You always called me Dear One, and I felt special.
The day we met, you told me that you cheated your way through college and grad school by reading the answers in your teachers' auras. When I told you I could see auras, but not as clearly as you, you said "let's clean those spectacles of yours."
Somehow, your words and vibrations just penetrated my aura and implanted new rhythms into my bone marrow. To this day I still catch your words falling out of my mouth as I write, teach, and mentor my own students and clients.
There was that time you called me several times a week, just to tell me random stories of things your shamans in Africa did to you. You were pissed. They didn't ask your permission, and they terrified you in ways you didn't like. You talked of falling through walls, flying on banana leafs, and leaving your body. You spoke with this odd balance of wonderment and awe yet this very modern frustration mixed with and anger based on your own fear of the unknown.
And oh, Dear One, the things I did, but didn't quite understand, because the items on your divination cloth told you to tell me, and how they changed me at depth. In hindsight, much of it was as wreckless as the way you liked to sprinkle the f-word everywhere (oh how people laughed when you said F&*k). I hassled you for doing to me what your shaman did to you, and you giggled your mischievous kid-like laugh.
There was that time you invited me to your Thanksgiving table in Oregon, and you offered to buy me a new pair of shoes because EVERYONE should have a good pair of Dansko clogs.
There was that time I stayed with you at your new home in Florida and helped you paint your bedrooms. We collapsed at the end of each day in front of an endless stream of Tom & Jerry cartoons and two bottles of red wine. We laughed. And laughed. And laughed for hours at the simple absurdity of a mouse outsmarting a cat.
Although we have not met in the physical in almost a decade, and I cannot readily recall our last human connection, you are with me, always have been.
And now, you take your place at the round table with the rest of my celestial team. What sadness I thought I might/should/could/would have is a mere shadow on high noon of a summer solstice day to the bright excitement light bursting the seams of my aura now that your ancestral spirit is activating those sub-atomic energies you embedded in me for all those years.
I love you dear brother Elder Malidoma.