Then I was told, Binda is the spider. This had an effect on me. Through this statement I was able to sense something gentle about the spider's consciousness. It was the first time I felt no fear. When I was able to absorb this I was told, there is a sliver of Binda's consciousness in the spider. All consciousness is interconnected. I rationalised that some part of my own consciousness was teaching me not to be afraid of spiders. It was working. I carefully placed the spider back outside on the end of a straw broom. Several hours later I woke up after having dreams that spiders were making homes in my hair and went into the bathroom to find the huntsman spider back in the house, but this time he had trapped himself in the bath. So we went through the broom routine again at around 2.00am. I felt sorry for the spider, since he only had seven legs.
A few nights later there was a humming sound coming from inside the microwave oven. I was afraid it was going to blow up, so I switched it off at the power socket on the wall. But the humming continued without the power for several minutes. The rest of the evening was spent lying on the lounge reading about angels. I then got up off the lounge and went into the kitchen. I was told, there will be an apport. At precisely that moment the huntsman spider dropped onto my face, jumped across my neck and chest before falling onto the kitchen floor in front of me.
I screamed my usual 'spider scream' for all the neighbours to hear. The same huntsman spider with the seven legs sat on the floor in front of me. I didn't think this had been very funny for either of us and so I said, "Enough spider lessons, okay?!" But the huntsman (with Binda's consciousness inside him) wasn't going anywhere. I ended up moving him along just enough in order to get the broom and go through the same routine. But this spider was a fast learner and, this time, probably being tired with only seven legs left, he had hitched a ride on the end of the straw broom, so that I could place him gently outside as before.
The next night I was sitting on the lounge sulking about the 'spider incident' when the double screen and glass doors leading onto the back verandah began to rattle on their hinges. I immediately thought that someone must have been out there doing it. I jumped up out of the chair and crept over to have a peek through the blinds, switching on the outside light as I did so. There was no one there. But once I had switched on the light, the same huntsman spider hopped out of his hiding place directly behind the lounge chair. Whatever had rattled that door had alerted me to the spider. So I gently removed the six-legged spider from the house for the last time, placing him out the front near a palm tree and away from geckos and further harm. After these incidents I appeared to lose my phobia of spiders. I was told, you have to overcome all fear in order to go further.
Towards the end of February in 2006, I had a very vivid dream where I saw my grandfather, who'd had a stroke, sitting up in his bed at the nursing home. My mother had made the decision to place him in there after he had become bedridden and she was unable to lift him. In my dream Poppy was not happy. He was telling me he had been left there to die alone and that the staff were mistreating him. I didn't hear him speak. He looking at me with his watery old eyes silently telling me with his mind. It felt eerie. Sitting on my grandfather's lap was Ginge, an old stray tomcat that my father had taken in at Rose Street when I was a child and who had died almost thirty years before.
The next day I could not shake the feeling that I needed to call my mother. I had been through a hard two weeks, since it was the anniversary of the deaths of Binda and Kindi. I had not spoken to my mother in twelve months. But I rang her and asked her if nanny and poppy were okay. Were they still alive? I mentioned the dream I had had the night before. She hesitated. "Pop is not doing too good," she said, "He's very sick."
"How sick?"
"He's not going to last," she said.
After we got off the phone I emailed her to say that Poppy was not happy and I suspected he was ill with pneumonia as a result of mistreatment and neglect in the nursing home. I wrote to my mother, "He wants someone to be there when he dies. Don't let him die alone." Mum told me not to worry and that she would be there. She said, "He's ninety two. He can't hold on forever."
