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“Tryst, please—”
“Allow me to finish. I have been struggling for some time now with my own feelings of betrayal. I made a vow to Rosa that I have not kept. For that, I am filled with regret. More, I am ashamed. What you experienced was anger at myself directed at you. It was unfair—wrong—of me.”
“Can I speak now?”
“By all means.”
“While the fire was an accident, my actions, my anger, caused it, and I take full responsibility. I know I can never make it up to you, Tryst. Please just know how sorry I am.”
“I forgive you, Vaile. Now, you must forgive yourself. That is the hardest part—forgiving ourselves.”
“It is.”
“I believe there is a way to make it easier for both of us.” I walked over to the pew and unfurled the papers. “These are the sacred rooms I asked to be included in the new center. One will be named for Rosa. The other is up to you. We will work together on them. Just the two of us and only when the others have finished for the day.”
“Okay.”
“Spend the next few hours, days if you need to, meditating on what you would include in the room in order to honor the person whose name you choose.”
I remained silent for several minutes, allowing Zin to process everything I’d said. What I’d asked George to do was a gift to both of us. It would enable us to honor the women we loved and, in doing so, find the forgiveness we sought. I prayed for both our souls that it would work.
“The hardest day of my life was when I had to say goodbye to my Rosa. Part of me wanted to go with her, and part of me wanted to beg her not to go. She had to. She’d been hanging on for me, and that wasn’t fair. I loved her enough to finally realize I had to let her go.”
“I need a few minutes,” he said when I walked toward the door.
“Take all the time you need, son.”
The first thingI did when I set about creating Rosa’s sacred room, herpuja, was to hang tengarudabells. The significance of placing so many, as opposed to one, which was more common in Hindu temples, was to bring harmony.
Crafted with several types of metals and alloys, it created balance between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, bringing a state of supreme calm when ringing the exact combination.
The purpose of ringing them upon entering a temple or other sacred place was manifold.
First was to put the mind in a state of awareness, ready for prayer. The sound’s effect on the brain was to vastly increase the power of concentration.
The subsequent echoes touched the seven chakras of the body—the crown, third eye, throat, heart, solar plexus, sacral, and root—thus relaxing every part of the body.
Finally, the practice warded off negative energy and alerted the gods and deities to accept worship and prayer.
Over the course of several days, I constructed a woodenmandir—or Hindu-style altar—made of a combination of rose- and teakwood. It was four feet wide, ten feet tall, and one and a half feet deep, large enough to completely cover one wall of the room.
Its design included one main shelf on top of two drawers flanked by two small cabinets. The most time-consuming aspect of the construction was hand-carving the decorative trim for the front of the storage areas as well as for the symbolicgopuram, the pyramid-shaped top section of a temple, or in this case, of themandir.
While completing the carving, I gave a great deal of thought to whether I wanted to paint the piece or leave it with a wood finish. My Rosa had loved the vibrant colors so common in Mexican interior design, so I incorporated a combination of those with traditional Hindu symbolism. I chose hues of bright gold, red, blue, and green.
Once themandirwas finished, I hung the artwork I’d created using similar colors to honor Mahadevi, the Mother Goddess. Simply, it was her mantra, written in Sanskrit. Its English translation was, “She is the most auspicious one and the one who bestows auspiciousness upon all of the world. She is pure and holy. She protects those who surrender to her and is also called the Mother of the three worlds and is Gauri, daughter of the mountain king. We bow down to Mother Goddess again and again. We worship her.”
The last thing I did—or what I believed would be last—was to place themurtis, or sculptures, of the deities.
Prominent in the center was Mahadevi. I hadn’t decided which other gods to include but was considering Lakshmi, the goddess of power and beauty and Parvati, the goddess of love and marriage. When I settled on Saraswati, the goddess of creativity and music, who had been one of my Rosa’s favorites, the sculpture broke apart in my hands before I could set it on themandir.
As was Hindu custom, I immediately removed themurtifrom the room.When I returned, I sat on the heated wooden floor and prayed.
“What am I not seeing, Rosa?” I finally cried when, after what felt like hours of meditation, I still had no clarity. Instead, my heart and soul ached.
Ten daysafter Zin and I began working on the sacred rooms, he came to me to say he was finished and would be leaving Mexico.
“I want to thank you, Tryst, from the bottom of my heart, for everything you’ve done for me and for Jada,” he said when we walked outside the rebuilt meditation center.
