The following is an extract from my forthcoming book BEINGS OF LOVE
Mental Health: An Astrological and Spiritual Lens
I could not have anticipated that soon after the lockdown began in March 2020, my twin brother died suddenly and unexpectedly, before we were going to celebrate our 70th birthday together later that year.
LOSING RAFEY
How can one write about the pain of loss? I feel to say that I cannot. For the pain of loss does not dwell in the mind, it resides in the heart and soul. The heart and soul are not verbal. They are a realm as deep as the deepest ocean, so that all I can do is to try and keep afloat in these turbulent seas and rivers of tears. The tears which flow down my face feel like an eternal cascade which will last for infinity. My twin. My friend. My womb mate. My mate on the top bunk bed. My classmate, my confidante, my fellow conspirator. I have never felt so separate and yet so whole. I have never felt so vulnerable and yet so powerful. I have never felt so alone and yet so connected.
My body undulates like a stormy sea and the tears seem to flow from the top of my head to the soles of my feet. They seem to flow into the depths of the Earth. I ask Mother Earth to support me in this loss and to bless him for all he endured while he was here. The injustice, the misunderstanding, the deaf ears of the “experts”, the incarceration, the electrodes, the torture and the poisons used to suppress the depth of his insight which was too high and too deep for their understanding.
I feel anger rise within me for what was done to him and suddenly a quote from my christian past comes into my mind. “Father forgive them for they know not what they do”. I search within myself to find compassion for them. I fail. The pain of loss and injustice overrides my ability to feel compassion for those who would not listen to people like myself. Those without their training, with no qualifications or letters after our names. I try not to think of his innocence, his sense of fun and our childhood pranks. Shared days on the beach in Sussex and hours of fun riding horses on Auntie Marjie’s farm. Our first day at school together aged four and opening our Christmas stockings with gifts brought down the chimney by Santa Claus.
How could he have known what lay before him? Somewhere within me I know he did. They yanked him from the womb with forceps, he did not want to come. He did not want to leave the comfort of the Oneness, to face the limitations his soul would experience in the human body, with all its wants and needs so often unfulfilled. To enter a culture both blind and deaf to the truth of the individual and our connection with nature, which is the earthly expression of the Divine.
Veronica is soon to have her first book, BEINGS OF LOVE, published, giving an Astrological and spiritual perspective on mental health.