Page 52 of All the Way to the River

Rayya was diagnosed with cancer only a week after she turned fifty-six years old.

She and I had rented a place together on the Jersey Shore for the weekend to celebrate her birthday, and we’d invited some friends and loved ones to join us there.

It was mid-April—sunny but cold. Rayya and I went to the house the day before everyone else arrived so we could have some time alone together and to set things up for the party.

We spent that Friday night writing a song together and singing on the couch.

Remember: At this point, we were not lovers.

Just best friends.

Just best friends who were always trying to find a way to have a few hours alone together.

On Saturday morning—the day of her birthday, and several hours before any other guests arrived—Rayya came and knocked on my bedroom door to wake me up.

She popped her head into my room and said in utter joy, “Baby, let’s bake a birthday cake today!

I dreamed about a strawberry birthday cake covered with whipped cream, and now I wanna figure out how to do it! Let’s go to the store!”

So we went to the store as soon as it was open, and bought ingredients for a strawberry cake covered with whipped cream.

Rayya had never baked a cake before, but she was like, Hey, how hard can it be?

We returned to the beach house and put on happy music and danced around the kitchen, laughing and joking as we created the cake.

It was funny, because neither one of us had any idea what we were doing.

Moreover, because the house was a rental, we had trouble finding the right kitchen tools for the job.

But we did our best with it, and soon Rayya’s first-ever homemade cake was in the oven.

We let the cake cool while we ate breakfast, and then we covered it with piles of whipped cream and strawberries.

We stood back and admired our work with pride.

Rayya announced that it looked exactly like the confection she had seen in her dream.

The moment was perfect and the whole house smelled like birthday .

Then Rayya leaned in to me and whispered, in a tone of serious conspiracy, “Dude, let’s just eat this fucking cake right now.”

I started laughing. It was ten thirty in the morning and we’d just had breakfast—but she was dead serious.

“No, for real, dude—let’s just eat the whole cake before everyone gets here! They’ll never know! We can just make another one later!”

I couldn’t stop laughing, because this was so Rayya—so funny and over-the-top. But most of all because it was so addicty .

I laughed and laughed, and then suddenly I stopped laughing, because I felt something come into the room. Or rather, I felt some one come into the room. And before I even paused to choose my words or consider what I was about to say, I blurted out, “Rayya, your mother’s here.”

I looked down and saw that I had gooseflesh all over my arms, and I could feel an electric tingling from my shins up to my scalp.

Because she was .

Georgette Kayser Elias—the youngest of the four beautiful daughters of the Kayser family of Aleppo, Syria, and widely considered to have been the most beautiful, a woman who was always the most elegant figure in any room she walked into, the loving and affectionate and long-suffering mother of Rayya, a woman who had died long before I ever met Rayya, back when Rayya was still a full-on junkie—was here .

Georgette was right there in the kitchen of this Jersey Shore rental property with us, and there was no question that it was her.

And now she was speaking words directly into my mind.

When I tell you that nothing like this had ever happened to me before, please believe me.

I lead a pretty rich spiritual life, sure, but I had never before been a channel for a ghost .

Yet here was Rayya’s mother, unmistakably present, and she wanted me to tell Rayya something very important.

Instantly I found myself weeping, absolutely saturated with mother love, as I said to Rayya, “Your mom is here and she wants me to tell you that she loves you so much. She’s so proud of you, habibi .

She’s full of joy to see your happiness.

She’s laughing with you and telling you to go ahead and eat the cake.

She says to eat the whole thing, because who cares?

She wants you to celebrate your life, and she wants to celebrate with you.

She loves you. She loves your appetites.

She loves your spirit. She loves you so much, and she is so proud of what you have made of your life. ”

Then Rayya and I were both laughing and crying and hugging—because we were so happy and so full of love, and because we both knew that Rayya’s mother was right there with us .

We ate the cake, of course, and it was wonderful.

It was the best cake ever.

And then, just one week later, Rayya found out she was dying.

2.

There was a night when Rayya was on chemo when she was so sick that she couldn’t settle.

Nights on chemo were always difficult, but this was one of the worst. She couldn’t stop vomiting, sweating, crying.

Nothing I could offer was helping—not the cool compresses I kept bringing, or the special drinks, or the medications, or the soothing stories.

Finally, she just collapsed into my arms, weeping in frustration and pain.

And as I held Rayya’s trembling body, her mother came to visit us again.

When Georgette entered our bedroom, I immediately knew that it was her.

But the effect was quieter this time. I felt the same tingling in my scalp and the gooseflesh up my arms and legs, but her energy was hushed and tender.

This was not a joyful situation, after all, but a moment of dire suffering.

May I please kiss my daughter? she asked me, from inside my mind. May I hold my daughter, just for a moment?

Of course , I silently responded to her.

And then Georgette Kayser Elias entered my body, such that it was no longer my arms holding a feverish Rayya; it was her mother’s arms. It was no longer me comforting Rayya; it was her mother.

My soul left my body so Georgette could be alone with her girl.

My being stood back in silent respect in the presence of such love.

Then Georgette gave one kiss to her suffering child—just one kiss on the forehead, through me—and was gone.

That’s when Rayya finally fell asleep.

3.

As I have mentioned, Rayya’s mother started coming to her in dreams every night in the weeks before she died.

“Take my hand, habibi ,” Georgette would say, smiling at her beautiful, wayward child. “I’m right here. Just take my hand.”

Rayya would wake up from these dreams in tears, because she loved her mother and longed for her love—but she didn’t want to take her hand, because she knew it would mean death. And she wasn’t ready for that. She wasn’t ready to die.

But each night her mother reappeared, always bringing the same message: Take my hand, take my hand, take my hand …

On her last night of consciousness, Rayya woke up in tears one more time from the dream of her mother.

She told me that this time she had, in fact, attempted to take her mother’s hand, but had found that she didn’t know how .

In the dream, Rayya couldn’t move her arms. She simply could not reach out, even though her mother was standing right there—and even though Rayya now longed to go to her.

In the dream, Rayya had asked Georgette, “What do I have to do to get to where you are? Do I have to, like, fight my way there? Do I have to, like, punch my way through?”

Her mother had smiled with infinite tenderness and said, “ Habibi , where you are going, there is no more fighting. It’s easy, my love. Just take my hand.”

But Rayya hadn’t been able to do it.

Shortly after Rayya reported this dream to me, she lost consciousness.

Two days later, she died.

Two weeks after Rayya’s death—after the cremation and the memorial, after we had packed up all her things, after the gathering of griev ing humans began to disperse, and right before I myself headed back to New York City to begin rebuilding my life—Stacey gave me the gift of a session with a psychic medium named Lori Lipten in Birmingham, Michigan.

I had never before been to a medium and didn’t even know if I believed in mediums, but my general inclination in life is to try everything, and my specific thought that week was “Maybe this nice lady will help me.”

Lori did indeed turn out to be a nice lady—a sweet-faced, blond, middle-aged suburban woman in clogs and a comfortable dress, whose office was decorated with butterflies and dream catchers.

For someone who talks to the dead, she was the furthest possible thing from flaky or occult.

In fact, she had such a motherly kindness about her that I fell into her arms crying as soon as we met.

And when I saw that there was a couch in her office, I asked if I could lie down on it, and if she would put a blanket over me for our session, and tuck me in.

She laughed and said, “Of course I will, honey!”

As she snuggled the blankets around me, Lori said, “Oh my goodness—Rayya is already here in the room with us and she’s hilarious.

She’s making jokes and cracking me up. Oh my goodness, she’s certainly very strong, isn’t she?

She’s very commanding. She’s amazing! Please forgive my language, but she’s instructing me to shut the fuck up and let her do the talking, because she has a bunch of really important shit to tell you.

Oh my goodness, Rayya, you certainly do like to swear! Okay, okay!

“First of all, she’s telling you that you don’t need to waste money on a fucking psychic—her words, not mine!

—because you guys can learn how to communicate with each other all by yourselves.

That’s hilarious—nobody’s ever said anything like that before.

Oh, now she’s saying, ‘No offense, Lori.’ Oh my goodness, she certainly is funny and honest. It’s no problem, Rayya—no offense taken.

Okay, okay, okay—I’ll tell her! Slow down, Rayya. I’ll tell her! ”

Then the nice lady told me that Rayya wanted me to know that she had suffered a horrible and painful and violent death.

Now, this is a pretty wild thing to say to someone who is grieving the death of a loved one, isn’t it? Yet I knew it to be true: Rayya had suffered a horrible and painful and violent death, for I had witnessed it. But there was no reason Lori would have known about it.

Lori went on to say, “Rayya wants you to know that the reason she had such a hard death was because she wouldn’t let go. She didn’t believe there was anything on the other side. She was scared. She truly believed that death was the end. She was terrified of being erased, she says.”

I nodded: That tracks .

“But Rayya says there is something on the other side, and it’s more beautiful than she could ever explain.

She says the best way she can describe it is this: She has become music now.

She says not to be afraid of death, because it’s beautiful, and when it’s your time to die, she will be the one who comes and gets you. ”

“Tell her to come and get me right now!” I said, bursting into tears again.

“She can’t, honey, and she misses you, too,” said Lori, stroking my head.

“But it’s not your time. Rayya is saying that you won’t die for a long, long time, because you still have work to do on earth.

She’ll help you wherever she can, but you’ll have to find your own way.

She says she isn’t worried about you, though, because you are much stronger than you think.

She says you are every bit as strong as you always believed she was—but you’re the only one who doesn’t realize that yet.

She loves you so much, Liz, and she says that you gave her enough love to keep her heart full for the rest of its journey through the universe.

She is deeply grateful. She says you were the biggest surprise of her life.

She was amazed when you came to her and confessed your love.

She had no idea. She was never sure if she was good enough for you, but she loved you so much. ”

“Tell her I love her, too, and I always will.”

Lori laughed and said, “Rayya says you damn well better love her! She also told me to tell you that she’s watching you right now and she loves your tears.

She loves your heart. But Rayya says the most important thing she wants you to know is this: She says that when she got to the border of death, the first thing she saw was her mother’s face, just like in the dream.

And her mother was smiling at her and saying, ‘Take my hand.’”