Freedom from Hell

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom” – Kierkegaard

‘Arrival in Auschwitz is a defining moment in your life. The doors open, you are thrown out, greeted by barking dogs, screaming figures with whips, a stench of burning flesh and a glow of fire. Everything happens at breakneck speed. “Out, out, out!” You are driven off running. You are taken to a building, stripped, put under cold showers, driven into the next hall where they shave off your hair. There are no towels so you are still wet and cold. Then women prisoners smear your body with a mop dipped in green fluid which stings. In the next hall you are thrown some rags and wooden clogs. In the final hall there are women sitting at tables with funny pens in their hands and before you know it needles are piercing your skin. That is when you become a number [39934]. Whistles blow and there is a roll call. Thousands of women are rushing to stand in line. For hours you stand in the rain and people fall to the ground dead. Then you are driven into a hut and you think, “At last, I can lie down.” But you can’t. There are 1,000 women trying to lie down on the bunks. You are lucky to find a corner to cling to. Welcome to Auschwitz. Welcome to hell.’

Kitty lost 30 members of her family in the Holocaust. Her father was betrayed and shot. Her brother died fighting at Stalingrad alongside the Russians. She and her mother came to Birmingham, to an aunt and uncle who’d escaped Europe before the war. Her uncle’s greeting: ‘In my house I don’t want you to speak about anything that happened to you.’ Adjustment took time. ‘I didn’t know how to hold a knife and fork. I was slopping my food out of a bowl. I used to take the bread my neighbours had thrown in their dustbins

A lust for revenge kept Kitty alive at one point: revenge for the friends she lost in Auschwitz and those shot or clubbed to death if they lagged on the death march. After liberation, she was part of a group that rampaged through Salzwedel town. But confronting a cowering German family, a knife in her hand, she knew she could not hurt them. Today, her work takes her throughout Europe, and when she talks to German teenagers, ‘I tell them, “It is not your fault. You are not to blame.”’ They must notice that every sentence she says is imbued with rigorous honesty. Perhaps they also sense the stark dignity shaping her compassion. -By LOUETTE HARDING about Kitty-Hart Moxon

Who can imagine the horrors of the concentration camps?  What must it have been like to at last be free? A child learns to walk by letting go of the chair where her mother sits excitedly anticipating the first step.  Who is standing by to hold your hand as you leave behind what has become a way of life, the living Hell of being a prisoner waiting to die, but determined to live?

If you have ever been abused, mistreated, or violated in any way, if you have witnessed atrocities first hand and lived to tell the story, you know the irony of freedom.  Those who did not survive, who were killed or took their own lives, those who lived but could not cope with the anxiety of freedom, those men, women and children are ghosts hanging on to your coat tails.  They ride with you to the grocery store, the bank, as you drop your children off at school.  They come to you in your dreams.  You see them in the faces of those you pass on the street.  One word brings them back.  Do you feel guilty?  Perhaps.  Grateful?  Hopefully yes.  But most of all I think one feels compelled to tell the story, to share with others what you have experienced and what you know about yourself and the world as a result.  Stories have the power to transform lives, your own and others.  Tell your story.  Honor the ghosts of your past, even those who persecuted you for it is in the forgiving that we learn to live again.

“Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.” – Ghandi

Near Death Experience and Beyond

Said the night wind to the little lamb
Do you see what I see
(Do you see what I see)
Way up in the sky little lamb
Do you see what I see
(Do you see what I see)
A star, a star
Dancing in the night
With a tail as big as a kite
With a tail as big as a kite

My husband teases me when I say, “Do you see what I mean?”  He laughs and asks, “Did you hear what you just said?  How can I see something you are saying?”  I respond, “How could you not?”

In school, I performed best on tests when I reread the material the night before the exam.  Then when presented with the questions, I could see in my mind’s eye the answer as it was printed in the textbook or in my notes.  People tell me, “You must have a photographic memory.”  Perhaps.  I believe I have second sight defined as ” a form of extrasensory perception, the power to perceive things that are not present to the senses, whereby a person perceives information, in the form of a vision, about future events before they happen, or about things or events at a remote location.”  This ability to “see” what is not seen comes and goes. The more I read, the more I write, the more accessible it becomes.

My grandmother was paranoid schizophrenia.  She was institutionalized, so the story goes, after she took a butcher knife out into the neighborhood and threatened to kill someone.  I knew then, what I know now, that that is not what happened.  Go back with me.  I am three years old.  My grandmother, father and I live in a tiny duplex on Miami Street in South Bend, IN.  It is early morning.  Dad has been up all night, reading and drinking.  He is belligerent, pushing grandma up against the refrigerator.  I am in my crib in a sliver of a room behind the kitchen.  I cannot see them, but I know exactly what is happening.  Grandma is wearing her half-apron.  She was cooking oatmeal when Daddy confronted her.  I see her stirring the contents of her favorite iron skillet, the one she never washed.  There are not words, only pictures.  Grandma pinned up against the refrigerator. Daddy pounding her chest with his finger, then grabbing her shoulder and shaking her until her head bounced against door.  She reaches for a butcher knife lying on the counter and points it right in his face.  Stunned, he backs off and she runs outside hoping to get help.

Grandma was never crazy.  She had second sight too.  She had visions of angels and talked to God.

When my son died, the paramedics resuscitated him on the floor of a bar in Memphis.  I was far away in Pennsylvania when I awoke suddenly in the middle of the night.  At that very moment, my cell phone began to ring, a very strange phenomenon given that there was no reception in the building where we were staying.  To use our phones, we had to walk a distance away from the building.  Never had there been reception inside.  It was Leah, my ex-husband’s wife on the other end.  “Jordan is dead. I mean, he is alive, but he died.”  She tried to explain what had happened, but I already knew.  I saw him in the ambulance.  I saw myself beside him, holding his hand.

He was in a coma in ICU when I finally took his hand in mine and calmly said, “Jordan, I don’t know if it is your time to go or not.  I know you see the light.”  ( I could see him walking toward the light.  My grandmother was there and my father with her.  They reached toward him, welcoming him into their arms)  “Honey, I want you to know if you are ready to go, do it.  I will be fine.  We will all be sad, but we will be all right.  This is your choice.  But if you want to come back, if you want to live, do not walk toward the light.  I know it is tempting.  It is beautiful.  But if you want to come back to us, listen to my voice.  I am going to keep talking.  You decide.”

The next day, Jordan opened his eyes.  Leah and I were sitting on five gallon paint buckets outside the ICU doors ( the waiting room was being re-built) when the sweet Indian doctor whose name I cannot remember appeared and offered me his hand.  ( I must explain something here. The odd thing about my second-sight is that I have a terrible memory for dates, times, names, and the details of events that actually happened.  My inner eye has 20/20 vision while my real eyes see and remember very little.)   “This is nothing less than a miracle.  We did not think your son would come out of the coma.  We rarely, if ever, see this kind of recovery.”  I threw my arms around him.  Leah cried and ran to tell the others.  The doctor stepped back. Still holding my hands, his eyes piercing mine, he repeated, “This is truly a miracle.  Now we must wait.  There may be brain damage.  Time will tell.”  I knew Jordan would make a full recovery.  He did.  He had decided to return, to come back from the dead.

I have many more stories like this one.  The time I was standing at the kitchen sink and I heard a voice, loud and clear, “It is time to have baby.”  I was never, ever going to have children.  I knew I did not have the skills to raise a child. Nine months later, my first daughter, Katie, was born.  As an aside, I was told I would never be able to bear children because I had a prolapsed uterus.

Then there was the time I walked into the building at 524 South Cooper, an old, run-down beauty school, and instantly saw what would be Midtown Yoga.  It was as if someone had snapped a photograph of the studio, what it looked like in the future, and held it in front of my eyes.  I told my husband, “I see it.  Yes, this is a yoga studio.”  And to this day it is a vibrant, thriving yoga center.

And then there was a time I was at Myrtle Beach, asleep in my bed, when finger tapped me on the shoulder and a voice said, “Wake up.”  I rolled over to see who it was.  No one was there.  The next morning, I received a message from my husband that Jimmy’s father had died.  Odd?  A coincidence?  Maybe.

Or the night I heard from my sister that my father died.  I dropped to my knees next to me bed and called out, “Daddy.”  He came to me.  He was with me in the room.  I smelled his cologne, his cigar breath.  I felt the smooth skin of his cheek next to mine.  “I love you Daddy.”   “I am with you,” he said.  “The past is behind us.  I love you.  Let me know if you ever need anything, anything at all.  I am here.”  To this day, I call on my Dad when I am confused or depressed.  I do not ask him to for miracles.  I just ask for guidance.

The psychiatrist at The Wiillows treatment center told me I was hallucinating when I responded in this way to her questions.  During my intake interview she asked, “Do you hear voices?”

Without thinking, I said, “Yes, of course.  I talk to my father and grandmother all the time.”

She responded, “You mean you call them.”

“No,” I said.  They are dead.  I talk to them when I need help.

And you know what the psychiatrist said?  “You know that is crazy.  You are delusional.  No one talks to the dead.”

I do.

Maybe my ability to “see” is simply a combination highly refined memory, visualization and intuition.  I don’t know, nor do I care.  I see what I see and I trust what I see .  When I sit down to write I wait for the word or phrase or idea to present itself to me.  I have no idea where it will take me.  I put my fingers on the key board and it begins.  I trust more will be revealed.  Thy will be done.