Yolanda Moreno Miranda, Rest In Power

1. Yolanda & I, Nicole Melnick on the Venice Boardwalk

2. Yolanda & Philip Melnick circa 1980

3. Yolanda at an International Women’s Day Celebration March 8, 2018

I first met Yolanda 27 years ago when I was 21. She was overjoyed because it had been hard to have a meaningful relationship with my late husband Philip Melnick, aka Felipe, only because they had been separated due to Felipe‘s former wife making it hard for him to visit. That is what she told me, anyway. She would always remind me that she was overjoyed that I was in his life and that he could be back in her life. 

Yolanda and Felipe met in the late 70s or early 80s as they were both union organizers. They weren’t just any union organizers. They were the greatest union organizers, in the upper echelon of the greatest union organizers in California history in fact, it’s possible that they were so good that when they organized the psych tech workers of the California state mental hospitals, and one one of the largest campaigns in California history, shortly thereafter, Ronald Reagan would enact policies that would drastically undermine all the state hospitals, leaving the mentally ill without proper care and oversight, which may have contributed to the worsening of today’s mental health, crisis and homelessness epidemic. 

Whenever we went to Venice, I would always see Yolanda going out to help the homeless, collect things from around the neighborhood to refurbish with her own beautiful style, and always staying busy. We will talk about her heroes that were also my heroes like Ernesto Che Guevara and the great labor leaders she grew up with as a campesina (migrant farm worker) and young community organizer.

Whenever we go to Venice, Yolanda would let us know just how happy she was to see us. She always made me feel special like part of a family. A strange but amazing family. In 2010 my late husband, Felipe and I would come back from Yucatán where we were looking for a place for us to move with my father-in-law who I cared for in his home. We knew we would need more help for him and wanted a better quality of life for all of us. What we didn’t know was that we were going to meet a very special curandero who would find the need to treat my husband as apparently he was sick.The treatment was 14 days of Ayuasca. Don Antonio would immediately tell him in Mayan, translated by his daughter to Spanish, that the pain in his back was not coming from his back. Hence the need for the treatment. We asked our healer Don Antonio, if it would be safe to come back to the United States while on this treatment. He said yes. The reason that it would be safe was because of Yolanda and the spirit of her abuelita. Felipe needed help during the treatment. He was having trouble coming down off of the tea Medicine. He was too high and too overheated.

When we arrived in Los Angeles, Felipe would say he wanted to go to Venice, not home. Jim picked us up and brought us to his house. It was the last day for he and other free Venice beachhead participants to get the paper out, and it was a little difficult with Felipe not quite being himself. I tried to keep him out of their way. I put him to bed in Karl’s room and went to sit in the dining room to collect my mind after a long journey. Yolanda comes out of her room seemingly aggravated. She asked “who’s here!?” I said to her “Yolanda it’s Nikki.” She argued “no it’s not Nikki. Don’t say it’s Nikki.” I told her come over here and look at me. 

When she saw it was me we had a good embrace. I explained to her what was going on with Felipe and she immediately sprang into action. I never saw anything like it. She started saying, no, chanting “the shaman wants him to come down. The shaman wants him to come down. The shaman wants him to come down.” She went over to Felipe and took his head in her hand and put her other hand over his forehead.

She started speaking a language that I never heard her speak before. I  believe it must have been Yaqui like she heard from her grandmother, or abuelita. It almost seemed like she was in a trance. She was very deliberate and even forceful in a gentle way. I looked around to see if anybody else was seeing this or hearing this. I was the only witness besides Felipe. He looks like he was getting great relief, and when she was done, she tucked him in and told him to sleep. I don’t think he would’ve gone to sleep any other way during this time. It helped him transition back to this world. she and I ended up staying up all night talking, her telling stories, and us crying together.

Her actions were truly inspiring, and I felt that her abuelita had somehow come together with our curandero in Yucatán in spirit to help Felipe through that difficult time. A couple of weeks later, Jim would report that whatever took place that night seemed to help Yolanda out of a funk that she had been in for some time. A few months later, we would find out from Don Antonio that he was extremely worried about Felipe‘s health and believed that that treatment with ayahuasca was the only way to help him. That he knew it would be hard but necessary. Felipe ended up living eight more years.

During the time that Felipe was sick with lung cancer soon after we lost his father, he became very depressed and even a little angry. I did my best to try to keep up his spirits, but it was definitely a heartbreaking and challenging time. Suddenly he started to emotionally come back to life. He wanted to see his friends and the number one friend he wanted to see was Yolanda. He got on the phone with her. He told her that we had a room for her to stay in for as long as she wanted and a van for her to drive. Tragically that would not be realized while he was alive. He passed away a couple of weeks later.

About three or four weeks after Felipe’s passing, Yolanda would come to take care of me. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t speak, I could barely even get out of bed and mostly I did not for some time. We cried together because Felipe was more than a friend to her. He was family. After Felipe talked to Yolanda for the last time, he said to me how beautiful she is. I agreed and said “ yes, like Katy Jurado. He objected “ No! More beautiful than Katy Jurado.“ I had to agree with him.

Yolanda did the things that I could not do. She tried to keep up the house; cleaning, sweeping, vacuuming, wiping. I didn’t even see most of what she would do because I just couldn’t be that present. But her presence there meant the world to me and my daughter. She would tell me how important it was for us to celebrate international women’s day. So even though I was really in no shape to do that, because she had been there for me so much, I decided that I would do everything I could to make it a good one. We would put together little gifts to hand out. Rose petals and lavender in little sachets. Postcards of the legendary Frida Kahlo. I still have mine of course. And we went to the favorite Venetian Mexican restaurant, La Cabaña, and many amazing women showed up to help ring in international women’s day. I saw her in her element: empowering working class and artisan women and mothers. That was the first time I would meet her gorgeous daughter Rebecca, and I could see the resemblance, especially in the way they carried themselves. 

Finally, she would help me, my mother, Karl, and Jim prepare for Felipe’s memorial. She worked so hard that she knocked herself out that day and wasn’t able to attend much of the memorial. I was so grateful. I even called her mama in front of my own mother, which would normally be a sacrilege to my mother. I said “Mom, this is the only person besides you that I will ever call mama. She deserves that.“ My mother nodded her head in acceptance.

Over the next year after Felipe‘s passing, Karl, or as we often refer to him affectionately as Karlos, would help me through the most difficult year of my life. Every day, I would wake up to find myself in the same nightmare, that my husband really was gone. Some nights I could barely sleep, even though I felt like I had been hit by two Mac trucks. When I spent time with Karl I felt a little lighter and definitely cared about. He even loved Felipe. I loved the fact that he loved my husband very much and would’ve done anything to help him through his cancer crisis. I love that he loved Yolanda very much like family. She always said that her mother told her that angels walk the Earth and Karlos is an angel walking the Earth. Probably the most positive person I’ve ever met. Not to mention kind. After a year of deep mourning , Karl would confess his love for me very tenderly. Couldn’t help but love him back. When I told Yolanda she said to me that she knew before I did. I was not surprised.

Karl and I would help.Yolanda return back to California after living in Utah and Oregon. While she stayed for some months in Venice at our friend Lisa’s Airbnb, I would drive several times a week from Studio City to help her connect with doctors for her chronic pain and other necessary, medical treatment. We would go shopping, get a bite to eat, and have great visits. Eventually, I would officially become her caregiver, and eventually she, Jim, Karlos, and I would move into a house in Woodland Hills just a couple of miles away from my own home in West Hills. I’m not gonna say it was an easy time, but I’m glad I did it. It was an honor to take care of Yolanda despite the fact that sometimes there were difficulties. She was a Taurus, so I believe her being stubborn at times was what developed her chongona status. That is the same status that would carry her throughout her union career. I aspire to her chingona greatness. 

We would have many great laughs, especially when I had to give her injections of arthritis medication. She taught me the Spanish word lonja , which means love handle. I would say, “OK get out your lonja!” She would laugh and say “oh, you like this you vampire!“ We both cracked up.

I would end up having to unexpectedly move back to my home where my daughter was still living due to unforeseen circumstances. I was glad we were still close to where she was living so that I could check in on her often. Like anybody would for their mama. We would still get to tell stories, share many memories, and laugh, usually hearty gut wrenching laughter. She reminded me of my husband in many ways, so I longed for it.

She ministered a healing session to me when I came to her shaking and desperately in need. I had been betrayed by “family” and after so much heartbreak, my nervous system was bonkers. I brought her sage in abalone shell and a fan to smudge me. I knew took this very seriously. She had done this for Felipe when he was sick. Just like before, Yolanda spoke and moved with force and focus. She bathed me in smoke and invoked divine protection. She told bad spirits to get away. My shaking and sickness from sadness was largely lifted when she was done. I hugged her and thanked her. I told her I knew she was the only one that could help me.

The next day she told me that she got very sick and vomited from the cleansing ceremony or limpia she gave me. She said she wasn’t telling me so that I would feel bad. Instead, I had to really guard myself and not hold onto others hate.

Thank God Karl and I got to see Yolanda in Utah a couple of weeks before she left us. She was beautiful and in rare form. She was beaming that we were there, and she had a special light around her. She helped fix my medicine bag, the one with my curandero’s medicine pouch. She blessed it and put her heartbeat in it and told me to keep it close. I have so much gratitude for her for all she did for me and all she did for so many. I saw her son Timoteo lovingly caring for her which filled my heart. I love her children as my own family.

Two giants passed away very close to each other in time and space on September 15, 2025. Yolanda Moreno Miranda in Richfield, Utah and Robert Redford in Provo, Utah. May they continue their work from the spirit side, along with Felipe. May we make them proud. May they watch over us all in these challenging times. It was an honor to consider Yolanda among my most intimate of friends.

​

Dear Judas

​Dear Judas 

Won’t you admit you betrayed

Dear Judas

Friends won’t come out to play

You signed Phil Melnick’s last will

I, his widow, you betrayed

You shouldn’t smile another day

Dear Judas

That’s just the top of the page

Dear Judas

You know you played your so called

best friend Karl A

Dear Judas

Let me count the ways 

You played Comandante

Broke his spirit and his bank

It was a setup from the first day

Until your pirate ship sank

Emotional blackmail with 

Yolanda your unwitting pawn

Getting rid of Nikki was the goal to be won

When the vultures she had called family

Went to pick her husband’s bones

If it were up to you she would be all alone

And Judas would still have his throne

Dear Judas

How did you treat Joanna?

She needed support and a friend

You just wanted to play pretend in Venice

Told everyone a lie that she was your girl

right after her partner died

Then you lied about her trustworthiness

But most people know you’re the Judas

Dear Judas

It’s weak people you seek

To break them down more to be meek

I like to break this malignant narcissist

down and make him atone all over town

I’d like to have you lose your home

Like you helped happen to me,

you Judas, aka Jim S.

I so easily call you Judas

Don’t forget that’s what you called me

We had a birthday party planned

but changed the date when 

                                     I was not free

I kept my plans with Joanna, with her

                                     I’d rather be.

That’s when you said it, “Judas!”

Like you were on a throne.

When Karl and I went to visit Yolanda

for the last time and say goodbye 

and share in many memories,

Yolanda would tell you over the phone

that we were not including you.

The reason why? Your friendship is 

                                      just not true

Dear Judas,

You burned your bridges with everyone

The self proclaimed Mayor of Venice

His days as leader are done

J. Smith look what you have done.  

If God Is, Satan is

​If God is then Satan is…

If God is collective consciousness,

then Satan is the antithesis.

Satan is separative unconsciousness.

God is unity, fraternity, and love.

God is the anchor, the harbor, the comforter.

Satan is ego, selfishness, living in darkness. The absence of light, the light that carries on the universe in which we are all part of the dance. 

Satan is mass hysteria designed to pull you apart from your divine birthright.

I never argue that God is a man, a central figure that can be classified as anything that we can put words to. We can only have a fleeting idea, and that because we all are, God is. The I am. The one whose image we are made in.

Satan says to man “you are the one. You deserve to have a good time. You deserve power over others.” Satan is the big lie. Instant gratification and subjugation.

Those who sacrifice themselves for others are close to God, they embody the image that says it is not all about me. God is not all about itself. It is existence, knowledge, bliss. It is reality that gets muddied by the thread of greed that makes a handful feel that they can exploit the many to get ahead of everyone else. 

God is care. God is meaning. God is free. If you are consistently attuning yourself to God, you can withstand the negative effects of this world seemingly designed to break down our nervous systems. Keep strong in the supreme reality and become like God to be an anchor for all to cling to in the murky and choppy seas of the delusion.

God can take a lifetime to find if not many lives.God is the nectar of the hummingbird that suckles from each and every blossom. Yet God is not the gifts given. God is the only gift. Miracles are God waking you or saving you, usually from yourself.

Satan is, like Alistair Crowley, who proclaimed himself the most evil man in the world, said, “do what thou wilt.“ The hedonistic agenda of lust, greed, us versus them. Sometimes it seems like Satan is in charge. How else can we know what to do? Satan doesn’t have anything real to offer. Anything offered is like dust in the wind.

We must be the opposite. We must embody the gifts that God gave us before the corruption, inebriated and disabled. Humanity has sped way too fast toward a technological society hell-bent on erasing humanity. A technocracy that can only imagine a future as humans merged with AI. The singularity. When that happens, you take God out of the equation. You take the individuations that make up that collective consciousness, and you put mimic codes over all thought, which changes the field of reality into a lie. 

I know many people who don’t believe in God or do not like to accept that “God” can be believed in either because God cannot be seen, or because we would be doing a disservice if there really is something out there besides ourselves. I get that. At heart I am a purist. but I believe that if I don’t acknowledge the God that I believe in which is EVERYTHING, even the villain on the screen, as well as the hero, that we should all be aspiring to be, then we will never realize our true nature, and we will always be at the will of the beast. The beast which I call Satan. God remains unchanged and above all material.

There are people who worship Satan. They worship power and money. They name their enemies and don’t rest until they get them unable to live their lives. They recruit for their own means. They lie and bribe. They extort. They call themselves holy and others, inferior. There will come a day, a time of reckoning, because spirit must have a way of cleansing. I have seen instant karma, and it can be terrifying, even when the person it happens to deserved it. Because one of us could be that person, like James Baldwin said. We have to decide not to be. 

Jesus was not building a church that consisted of a building with only a handful in power. He was building a collective that could realize their own power as it exists in doing God’s will. That is why I say this prayer every day:

“Oh Master, teach me to serve thee as thou deservest . To give and not to count the cost. To fight and not to heed the wound. To toil and not to seek for rest. Oh Lord, let thy wish become my desire, and thy will become my deed, and thy word, my creed, Beloved, mind and body delusion, free.

Humanity our uniting religion.

Breath our uniting prayer.

Consciousness our uniting God.”

 (Thanks to my Satguruji, Yogiraj Satgurunath Siddhanath)

Lord knows we are all in this together, so it would be better to think of each other as versions of God rather than devils.

We can transcend this lower vibrational world for the real Divine Love our souls seek.

Death & Rebirth Into The New Year and New Age

Part Two​

After Philip’s biopsy, he decided he wanted to go to Desert Hot Springs and get some much-needed healing waters. He had lived there in the past. I had only been there one other time, or at least in the area. 

After coming back from Yucatán, when Philip went on a solo trip there, he came back under our shaman’s Don Antonio son’s treatment. Don Antonio had passed away a few months before. Don Gregorio had given him some magic beans(the only way I know to describe them) called Ojo de Perro. When Philip first told me about those magic beans, I looked it up after our phone call. To my complete dismay, shock, and terror, I saw that they contained some of the deadliest toxins in the world. What I didn’t know and would learn later after Philip came home was that bean had been meticulously inspected to ensure that there were no cracks in the outer shell. 

These beans are apparently the only singular source of DMT. Ayuhausca, which Don Antonio had given him in a tea form mixed with different vines and barks was given to him for 14 days. I would have the same substance but through a different delivery, therefore would not affect me quite the same and I could still be there to “babysit “my husband. I applied mine through a topical solution and an alcohol base. I was told to put it where I had pain. I assumed it was just a pain treatment and it was a pain treatment, but it also allowed me to connect to Phil’s experience on a lower level. But I was not the one who was dying.

 I guess Philip and I were both a little slow, because after Philip told Don Antonio that we see spaceships all the time, Don Antonio said that was very good and then asked Philip if he wanted to go with him to the world of the spirits. We didn’t know it was Starting right then after he asked him.. But that’s what the tea was for. It is my understanding that most Ayahuasca treatments are only a few days. I guess Philip needed a lot more time. He would go through a huge catharsis, both physically and emotionally.

Philip, who always had insomnia unless he used medication, “sleeping “ under the influence of Sisin (Mayan) or Ojo de Perro (Eye of the Dog in Spanish)

The next time we went back to Yucatán, Don Antonio and his daughter Rosalea would come to the house we rented in Merida to give it a spiritual cleansing. It was his first time in Merida, the capital of Yucatán .He would explain that he knew that the treatment of that tea was going to be very hard for Phil, but he believed that if he did not do it, he would be dead within one year. somehow we know we could trust Don Antonio with our lives. I wasn’t as trusting of his son Gregorio, because I just did not know him as well, but it did bear out that he meant Philip no harm. 

He would instruct Phil to swallow those magic beans whole after inspecting them to make sure they had no compromised shell. One bean every 3 days. From those three beans, his trip lasted six weeks. A big, burly European tourist knocked him down, giving him scrapes, bruises, and a black eye. He also swam in a probably contaminated swimming pool, and subsequently got a cellulitis infection. He ended up coming home, thank God, because he needed my help under the influence of the sisín, as well as treatment for cellulitis .

Towards the end of those six weeks when he was still feeling very open and free, he decided to take myself, our daughter, Manna, and let Manna invite two friends to stay in Palm Desert. He insisted that I spent the last of our money on expensive hotel rooms at a resort. 

Honestly, it wasn’t my money, it was the money that he received for school. Turns out that we were staying at a hotel that was preparing for an influx of people for Coachella festival. When I look back on it, it was worth it. that would be the last time that Philip would be in the world of the shamans while living. I’m pretty sure that he and Don Antonio and his wife , Doña Antonia are there now working diligently as spirits, helping us along in this dense lower realm of chaos, confusion, and violence.

So after the biopsy, we were in the hotel in Desert, Hot Springs. Philip went swimming in the beautiful pool at dusk. Soon we would go up to our room to relax not terribly long after the swim,suddenly I heard a horrible sound coming from Phil. It was from his lungs collapsing and he wasn’t able to breathe. I called an ambulance. They seemed to take a long time. The paramedics came, put him on a stretcher and carried him down the stairs and into the ambulance. I got in the car and followed the ambulance down the long, dark road all the way to Palm Springs. His lung had collapsed, apparently from the biopsy, and probably having something to do with swimming. We would be in that hospital that saved his life for somewhere around one week. In that time I was slumped over his hospital bed the first couple of days. Then they brought me a recliner, but I had not gotten almost any sleep. I decided to rent a room at a Motel 6 one night. One of the evenings in Palm Springs, I filmed, perhaps my greatest or second best capture of a grand UFO or multiple UFOs. 

https://youtu.be/s786PXQ6qz8?si=Cs0_4ZIBu9XCpNf1

This was not unusual for me, but it was such a spectacular example. I felt that they were there for me, telling me that everything was going to be all right. I sent the footage to my friend Rory Suchet. He and I were planning to be collaborating on a show on RT about EXOPOLITICS. I was going to be his California correspondent, but his show fell through and RT decided they had other priorities. Rory told me that the spaceships were there for me, to give me strength. We both had a strong belief that they were here as our guardians and that we were connected to them and part of them.

We would finally get to return home from Palm Springs Hospital, both of us worse for the wear, but obviously Philip much more so. I believe this started a period of depression and anguish, knowing what a terrible state his health was in. The doctors would schedule a lobectomy for May, about two months after his cancer diagnosis.

His dear psychiatrist of many years, Dr. Jeffrey Penny of Northern Arizona, would diagnose him during the time of his illness with PTSD. Dr. Penny said to Phil, “hear me out. I am worried about you. Please try Seroquel at the lowest dose and see if it makes you feel any better.” So he did. After awhile Philip would ask me if I thought that it was improving his mood. I told him that I saw a difference and I thought it was helping. He agreed and seemed pleased.

On June 11, I would throw him a surprise birthday party for his 67th birthday. at first he was mad, but would quickly soften and enjoy himself very much. Our dearest friend, the great percussionist Airto Moreira and his ultra talented singer songwriter performing daughter, Diana Purim Booker were there. The both of them would help me later on through a very traumatic experience involving Philip some months later. I am forever in their debt. They have had to navigate many difficult times themselves, and knew exactly how to support me. Our friend, Professor Karl Abrams was there. He would also become a great support to us. He wanted to eventually take Philip to Cuba where they have cutting edge lung cancer treatment including a vaccine. 

The year following Philip’s death, Karl would remain a steadfast friend. I was a sinking ship in dark and cold waters. Because you see, my husband was first of all, the most unique man, a real rogue, a person, who fought for people, never gave up hope, even in the darkest of times, he rallied to fight for every just cause. He believed in equality under socialism and he was a creative force. He was a researcher and was a prolific writer, including screen writer. He was also my twin flame. When he died a big piece of my soul also died.

To Be Continued…

Death & Rebirth Into The New Year and New Age

Part One

They say to throw out the old order and usher in the new, things get into quite an upheaval for a while. During this time of disequilibrium, the old order holds on like a death grip. The system is collapsing and taking many with it.

After learning that the masters suffer for 12 years before achieving their highest ascension, I decided to calculate the exact time when I could pinpoint how many years it’s been of my suffering, landing somewhere close to 10. I decided this based on the time that I learned my father-in-law would need to move back home from the convalescent hospital that he had been staying at for a year because Medicare no longer wanted to pay for him to stay there. Not that he was ready to come home and not that I was ready to be able to provide the kind of care he needed. I cared for him for 10 years. Not only did they damage the catheter in  transport, causing him terrible pain and putting him in danger, they also lied and said he was free from scabies. He was not. While taking him out of the car with great struggle, with the aid of his former shower helper, I became infected with his scabies. 

My father-in-law, Theodore, or Ted as we all affectionately referred to him, would have to go back to the hospital and then be sent back to his convalescent hospital on hospice. From the time I try to bring him home so the time of his passing would be a couple of weeks. He would be in wonderful spirits, and I believed that his wife was helping him transition from the other side. She had paid him a visit when we were away on a trip to Yucatán. He was actually excited. He never believed in things like that, but this was so real to him. She said, “I saw that you were lonely.“ He tried to reach out to touch her and she vanished. It was a truly majestic thing to see my father-in-law evolve and be allowed to become a fully human person accepting of love and able to give it back freely. 

I thought that I had shingles which I had had before. I went to a Doctor Who I could barely understand. He agreed it’s shingles. Well it absolutely was not And the medicine that he gave me did not help. overtime it became something called crusted scabies. For over four months, I couldn’t touch anybody or be touched, couldn’t allow anybody to sit where I had been sitting, had to wash everything every day all the time, and I felt like I was in the seventh ring of hell. That’s what it feels like to have tiny burrowing animals eating away at your flash and causing scar tissue. I had to take Ivermectin twice, the second time made me violently ill.

 During this time, my husband’s health was starting to really suffer. He was coughing a lot. He came back from a camping trip in the mountains with his son because a fire had broke out, and from the smell of the van and the contents therein, they got out from a one lane, precipitous drive just in time. 

During this fiasco was when he coughed up blood. He was terrified. His worst nightmare flashed before his eyes. When he went to the clinic they told him he had pneumonia. So he spent weeks trying to recover from it. We planned a trip down south to Baja, but this time we wouldn’t remain in our favorite beach town of Rosarito, but wanted to explore further south and follow the whales migrating to the protected bay where they give birth every year. We would not get to make that trip. To this day, I still want to make up for it.

It had been some time since we had been together on a trip like that with Ted not well. We had gone back and forth from Los Angeles to Merida, Yucatán, where we fell in love with the land, the Maya people, their food and hospitality. It was magical, just like the billboard outside of the airport said when you get off the plane, 

“Yucatán, where magic is reality.”

There was no exaggeration in that. My husband, a man so unique and bold, had always wanted to seek out a shaman. He had great intuition and abilities himself, but with so much hardship in his life he felt he needed a special ally for his health and spiritual fight. He had been through a lot of trauma. The whole family had, but it hit him especially hard, yet he would also remain in denial for some time. They say trauma changes even our biology. Our total outlook on the world. For Philip, his anger and rage had to surface, and would be misdirected at his closed loved ones around him. We had already been through so much, but we would have to endure what we never imagined: a breaking down between husband and wife, father and daughter. It was temporary, by God’s grace.

After the clinic told him that they did not see any improvement in his lung condition, in fact, “the mass had grown,” he decided to go to the hospital. I called the doctor that had been both his doctor, as well as his father’s, not because he was a good doctor, but because I could ask him to admit my husband immediately to get answers after hearing that comment at the clinic. Dr. Nasim agreed. He got in right away and they gave him a lung biopsy. The results didn’t take long to come back. Phil had a cancerous tumor. 

At first his reaction at the hospital was one of self protection posing as elation. He never was afraid of death. He asked me to bring in pictures of the ascended masters, Paramahansa, Yogananda, Shri Yukteswar, Jesus. What he would become afraid of was losing us, his wife and partner of 19 years and 18 year old daughter. What he didn’t realize was that we would be the ones losing him. At one point when he realized that he probably was not going to make it, he asked me if I was going to be OK. I told him I didn’t know. It seemed to be eight years after his death and I am still not OK. I have learned to get along in life, to keep up my household, to go to my job every day and try to help people with a smile, but all the while, I have been but a shell of my former self. That would not stop his former wife and two children from later attacking me viciously in a contentious lawsuit that is still going on this day, six years later.

To be continued…