Flashbacks

Dear Web,
Flashbacks are symptoms that affect people who are suffer from PTSD...it's caused by a certain part of the brain that doesn't register linear time. These flashes take us back to moments of the most poignant trauma and register in our bodies as if it is literally happening in present time. There are several flashback scenes that happen for me, but the one that haunts me most recently is that irreversible moment I wasn't even physically present for--the moment Phoenix was shot.

I believe I know what that moment was, even though I wasn't home at the time. How I know came from a vision I had later that night as I lay beside Phoenix petting him, singing to him, sobbing, keening. At one point I drifted off into a stupor that might have been a moment of sleep. I woke with a start because I literally heard D.'s wife scream: "SHOOT HIM!!" followed by the gunshot that killed Phoenix. My heart was pounding and I was so scared and sure that this was what happened. I felt like that dream/vision was a gift from Spirit so I would know.

These last several days I have been assaulted by that scene, that flashback. It's not like I cannot still function while it's happening, but it derails me for those seconds and it's like I cannot quite dodge the flood of what I am seeing/hearing. I try to focus on other things, the trees around me, something to redirect the flood. I pray for help to not be held captive by that moment. And I have to admit that as painful as that moment is to experience and I am grateful when it passes, it's the one point of sanity, of Truth of why everything feels so wrong and unfamiliar in my life. It's the sobering slap that undeniably says: Phoenix is gone.

Today I had to go to the branch of my bank on the side of town where I used to live. As I drove there, I could feel the urgent longing for the time I lived there...because, you see, then Phoenix would be alive. In fact, this time last year, November 15th, there I was...there we were...in that home. See, I tell myself, all I have to do is drive this familiar way home and all will be well. I wanted it so bad...I had that Desire for it, at any price, I heard myself negotiate! I will give up everything that is good since then, EVERYTHING!!! just to go back and see Phoenix there alive. Can't I just drive home to find him in his yard. We could play with Mr. Quackers (his favorite toy), maybe take a walk. AND.... Maybe there is something I can do on this day that would alter the course of the future events. Maybe I could do or say to these people....something that would erase the growing hate that ultimately yelled, "Shoot him!" and then pulled the trigger!

Hate...there is a Holocaust survivor, actually the oldest one in the world, who spoke about hate. If anyone deserves to hate, she and all the others like her do, not to mention every woman who has ever been violated in anyway. And this particular woman/survivor, her name is Alice, she says she doesn't hate the Nazi's. She says hate eats away at one's own soul. She lived through Nazi hate and saw not only what it did to millions of Jews, but what it did to the Nazi's themselves--to their humanity, their souls.

I am not Alice, nor do I forgive like she has. Sometimes I wonder how these people who killed Phoenix live with themselves. How they might be haunted by their hate that destroyed a precious life. How their own lives will forever reflect that somehow back to them. How maybe in the night they may waken to the sound of those two words and one single irreversible gunshot.

Lastly, I've been listening to James Taylor's Greatest Hits and have been taking his advice literally when he sings about having a friend, winter, spring, summer or fall...and all I have to do is call. I hear my own voice call, "Phoenix, I miss you. Phoenix, come . Phoenix!"

Phoenix!
Melissa