the spirits who stopped listening to her, who stopped helping them...

Even old Roif, the most respected member of the tribe, no longer listened to her…

He was afraid. He admitted it both to himself and his mother.

The tribe really could no longer be controlled. The hunger and the revenge were too strong. Maybe also for Rolea, the one who was fighting to become a shaman in my mother’s place, who could no longer be controlled...

And now it was judgment... Or condemnation… That’s all… No options…

Before climbing the “Stone of Justice”, the mother hugged him strongly and for a long time, wetting his face with her tears.

“You know what’s next!” she tells him, cupping his cheeks in her hands and making sure he’s paying attention…

“Don’t forget that we asked the spirits to be with us in the lives to come!”, was her last message.

In vain, she reminded the tribe that the spirits always helped us, in vain, she reminded them every moment when miracles were not random, when the spirits were with them…

She was going to be buried in the bogs of the east… The only favor she was being given was to be strangled before her body and spirit were buried in the black, frozen muck that would hide her for eternity.

And Rolea, the new shaman, saw to it that I carried out the sentence. And I didn’t dare to resist... I didn’t have the strength... My mother breathed her last in my arms, through my arms.

I had nothing to do but watch her gentle face, unaffected by death, as it was swallowed up by the mire of the peat.

But he was right. The spirit’s message came true. A new life came and I was by her side again… But for too little time...

She chose to repay my long-ago gesture with her sacrifice. She chose for me to suffer in our new existence through her absence, through her sacrifice, without agreeing for a single moment to bring me death. It was beyond her power to make this gesture.

And that’s why he chose to abandon me in front of an orphanage, to immerse me for eternity in another life, far from it, in the mire of the life that was to come.

I didn’t understand anything then, I hated her, I condemned her moment by moment, for my whole life since then... I was so angry that my mother left me.

But this suffering was not enough for the fulfillment of samsara and the breaking of the karmic bond. For this, she was forced to suffer, far from me but so close to me.

Being a hidden witness to my life without me ever knowing that she was the old Ellie who accompanied us as a servant until the end of her life...

Suffering with me the miserable times since then, leaving shortly after the love of my life since then, Ana, who died after a merciless illness... Too soon…

She could no longer bear the pain I was experiencing in my soul because of Ana’s departure…

And she died without ever telling me that she was my birth mother then and now…

She just whispered to me before leaving, “This is where your duty ends! Live what you have left of this life! Maybe we’ll see each other in the next life when you understand everything that was.”

And she was right. She came back into my life as a mother. Free, beautiful, living life to the fullest, being by my side moment by moment...

Like a kind of shaman, together with another kind of shaman... I had received the “gift” that I would have received a long time ago if the Rolea shaman had not intervened during the “Great Winter."

Now we knew our way and the way it once was. We were together on the same path, in a world where spirits were long forgotten, fighting for people to remember them, the true connection to our lives.

Receiving the “gift” I started the fight alongside her, understanding that the earthly years have no importance for us, no relevance... Everything seems like it happened just yesterday and the day after yesterday…

Along with the fight for the spirits, I also began the fight to redeem the pain of past lives, fighting to release it…

Through the family with three twins and two twin girls, given out of our love with Ana, who became Maria, including the grandchildren that followed, from my children, as my gift to the dissipation of the samsara with which I burdened her soul...

And not by her deeds, but by her love for me and my mistake...

Then, on the anniversary of the 72 summers she lived in this life, we all met, wanting to be by her side to get over the departure of Rollie, our father.

Rollie, the incarnation of the old Rolea, has been eager and dedicated to closing her open samsara through her gesture since...

After this snapshot of our celebration, Mom retreated under her favorite chestnut tree in our childhood garden, stretching out on the padded swing as if to take a nap.

She was tired, or I felt her desire to talk to me.

“Have you come?” she asked me rhetorically without opening her eyes or seeming to wake up from her meditation. “You feel the call of the spirits, don’t you?”

“But it won’t be now, please!” I answered scared, filled with shivers of foreboding.

Her piercing black eyes opened wide, startling me. It was her most serious look possible.

“Tomorrow morning, I will leave. It’s time to dedicate myself to a new family. Ever since you received the “gift” you knew that. And Rollea and I settled our accounts with you, with all of you.”

“But do the spirits still need you?”, I then tried to comfort her, to make her tell me something else.

“Spirits don’t belong to a particular place! Now they need us at other times and in other dimensions! The lessons here have been passed on. Now it is your duty, yours, to continue writing in the book of life, especially in that of Ana and the children, to whom you have become so attached!”.

“And what else should I do? You always told me to always do what I feel, regardless of my feelings, and pay attention only to my deeds!”.

Then she looked me in the eyes, holding my cheeks in her hands, as if to make sure I was paying attention, and said:

“Remember, we can only write some personal footnotes in the great book of life through our temporal existence! Be open to writing your notes! That’s it.”…

Note: Images are created by me, Merticaru Dorin Nicolae, using Microsoft Bing Image Creator.

Dorin, Merticaru (12.04, 2023)