By Elle Dooley

I had a birthday recently. My partner gave me a Himalayan Salt Hot Stone Massage as a birthday gift. He scheduled it at a spa in beautiful Ranchos de Albuquerque. It is on the grounds of an organic farm whose primary crop is lavender. The past is very present in the art and architecture. Entering the grounds is a lovely and long step back in time.

I admit I’m a little anxious about massage. Hands on touch is fine but I suffer from claustrophobia when confined to a small room with a stranger. Massage is a challenge until I have a relationship with the human being who will care for me in this way.

On this day, I am face down on the massage table when the therapist begins to lay her hands on me. These are the gentle first strokes, meant to relax and soothe, establishing the relationship between us for this brief time we are together. As her hands move over my back, I sense another pair of hands fluttering around the table as if they are on the wing. I see and sense and hear them as wings, yet the predominant sense is that there is another pair of hands in the room. I breathe and I wait.

The floorboards are very old; they squeak and groan as the therapist moves around the table. Again, I hear the sounds of two people moving, two pairs of feet bringing forth the deep creak of old planks. My senses are overwhelmed, and I surrender to the touch of the massage. It is a lovely, soothing experience in every way.

As our time together ends, the massage therapist leads me back to the lounge where I’ll rehydrate. As we are walking, I think of the second set of hands that fluttered around me, the second set of footsteps that I heard on the floor.  I want to speak this out loud. But I hesitate. It’s only a sensation I had; I could be – I don’t know. I could be perceived as weird or delusional. Just plain wrong. I could be ridiculed, rejected, dismissed out of hand. It’s a risk to speak. But I made a commitment this year to live my inner life out loud. So, I take a chance.

I preface my thoughts with, “I don’t know how this will sound but I felt the presence of other hands, the presence of another being. I heard other footsteps in the room.” And then I wait for whatever will come back to me from this beautiful woman.

“I lost my young son several years ago. Some people have told me that he is always with me.” She shows me the tattoos on her arm, almost photographic images of a handsome young man – at two years of age, seven, seventeen. And then no more. And then she hugged me. And thanked me.

I was so hesitant to be seen as crazy, or strange, or wrong or weird. I almost withheld the gift of witnessing the deep love of a woman for a son, of being witness to a son’s undying presence in his mother’s life. I almost held my own counsel and denied another human soul the chance to be seen, to have a profound experience in her life felt and acknowledged by another.

The gift of being an Elder is finally allowing the expression of my own senses, despite the presence of fear. It is ultimately giving voice to my perceptions and my truth. In this instance, in the service of witnessing another.

And for me, allowing sensory impressions that have lain dormant, smothered by the culture of what is accepted as rational thought It’s an embrace of the wholeness of my experience. A chance to welcome an angel to my table.