Deep Magic
The universe is full of deep magic, but most miracles can be traced back to someone’s profound and quiet kindness. An excerpt from Luck by Joy Sullivan
The universe may be full of deep magic if we are open to it, if we don’t crave or grasp for it. I crave the magic, grasp toward fleeting seconds of stillness.
Sometimes both are there, unbidden, when I wake in the pre-dawn hours.
***
The morning after Beth died, I woke in her bed and glanced at the digital clock on her nightstand. 6:11; her birthday. Her energy was immediately present, unmistakably her, exactly as she hugged. I clutched people tightly, squeezed them to my chest and then released them quickly. A hug triggered my fear of intimacy, managed only by maintaining clear boundaries with a definite beginning and end. Beth’s hugs were nebulous. She snuck into your arms like a feather and melted. That morning, like butter on a griddle, her energy entered at the soles of my feet and filled me inch by inch, warm and fluid, to the top of my head.
She was still with me.
In the days and weeks that followed, her energy became a daily light show behind my closed eyes. It was mobile and dramatic, different every time, bursts of pure white against a deep black background. She wove intricate webs of light, dashed off geometric shapes, letters tumbled over each other into the pull of gravity. Her light spiraled and circled and pulsed with life.
This was some deep magic alright, and I had a front row seat.
A year and a half later, I woke in my brother’s bed in Manhattan the morning after he died. His wife had chosen the couch, where she’d slept for the last two months as lung cancer too quickly sapped Paul’s strength and breath. Night noises had intruded on my sleep all night: car and truck engines on the street below, sirens, honking, human voices and music. At one point, a dance party boomed right outside the window, six floors down. The courtyard below amplified humanity in full motion.
There was no digital clock to mark Paul’s presence. I closed my eyes and let morning traffic noise wash through me. Life continued all around. Beth appeared as usual; her light so bright that I opened my eyes to check that there wasn’t an external source. As usual, it was dark. I closed my eyes to her swirls and spirals. Allowed her to hold me.
I am here, her light seems to say. I am with you.
And, that morning, there was another message.
I am with you, and I have Paul.
Beth and Paul were always close despite a six year age difference. She was his champion and protector. The day we stood vigil in the hospital as Paul’s body gradually shut down, I told his kids about Royalty, the card game Beth designed and played with Paul on rainy weekends when we were kids. I heard the two of them often in one of the bedrooms. “Oh, I forgot to tell you one other rule,” she said many times. He went along with all the changes, happy to be playing with his big sister, eager, trusting, some might say gullible. It wasn’t until the fifth or sixth game, and the millionth rule change, that I heard Paul say tentatively, finally catching on that Beth was constantly rigging the game. “Hey, wait a minute. What’s going on here?”
It felt good to remember Beth and Paul, to chuckle at their younger selves, to marvel at their particular bond and connection. He had been hospitalized for two weeks with dangerously low oxygen saturation. He was unable to catch his breath, or speak comfortably due to a trapped lung. He had been awake when Eli and I arrived the day before. His eyes lit up when he saw his son. They clasped hands; Eli leaned in close. “I love you I love you I love you.” Paul’s voice was barely audible, breathy and forced. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I love you. I love you.”
They were his final words.
***
Hours later, the nurses adjusted the IV drip of pain medicine, and he relaxed back into sleep.
I sat at his left foot. Olivia at his right. Milla held his right hand, and Eli held his left.
Olivia reminded us about when her mom was hospitalized and isolated with covid three years earlier. It was one of many times Beth thought she was coming to the end of her 22-year cancer journey.
Don’t worry, she texted. If this goes south I know I will be okay. I am surrounded by luminous beings. Olivia told the story just like Beth. “Luminous beings,” she said. Her words shimmered with light.
I directed my question to Paul’s sleeping form, “Are you surrounded by luminous beings, Paul?”
Eli looked up suddenly. “He just squeezed my hand.”
***
I recalled Eli’s look of wonder the next morning when I woke in Paul’s bed. The deep magic of the universe alive in Beth’s light show.
There in the bottom of my mind’s eye was the tiniest speck of light. Beth’s light spiraled around it, scooped it up as if playing with it, protecting it. She was showing him the ropes. This is how you move in the world without a body, she seemed to say. Follow me. I’ll show you how this works.
Maybe most miracles can be traced back to someone’s profound and quiet kindness: the nurses at Memorial Sloan Kettering, the nursing aids, the custodial crew. Everyone was incredibly calm, present, and respectful. A quiet knock on the door, a peek around the edge. Okay if I grab the trash? I have your dinner? Just a quick vitals check, okay?
Then, there was the parking garage attendant standing under a sign that clearly stated: NO ACCESS TO CARS PARKED OVERNIGHT.
I asked anyway, “Is it okay, if I come back to grab my nephew’s backpack in a couple of hours? I know I’m not supposed to. I’m not leaving the city until tomorrow. I was here last week. Do you remember me?”
He didn’t know my brother had just died. He didn’t know that I’d been back and forth to Manhattan from Western Massachusetts three times in the last two weeks, that I’d made an hours-long detour to pick up my nephew, that we’d spent the last 24 hours standing vigil. Maybe he saw it in my tired eyes, my lined face, my body sagging under the weight of loss.
“Si,” he said, “I remember you. I will leave your car right here.” He pointed to the first open spot just inside the garage door. “When you come back, bring your ticket.”
The kindness of others and the universe’s deep magic.
Maybe they are one and the same.
My niece Olivia started her own Substack. Read her writing and follow her below.
Linda, this is a beautiful, beautiful essay. It, and you, are luminous.
Many thanks.