Sometimes the Soul speaks. I have a patient who has Parkinson’s disease, she has expressive aphasia, she has thoughts she cannot put into words. This causes her a great deal of frustration.  Last week she decided she had had enough and want to go to the hospital to die. We talked about this choice and that perhaps going to the hospital doesn’t always equate into death. We talked about her frustrations, and her loss of self-control, the tremors, the inability to walk, the need to be fed.  I acknowledged all of these things, she cried and released a lot of pent up emotion, wordless expression of her sorrow. I sat with her and held her hand. Her husband sat silently in his recliner listening to the interaction. By the end of the visit she felt calmer, peace had found an entry way into her sadness.

Yesterday I visited again, she asked me this “When did you move back from California?” Her words were clear and concise. At first, I was confused and offered, “I only visited last Spring, two of my children live there…” Thinking perhaps she had confused my vacation time away from her.

Then she looked me right in the eye, there was a light in hers I hadn’t seen before and she said, “You don’t remember- do you?” Now I was totally intrigued, magic was afoot, her soul was speaking…

“Tell me what I have forgotten…” I encouraged her.

“You saved me once before.  When I was a young girl you came and saved me.”

“How?”

“I was going to commit suicide and you saved me.  And now I have three beautiful children and Bob!”

It was a huge statement; I wasn’t sure how to process it.  My mind reeling, she is 89 years old, 32 years my senior.  Mathematically impossible, at least in my current form.

I replied, “I am so glad we are together again.”

We talked a little about why people choose to take their own lives, to stop the pain and suffering they find unending.  We talked a bit about how the ones left behind are left in that pain, and how it breeds sadness for everyone.  She nodded her head, she understood that now.

We sat in silence, I held her hand, the soul light receded from her eyes.  She complained she was uncomfortable, I repositioned her with pillows, she closed her eyes to nap.

I later spoke with a friend who suggested that I had indeed intervened, as a different person, in a different lifetime for me, and now it has come full circle, as now she is fulfilling her life and I am walking her home.