Toni and Me
Part 2 – The Recognition

 

I walk into Bruce’s office, thinking the worst. I came in and said, “Hi Bruce, Sondra said you wanted to talk with me?”
He was looking at me, and he was not angry, just tired. So very tired.

He said, “Come in and have a seat. Please close the door behind you.”
“Oh, dear!” I think. “A private conversation that he does not want others to hear. This is not good!”
I close the door and try to calm my breathing.

Then I sit down and give him my full attention.

He says, “This conversation cannot leave this room. Are we clear?”

I respond, “Oh, of course!”

He continues, “You can’t tell any dancer, no staff, no one! Not your best friends … anyone!”

I say again, “Yes, sir! No one. My lips are sealed!”
He takes a deep breath and looks down at his hands. Suddenly it looks as if the weight of the world is on his shoulders. He seems spent. Burdened with something that he has been trying to carry. And that something was about to be shared.

I try to remain open, not knowing what was coming my way.

Then he just blurts it out! “Toni has cancer. She is dying. We don’t know how long she has, but it will not be long. Her goal is to complete Abdallah. It is everything to her and her total focus at this time.”

I am stunned! I can barely breathe. My mind is racing. Puzzle pieces now falling into place, “That is why she is so thin. That is why her aura is gray. It is the cancer!”

Suddenly everything is making more sense.

Thoughts start exploding in my mind from everything I know about the “Five Stages of Grief” to Louise Hayes’s book, “Heal Your Body,” come flooding in.
I had been exploring the metaphysical and emotional causes of illness because of dealing with my mother’s emotional illnesses and in trying to make sense of my own physical challenges from Berlin, pneumonia, and almost dying.
Bruce Marks continues, “Everything is extremely difficult for her right now. We are dealing with various treatments, and she is having a hard time swallowing. Eating is a problem, and the demands upon her physically are tremendous right now. I need your help. I need you to help Toni with the day-to-day things because she just can’t do it all.”

Now, I am even more stunned!
I think inside my head, “What? He can’t be serious!”

I can’t help but blurt out the obvious elephant in the room, “But you know she hates me … right? Why me?”

He nodded in agreement without saying the words. He did know how she felt about me. But he would not give them power at this moment.
He said, “I picked you because I trust you to keep quiet about all of this. I picked you because you are the only dancer that is not dancing in Abdallah. You are the only one who has the time.”
At that moment, I realized he was right. Everyone else was fully embroiled in the production of Abdallah.

He kept talking, “I want to keep a lid on this as long as I can. Already people are talking about how thin she looks, but she is struggling to swallow. I need you to take the home pressures off of her so she can focus. Do you think you would be willing to do this … for me?”
He looks me right in the eyes.

Aghast, I nod my head.

Responding with clarity I say, “What do you need me to do?”

In all honesty, he was not exactly sure himself. He just knew that the normal daily things needed to be handled, such as laundry, picking up the house, taking the dogs to the vet, grocery shopping, etc.
I agreed, and he gave me the home address, though I did know it, and told me to be there first thing in the morning.

Dazed and confused, I stood up, opened the door, and walked out.
I immediately went home. I was too overwhelmed with all the information. I knew that going back into the studio was not a good idea. Someone would notice the energy that I was holding and see the look on my face. That would cause too many questions. I could not risk it. I had made a promise.

A promise I would end up keeping for over 30 years.

It takes that long to make huge karmic pieces all fall into place. We do things that we try at the moment to make sense of. We try to be more aware and awake in the swirls of heavy karma. But to unravel all the pieces …. It often takes a great deal of time. Forgiveness comes. Understanding comes. Awareness grows, and Wisdom eventually replaces reaction.

Toni would teach me some of the most powerful lessons of my life. She taught me that her understanding and self-awareness would come in her dying process and even after, as she would be a guide and angel to many on the other side. Her connection to me would transcend this life and into the energetic connections of love and forgiveness that happen through my meditations, and my dreams, and she would show me that even in death, it is never too late to apologize for our human condition, our reactive choices, and that spiritual family is eternal even when our personalities clash while in this density.

I left the theater that day, and everything changed. Something inside was awakened and transformed. I was no longer angry. It was clear that she was scared, and confronting things that had been hidden and dormant for a long time.

Confronting death does that to each of us. I had done it twice already in this life.

The Sufis have a phrase, “Die before you die!” This means that in life, we are confronted with many forms of death. Some are physical deaths, but there are emotional deaths, deaths of ego, spiritual deaths, etc. At that moment, I experienced all of them happening at once inside me.

I was here to dance with her. But it was clearly not going to be the dance I was expecting.
Leaving Bruce’s office, it clearly felt that way. Bruce was not in any way upset with me; he was in his own horrific process of losing Toni, the mother of his children, his ex-wife, and clearly his life partner. There was a strong agreement that had pulled them together. It was clear that he deeply cared for and loved her. This was difficult for him in ways that would unravel after her death. As he would decide to become the Artistic Director of the Boston Ballet, leaving his legacy of Ballet West behind. He was going to clear the slate and completely start over.

Such profound deaths in our life often require that of us.

For the rest of that day, I decided to do deep meditation. Something so much bigger was happening than the clashing of personalities.
I remembered, one of the gurus saying that past life karma comes in as an imperative. You become compelled to do things that seem to defy comprehension. You do not know why you are called. But it is as if something deep inside demands something of you. You owe a debt. Or a debt is owed to you. And you must respond.

The guru used to say that karma also creates loops. And I could not deny that this one had a huge loop.
Which translated as a huge amount of karma.
I instantly wondered what had happened in a past life to cause the response that she did to me regarding Abdallah.
Everyone loved Toni. And I mean, Everyone!
She was known for being a very talented, compassionate, and engaging teacher. She was known around the world as amazing in all ways.
Even Eva Evdokimova and Galina Panov both wanted me to have her as a coach. She was widely respected, admired, and deeply loved.

The question, again, arose in my mind, “What are hers and my karma? What is going on that I get the brunt of seeing a part of her that no one else sees? Did I do something to her in a past life? I clearly owe her something. But what?”
As I meditate and recite the mantras for breaking karma, I return to the thoughts around the Karmic Loops. So many pieces were swirling around that seemed to be looking for a place to land and fit into a complex puzzle that my mind did not have the capacity to wrap its head around nor completely understand.

I reflected on all the loops and compelling situations that were rapidly unfolding in front of my eyes.

In my meditation, I remember seeing, with wonder and magic, Toni Lander and Bruce Marks dance “The Moors Pavane” in Dallas, Texas, when I was 5 years old. It propelled me into wanting and knowing that I was a dancer. Their performance awoke something so profound and deep inside that it became my purpose, my path, my healer, my therapist, and my life.
It was the hope of being coached by Toni that propelled me out of Berlin, letting go of all my seniority there, and the increased salary with a much better contract.
And I realized that I had never told either of them that story.

Coming from Berlin was a whirlwind of chaos and change. I never had that opportunity to tell either of them. The moment never arose, and the timing always seemed inappropriate.
I could see that I was pulled to Salt Lake City by forces greater than myself.
Only after I got to Utah, did I discover that I was only going to make $17,000 a year in salary and took a 65% cut in pay, leaving Berlin. My innocent self just assumed that salaries would be similar from Germany to the US.

I had put up with an expensive lawsuit to be released from that Berlin contract and had to go back and forth for a third of a year to complete my contracts in both places.
The strain of wanting to work with Toni and Bruce had almost cost me my life by getting pneumonia three times and coming so very close to death.

What I had been willing to sacrifice to be here was beyond a normal situation.
In the meditation, I had to own that I did feel powerfully compelled by some divine force to be in Utah and at Ballet West.
I had to be here. I did not know why. I continued to wonder that while Bruce saw and appreciated me, why did I not have any real connection to Toni?
She always seemed to avoid me. Clearly, she felt something as well but kept it in, hidden, until she had enough stressors on her that some deep-seated feeling (or karma) was coming out.

Until that confrontation, I had always adored her. I looked up to her in ways that tall dancers look up to other tall mentors because they are so few tall females in the ballet world. Tall dancers naturally want to stick together.
I began to wonder how long they might have known about her condition. The fact that from the time I got there that she was not around could indicate that she had been ill for longer than we knew. But I did not have any facts to back that up.
She never really interacted with me in those very few classes, but I loved her classes. I loved how her mind saw movement. I wanted to pick her brain to understand and see the world as she saw it. But those opportunities never arose.
She was like a powerful Willi moving through the mists of my reality. While I was seeking her, she seemed to disappear whenever I got nearby.

And I had accepted that as a fact.
I figured that my younger self had made a mistake and that the connection was never really Toni, but instead, it was my connection to Bruce that was what I was there to do.
And I did adore Bruce. I felt as if he was approachable and a highly talented director that saw a bigger picture for ballet in Utah and worked to make that dream a reality. He was a person that I deeply respected, even though I know that all dancers do not feel that way about him.
I contemplated that thought and how funny that situation is. Each personality … either meshes or repels others. Clearly, such moments were a dance of clever karma at work.
I spent the entire rest of the day meditating. It helped calm me down and get me centered. I was not angry anymore and had come to the conclusion that I would let Toni dictate the process unfolding. I did not need to be right. I was here to help her in any way that she wanted.

I could see that each of us has a way of engaging others and that each of us is drawn to and repelled by the karma we still carry inside. I decided to drop any projection I had on her and just be open. She was the one dying, and her need overshadowed any petty or personal issues I had.

I believe that we are all a spiritual family. That those that greatly impact us, for better or worse, have agreed to be in certain positions in the cycles of this life. I believe that we challenge each other to see past the obvious and into the deeper meanings and lessons that this life tries to offer.
I was here to learn. I did not know what I was to learn, but such a thing is not necessary to know.
I was to help in any way that was in my capacity to do so.

Little did I know … I would have much to learn.

The lessons that were unfolding were going to open me to levels of understanding that would allow me to heal my own soul in the present and in past lives. It would open me up psychically and integrate the healer in me that could only awaken from a powerful and deep wound, becoming awake and showing me the truth.

Toni would be the catalyst that would take me to the bottom of my ego and then lift me up to a place that I never dreamed was possible.

Unfortunately, on a conscious level … she would never know that fact, while she was in her physical body. She was dealing with too much on her own personal plate. I would not burden her with my explorations into awareness as such things are always deeply personal and hard to explain.

It has taken me these thirty years to be able to connect all the threads that I now share with all of you.

I share them because I know I am not alone in trying to make sense out of difficult moments in our lives.

I share them because I hope instead of shutting down, through my words, other tools, answers, and lessons begin to open for you as well.

Profound upsets are the doorways to the powerful karmic lessons of healing that this life offers up.

The more powerful the upset, the greater potential for a breakthrough in our awareness.

The answers are out there. But even when you embrace them, some of them will break you down until you are on your knees, begging the universe to give you a pause, a break, and a moment to catch up.
Toni would become one of the greatest teachers in my life. Just not a teacher designed to make me into a great ballerina. She came to wake me into the intuitive artist that I have become. She taught me to dig deep to find the truths that she and I shared. She taught me to see past a person’s behavior and into the underlying emotions that stir things to the surface to be seen by a few.
She did not realize it at the time, but once on the other side, she did. I know she understands it all now, probably better than myself.
I know that she is the only soul that I deeply trusted to show me what I did not want to know was true about myself.
I am forever grateful that I got to see this side of her that others never saw.
With every move she made, I learned something. Every word she uttered, I watched and waited to see what was really happening in her head. And her touch continues to be a motivator even now, as I write another chapter in this book.
~Suzanne Wagner~