The Power of Stevie

Everything I have ever done that is good I owe to Stevie. It was her birth that unlocked the wisdom that has allowed me to deal with life in the face of her profound disability and Bernadette's battle with cancer - and indeed with the depression that followed on the heals of the deaths of both Stevie and Bernadette.

Here is the story of my life with Stevie and Bernadette. Please copy it and read it at your leisure. I have called it Wordjazz for Stevie.

To download the whole book click here: Wordjazz for Stevie

Extract from Wordjazz for Stevie

How can I explain it?

Imagine a man walking down a road. He is not going anywhere important. Just walking, not thinking. Then suddenly, something happens. For a second he has a superconsciousness of some absolute, irrevocable event taking place...of something that is inescapable, that is going to happen before it all clarifies in his mind. There is no time for action. Only time to acknowledge. Somewhere between one beat of his heart and the next he is aware of a dialogue; a dialogue, he senses, between the person he was a moment ago and the person he is about to become.

And then there is the explosion. A cosmic roar. Here, in the middle of the sound, he knows he is being ripped apart. Sound and pain are one. He knows that now, finally, he has been given his own fate.

Then, as he attempts to escape the pain, slowly, grudgingly, uncomprehendingly, he becomes aware that he is holding something. He turns his head to see if this is true, that he is indeed grasping something. His mind is operating in a dull fashion. It appears he is able to take hold of only one thought at a time - and each thought gives way to the next most reluctantly. He turns his head and fixes his gaze on his hand. It is true that it appears to be clasping something. What he is clasping he cannot imagine. Whatever it is, it is hidden within the fist that is gripping it tightly with an almost spastic intensity. Slowly he understands that he needs to send a command to his fist to relax and then for the fingers to ease open like a flower blossoming. First he sees the problem. Then he sees what he must do. Then, he realises he must do it. And then he does it. He issues an instruction and somewhere along the chain of command a switch is thrown and his hand is told to bring forth the fruit. Only then does the hand unfurl.

He opens his hand and there in the palm of his hand, resting in the leathery creases, is a large glittering stone as large as a small bird's egg and filled with light.

At first he doesn't give the object a name. It is simply something that draws him in. For a long time, the very longest time, he is not aware of anything else apart from this clear, etched, limpid stone rich in all the colours of the rainbow in their deepest and most profound form. He sinks into the shifting whorls of light and colour. He feels lightened, unburdened. His cares are stripped from him. And as he sloughs them off like a heavy winter coat, he feels his heart pumped full with love - a beating ecstasy, an overflowing richness of emotion. How can he explain this feeling? It fills him and overflows. He cannot contain it. He is aware that he is floating in a sea of pain and love, a pain that screams obscenities and a love that sings like birdsong. There he is, he says to himself, silently, wonderingly, because he has an image of it inside his mind as if it were outside his body, there he is floating on this terrible sea. How can this be? He hardly knows how to frame the question. He asks himself another question. How do I feel?

Indeed, how does he feel? Feel now? Now? What does now mean? This moment? This moment which has already escaped to become another moment, just another fleeting moment of the past? Focus on feeling, he tells himself. Love and Agony? Annihilation and completion. Emptiness and fulfilment. Both torn apart and put together. Mended and destroyed. Yes, yes, the pain. But also the love and laughter that poured out of his heart and didn't stop pouring out. A pure fountain of loving love. And the whole world was suddenly different. And the whole world and the rest of his life was made new again. And meaningful.

And Stevie, my dear Stevie, that man was me. And I was never able to separate the pain from the love. I did not know it then but the love was the key to the pain. The pain, of course, was the key to the love. And the name of the stone was Stevie. It was you. Did you already guess that? The life transforming diamond of love and pain.

And, yes, Stevie, you too knew about pain and love and laughter.

What stories do little girls want to hear? Not stories of pain. You want to know how it all began. How did your mummy and I meet so that we could come together to have you as our baby?

Well, let's start at the beginning. I fell in love with your mother's perfect feet,…

© 2008 Jonathan Chamberlain

To read the rest of this story you are welcome to download the following file completely free of charge

To download the whole book click here: Wordjazz for Stevie