Over Thanksgiving my husband and I were in New Mexico cleaning and fixing up our Espanola house. Two of our dear renters had moved and our small home on 3 1/2 acres of high desert stood vacant on this county road called #119.
There was painting and patching and much shifting of furniture to do, so we hired a young man from our Sikh community to come over to help. His name was Deva Singh which means Angelic Soul. As he did not have a car, I would go to his house and pick him up to come work every morning after sadhana at the Espanola Ashram... read more
Deva Singh was the older brother of my son's classmate, but still, he was only 23 years old which seems very young to me now. I gave him breakfast every morning....a bit of green smoothie, a few pieces of avocado toast and a bowl of cereal to nourish his youthful nutritional needs. Every day he thanked me for the food, washed out his bowl and utensils and placed them in the dishwasher. I complimented him on his manners and he said his mom trained him well. On Sunday I saw him in the Sikh Gurdwara service and marveled at his graceful appearance and manners. All dressed in white, beautiful white turban and his small beard. He appeared so radiant and happy and I was happy to see this in him and was glad for his mother.
You see, not too long ago he had been in jail and his mother was lamenting how his addiction had landed him there. He bottomed out and while at the bottom he found the courage to face his addiction and get help. He made a remarkable transition over the course of a year through kundalini yoga. diet and the group support of our Sikh community. He successfully transformed himself from an angry young man to what I witnessed that week, a very beautiful exemplary young man.
The day we left Espanola to fly home I noticed Deva Singh had left his soft deerskin gloves in the dining room. As my husband was locking up the house he put the gloves in his briefcase with the intention of mailing them back. I wasn’t quite sure why we would take them all the way to New York to mail, rather than leave them on the doorstep for someone to come by and pick up over the ensuing days. But what followed made me see the wisdom of my husband's choice to mail the gloves back to Deva Singh.
When we arrived back in New York, I looked at the deerskin gloves and felt a real sense of love and beauty remembering this young man. Life was so busy on our return with a new CD being produced and the cold weather flooding in that the next thing I knew it was Sunday. Before we could mail Deva Singh’s gloves back to him we received news of his departure. Saturday he had been in a car accident and shortly thereafter, Sunday morning, he passed away. This news was very sudden and unexpected. The fact that we had just spent the week working together and witnessing his beauty & grace left me without too many feelings of loss or tragedy. Rather, seeing him triumphant in his transformation into a spiritually identified young man with great radiance made his departure from this life a very victorious event.
When I looked at his gloves sitting on our dining room table I felt the presence of this very dear beautiful and conscious young man named Deva Singh Khalsa—a radiant and graceful human being. The sadness that would have occurred was rather a very loving and compassionate kiss good bye from Deva Singh, a young man that was successful in turning his life around from tragedy and despair into one of majesty. I am ever grateful for having known Deva Singh and his mastery of his God light.
