Leaping into the Light

By Lennox Seales

The book is a collection of essays, thoughts, and poems. Its about how I faced adversity and turned it into an opportunity to expand, grow, and transcend.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 29, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543478723

Lennox Seales

Lennox Seales is a psychotherapist living and working in Savannah Georgia. I was born in the Eastern Caribbean country of St. Vincent. I migrated to the USA as a teenager. Completed High School and College in NYC. Married and lived in Savannah since 1980. Three adult children and two grandchildren and one on the way any day now. I enjoy playing guitar and writing. I see myself more like a story teller rather than a writer. Out of the blue, stories come to me and I write them down. Its my process. I never know when or where the vibe comes from; it just comes and I scribble it on my way paper; later I go back and type it . All in all, it helps me to get my stories out of my head. Essentially, thats what I am doing here; finding and encouraging like minded people to share and tell their stories. Hopefully, I will gather a few friends along the way. Lennox Seales

Book preview

Copyright © 2018 by Lennox Seales.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2018900603

ISBN:                   Hardcover                     978-1-5434-7870-9

                            Softcover                       978-1-5434-7871-6

                            eBook                            978-1-5434-7872-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the Holy Bible, King James Version (Authorized Version). First published in 1611. Quoted from the KJV Classic Reference Bible, Copyright © 1983 by The Zondervan Corporation.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 01/26/2018

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

772005

CONTENTS

Introduction

Moving Out of My Disconnected States

Out of Sadness, There Is Joy

Lock into It!

Lessie’s Dough Boy

Afternoon Tea with Granny

Follow Your Intuitive Mind

Friend

Practice Staying in the Presence of God

Facing and Taking Ownership of Necessary Pain

Crossroads Blues

Walking in Spirit

How I Came to Love and Believe in the Power of Trees

Savannah on My Mind

Power of Soul

Message to Love

Way Down There in the Caribbean

The End of Summer

SHARING POETIC INSPIRATION

High-Flying

Hold Me Better Than That

Bean Soup and Dumpling

Deep Roots

Cry before It’s Too Late

Restless Soul

January Winds

If You Kiss Me, I Might Cry

Naked and Crying

Naggy Georgia Boy Blues

Odds and Ends

Traveler

Uncle Larry’s 1956 Bel Air Coupé

Invictus

The book is dedicated to my daughter, Liane.

Introduction

It’s been almost three decades since my brother Franklyn died at the age of thirty-seven. Back in 1986, four years before his untimely death, I talked to my brother long-distance from Los Angeles. During this conversation, he spoke longingly of wanting to visit me on the East Coast.

For me, visits from Franklyn were always bittersweet. Although I always delighted in having the chance to see him, I knew that whenever he visited me, inevitably, at some point, he would take my inventory and pick me apart. This predictable inventory taking would always create strife, and it reinforced our inborn competitiveness. Despite it all, he’d been writing to me to tell me how much he loved me. In those days, I never fully appreciated affirmations of love coming from my brother. At times, he could be highly critical of me. So it came as a surprise when he later told me what a lovely time he’d had with me and my family in Savannah during past visits.

Though it puzzled me, I cautiously allowed myself to believe there was in fact love between us. But that defining phone call in 1986 changed everything. He started the conversation by asking me if I was standing or sitting. This was not a good sign, I knew. I told him I was sitting on my bed. I sensed that he preferred for me to be sitting. He proceeded to tell me that he had recently been diagnosed with HIV. In 1986, HIV was a death sentence, and I saw no way around it. Time seemed to freeze, and panic took over, and my throat went dry with fear.

However, Franklyn, in his infinitely optimistic style, assured me he was going to travel to Paris to secure the best medical care of the day and all would be well. As much as I wanted to cling to that hope, I was enveloped by fear as soon as I hung the phone up and walked into the kitchen. My wife commented on how pale I looked and asked me if Franklyn had shared some dreadful news. I told her that indeed he had.

After I told her just what that news was, she confirmed my fears, reminding me that a diagnosis of HIV was indeed a death sentence, at least according to public consensus at the time. He is going to die, we realized. It wasn’t long after that phone call that the story about film star Rock Hudson’s battle against HIV came out in the press, and not too much later, he became another casualty of the disease.

I wanted my brother to live. However, I could not find a way to shake the death sentence out of my mind. I was haunted for days, knowing that awful day was coming. But the day did come, four years later, on May 14, 1990.

In between his diagnosis and his death, Franklyn and I shared some moments that stand out in my mind because they didn’t have the negative energy I’d become so accustomed to. At one point, he moved back from the West Coast to Brooklyn, New York. While on one hand I was happy that he’d decided to return to Brooklyn, in a way, it also signaled the beginning of the end. Then again, there were those among us who believed that they possessed magical potions and powers that could save his life. My mother, sisters, family, and friends would cook and offer up all manner of remedies that were supposed to heal Franklyn and restore him to the fullness of life.

I remember driving the eight hundred and fifty miles from Savannah, which I now call home, to Brooklyn because Franklyn was in the throes of one of his many crises. I walked up the flight of stairs to find him lying on the living room sofa. It was a shocking sight. Franklyn’s face was drawn; he looked bony and almost gray. He had been wasting away and had lost a lot of weight. However, he still had his great laugh and sharp mental ability. I found a spot on the sofa where I could get close enough to give him a hug. I held on to every word he said. I knew that the time was precious, and I wanted to take everything in. There was no doubt in my mind that there was a powerful meaning to Franklyn’s illness.

Franklyn represented our new hope. Given our family’s history, which included our fair share of adversity, Franklyn had become the torchbearer for many of us who knew him well and had heard about his early successes in Hollywood. Now I was watching him slip away before my eyes, taking that hope along with him. I had to dig deep within me to find light. I felt the power of darkness hovering over my mother’s living room. Friends and family were sitting around my mother’s house, straining to find levity. From where I sat with Franklyn, there was nothing but a powerful cloud of darkness, a lingering cloud that wouldn’t let go.

The words of a Bob Dylan song snuck their way into my head: I’ve just reached a place / Where the willow don’t bend / There’s not much more to be said / It’s the top of the end / I’m going I’m going I’m gone. Despite the darkness that seemed to surround him, Franklyn was focused on how others were doing. He asked about my children. He adored my kids, even though there were times when we clashed regarding our conflicting parenting philosophies.

One of those times, my son Gabriel was about three years old, and Franklyn was visiting us in Savannah in early 1986. Gabriel was very active for his age. We were walking on the beach early one