© 2016 Jean-Claude Romeuf
© 2016 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
| The Circuits of the Adjutant Mental Spirits | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 73 — March 2016 | History of the French-speaking Movement in Europe |
Before telling this story, I remember the melody and lyrics of a beautiful Sevillian song called El Amigo. Every time a friend leaves, he leaves behind a lot of sadness and emptiness. So, when we are near him in his last hours, we would like to hold on to him a little longer, just a little while. The song says in Spanish: “Don’t go yet, wait until my guitar cries as it says goodbye to you.”
But I could not keep my friend Pierrot on earth. He was eleven years older than me. I remember that he took me for walks when I was a child and taught me to swim. Although he was often absent during my adolescence, our friendship developed into adulthood until death separated us. I can say without lying that I knew all the important events of his life. Modesty prevented me for a long time from recounting his last hours. After some hesitation, I am sharing them today, counting on your discretion not to reveal this to anyone!
It must first be said that Pierrot, even though he had been raised Catholic, was not a fan of religion and that he had often played truant! The Urantia Book that I had presented to him was not his bedside book either!
After his divorce, at the age of fifty-five, he fled France and converted to Islam with the sole aim of marrying an Indonesian Muslim woman with whom he had a third child.
One day in 1998, I received a phone call from him telling me that he was sick. He asked me for hospitality and to find him a good doctor. That’s what I did. After the first consultation, the doctor took me aside and told me that my friend’s life would end in four months.
As long as there is life, there is hope! So I did my best to make his last days as pleasant as possible. We banqueted, we often savored champagne, we took walks in the nature that he loved so much, we continued to go fishing, to play belote with mutual friends, etc., etc.
Then one day, his brain cancer started to hurt him a lot. So, I asked for him to be hospitalized. As soon as he arrived at the hospital, he fell into a coma. For three days he remained unconscious and I thought he would never wake up again.
That morning, at seven o’clock in the morning, I was approaching his room when I passed a friend in the hallway who said to me, “Pierrot is sitting on his bed, completely conscious, he won’t stop talking; we’re going to be able to continue playing belote!”
I didn’t believe it, but when I opened the door, he was sitting comfortably on his bed; his blue eyes radiated a light of happiness. When he saw me, he said, “I was waiting for you!” I, who knew him well, noticed that his voice had taken on the intonation of a child’s and I was surprised. I had practically nothing to say, except to agree, because he spoke incessantly, recounting his life in the present tense. But it was always about major decisions that sometimes I had been the only one to know.
For example, he said to me, having resumed an adult voice, “If you could feel how cold it is today in England! We’re freezing!” I knew that he had only stayed three days in England, but that this short time had been an episode of great decision for him, requiring an important moral choice.
A few hours later, he began to speak in Indonesian, a language that is completely unknown to me. Then, he fell unconscious again. Then, I had a strange feeling: the room seemed empty to me, I felt that there was no one else but me in this room. Shedding a tear I kissed the forehead of my friend lying there and fled at full speed.
I care little for miracles and am even wary of them. I am rather indifferent to the supernatural stories that one sometimes hears. I prefer to remain incredulous about them.
But I will remember for a long time these few hours spent in the room of a friend who is leaving. Not long ago, I even wondered if I had not witnessed a supernatural phenomenon that happens every time a human prepares to leave for the world of houses, even if the means are not always the same. I do not draw any conclusions from this memorable morning, however, I know that the seraphim, before separating from the mortal they have helped, sort through the human mind the episodes of their life that have survival value.
Bonabo February 6, 2016
Jean-Claude Romeuf
| The Circuits of the Adjutant Mental Spirits | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 73 — March 2016 | History of the French-speaking Movement in Europe |