Farewell to a Long Time Friend

 Each of you are now involved in a much larger production, in which you all agree to certain basic assumption that serve as a framework within which the play can occur. The assumptions are that time is a series of moments one after another; that an objective world exists quite independently of your own creation and perception of it; that you are bound within the physical bodies that you have donned; and that you are limited by time and space.

Other assumptions accepted for the same reason include the idea that all perception comes through your physical senses; in other words, that all information comes from without, and that no information can come from within. You therefore are forces to focus intensely upon the actions of the play. Now these various plays, these creative period pieces represent what you would call reincarnational lives. Seth, as channeled by Jane Robert.

All that we would consider in the modern world to be evil, is created by one thing and one thing only. Evil is created by the mistaken belief in separation. Good is just the opposite. It is totally connected, filled with light and endless bright colors, and it is infused with emotion and unconditional love. Grant Cameron

"Don't cry." Larry's constant refrain to his wife during his almost 10 months in a hospital bed. 

 

One day God and I decided to go to the movies. It was one of those big movie complexes with all sorts of different movies playing.

 I had my medium popcorn and water. God of course had an extra-large popcorn with a large diet coke.

The movie started right at seven like posted on the door. Words started to flow across the screen. I tried to read the words, but my mind would wonder, and I would loose track of what was happening.

Ten minutes into this bland written movie God said to me “This is BS. Let’s get out of here.”

We wandered down the hall into another theatre and this time there were pictures of people doing things, but it was in black and white with no sound.  I had no clue who the people were, and God had signed an NDA not to tell me anything. Just as I was wondering how long this movie would go on for God said, “You don’t appear to be connecting. Let’s move on.” God bought another popcorn and coke, and we searched for another theatre.

In the next theatre things were very different. It was filmed on Hudson Street where I grew up. There was my friend Larry who I would know for 66 years. There in the movie was Bobby Rondeau, Les Swayze, and even the old man on his bike would swear at us and he was forced to drive through our game 7 of the Stanley Cup. The events played as if they were happening for the first time. There was color and emotion. I became one with the film. Time and space disappeared,

This was the period play I am all the others had agreed to play. We all had agreed to live in the coldest city in the world, to explore, learn, and do some stuff. It was the worst of times when friends and family died. It was the best of times when Larry and I with our Jet’s season tickets saw the great Bobby Hull and his line mates capture one championship after another until the NHL screwed the team over.

There were good times like playing ball hockey on the street in front of Larry’s house, or baseball and football in the field across from my house. We were all connected. Members of a team of Fort Garry folks.

Then there were the important moments that I took for granted as random events in a casino. Seventy years into my life I realized that the nature of reality is a bit more complex.  The idea of everything happening by accident was equivalent to Terrence McKinnon’s assessment that this is the Limit Case for Credulity. “If you can believe everything in nature is an accident,” said McKenna, “what is there is in the world that you can’t believe?”

For the first time I grasped what had been done for me.

It was February of 1975, and the UFO called Charlie-Red-Star had been sighted in Carman Manitoba near the United States border. Larry and I would drive around the city doing nothing. I suggested we go to Carman and see what was up. I had no interest in UFOs, but being raised religious, I would never turn down a chance to see a miracle. 

We didn’t go for three months, going only after a local TV station, CKY, had captured the object jumping from the ground. Now watching the movie replay I realized Larry’s important role in the play. He volunteered to drive me to see Charlie Red Star.

I had no interest in the subject and would not have gone by myself even after the CKY film. I did not have a car. Larry left school early to make money. He had the car. He drove the night in May 1975, and he paid for the gas, both on the first and second night that we saw the object. I was busy at University wondering what the hell I was doing there and what would I ever do with all the nonsense they were teaching.

I fell off the edge of the earth when I saw Charlie. I had discovered my role in the play, and I was excited to explore for answers. I always knew, and told everyone who would listen, that I got to play in the Super Bowl of all story.

The fact is that Larry drove me and others to Carman and then he went on with his life. His job in my Shakespearean play was done. Years later people would find out that he had been the first important block in a big ontological UFO block buster series of movies. When he would be asked what he saw he would say, “Whatever Grant said we saw. That’s what we saw.”

Just as I was getting into this movie, God said, “there is one more you need to see.” It was in a small inconspicuous theatre at the end of the hall.

When I entered it was like the light of 1000 suns, with more colors than are in heaven and each. The emotion in this movie was like a high dose psilocybin experience where the emotion is turned up to the highest level.

This movie appeared to be Larry’s personal period play. It was a love story between him and his wife  Shirley, of almost 46 years.  That was the focus of Larry’s life. He was to care for her and love her more than himself. He treated her like a princess. I used to bug them as to how long they had been married. They were attached at the hip. They went everywhere together and even when he and I were across the street at McDonald’s, he would be talking to her in the cell phone finding out what he could buy for her to bring home.

As she needed him, he needed her. That was evident when, years before, she was in a deep coma with H1N1 and he and I stood outside the glass isolation room. My girlfriend cooked meals for him as he dealt with the pain of separation and loneliness as she struggled to stay alive.

Larry took 9 months to come into the world, and for whatever reason he took 9 months of labor and pain to leave. It was  then that the beauty of oneness jumped off the screen. Not able to eat, watch TV, or walk he would be thrilled when she was there. She was trilled to be with him, but she felt his pain.

Larry would always give the thumbs up sign when I asked him how he was doing. How he kept that game up I will never know because not a hell of a lot was going right.

The emotion in this part of the movie exceeds spoken words. From time to time a staff member would cause pain by touching his arm or leg and he would yell out. Shirley would correct him. He would cry, Shirley would cry, and I would cry. Larry would end the whole situation by telling Shirley to stop crying.

This part of the Larry’s play may seem pointless but Seth and other intuitives say we plan our exits from the world. Larry’s exit, of course, centered on Shirley. He made the decision not to go back to the apartment to spare her having to take care of him. He gave her encouragement to set everything in order and move on with life. They talked back and forth like newlyweds “I love you” became his main expression, along with the bullshit thumbs up sign.

Our conversations were absent much news. How much new can happen when you are lying in bed staring at the ceiling for almost 10 months, and much of the time he could not talk. I did talk with him about Shirley and how she had grown up to reset her life now that he would no longer be living with her. He agreed and seemed pleased that she was dealing with her own health problems, arranging to move to a smaller suite in the block, and would have enough money to survive. That seemed to be all he cared about -that and the no-crying rule.

As the movie ended and the tears began again,  I saw the power of love, and the lessons Larry gave me about it’s importance. That which appears to be separate is almost always ignored and devalued.  As the Bible says, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

As with many patients, there is an up day or period near the end. Larry was doing well, out of months of isolation and now sitting for a couple hours in the hall.

 

Shirley wrote me that the painter was coming Wednesday, and the furniture would move to the new apartment on Saturday. She wrote about the latest setback and that he had only days to live. Thursday morning, everything seems taken care of and Larry leaves.

The important lessons I learned from Larry was the same message that is often mentioned by the intelligence behind the UFO phenomenon. 54% of all experiencers polled reported being talked to about “oneness and love.” I didn’t learn that lesson from the intelligence. I learned it from my friend, happily married after 46 years, who also gave me a free ride to see some UFOs in 1975. For him life was simple but meaningful.

Larry and I can perform in a new stage play sometime soon. As Bing Crosby used to sing,

We'll meet again

Don't know where, don't know when

But I know we'll meet again some sunny day

Keep smiling through

Just like you always do

'Til the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away

 

Until then, thanks to Larry for all he has done. It was a life well lived.