I'm almost finished with After This. Bidwell Smith's exploration of the question of where we go when we die is a weighty one. A controversial one. And for me it is a question that I don't need an exact answer to. I have strong faith that our souls live on. This strength comes down to the word faith for me. Faith is not needing to know empirically or rationally or absolutely. Faith is belief suspended. My proof lives within me. It is something I know by not knowing.
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I feel at peace in my faith even as it exists in relation to my religious beliefs. Religion and spirituality are not mutually exclusive. I can be religious and not spiritual. I can be spiritual and not religious. I am both, and I have found that they are rather compatible believe it or not. The longer my religious and spiritual journeys are the less often I find myself asking questions like Why? or How? I'm a spiritual being having a human experience and that's the crux of what I need to know.
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My friend Rose said goodbye to her mother on Saturday. She was with her when she took her last breath. I was on my couch reading After This and thinking of Rose. I was thinking of her because I knew her Mom was near her end, but also because Rose took me to my first and only experience with a medium a little over 5 years ago. Incidentally, Rose visited a medium before the end of the day Saturday, and what she shared with me about that experience brought tears to my eyes.
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When Rose suggested the physic circle led by her friend, a medium, what feels like a lifetime ago, I was just a little apprehensive. My trepidation attributable not to any preconceived notions about conjuring the dead, but that my Mom wouldn't come through...couldn't come through. Before she died, I beseeched her to send me signs. She said she would if she could. We never agreed on a singular talisman. I didn't want to limit the possibilities. Within days, it became clear to me to pay attention to birds like the owl prone on a branch in the middle of the day watching me like a hawk as I hiked hurting over my loss and humbled that life goes on. The truth is I'd had many signs in the months after her death so I didn't want to be greedy. There was a circle complete with loved ones looking for comfort and connection. Why shouldn't it be one of them?
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My Mom was never a wallflower is why. She came through with a couple of messages that brought me incredible happiness and healing. She let me know that she would be at my brother's upcoming wedding, that she is with my children often and then she told me that she knows I miss her only Martina said it like this, "She KNOWS you miss her (alright already). She hears you EVERY night." I didn't see or hear my Mom that night, but I felt her. I truly felt her. Our reading was cut short when my friend's mother came through with a message for her. What she said concerned me at the time, but gives me chills now knowing what I know.
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I know what I know. Knowing is a double-edged sword. There is healing in knowing that our loved ones are with us, but it is hard to reconcile that they are so close and still so out of reach. The thing is that they come closer when we open our minds, when we talk to them, ask of them, invite them. I haven't been doing that lately. That's going to change.
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I had a dream of my Mom before waking the other early morning. It woke me. I was still in the dark for a minute or two replaying it in my head...committing it to memory. It felt like much more than a dream. I told myself that I needed to remember it when the day dawned. I promised to figure out what it meant. The only thing I remembered an hour later was my Mom telling me that it wasn't a dream, but then I knew that.
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My Mom was never a wallflower is why. She came through with a couple of messages that brought me incredible happiness and healing. She let me know that she would be at my brother's upcoming wedding, that she is with my children often and then she told me that she knows I miss her only Martina said it like this, "She KNOWS you miss her (alright already). She hears you EVERY night." I didn't see or hear my Mom that night, but I felt her. I truly felt her. Our reading was cut short when my friend's mother came through with a message for her. What she said concerned me at the time, but gives me chills now knowing what I know.
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I know what I know. Knowing is a double-edged sword. There is healing in knowing that our loved ones are with us, but it is hard to reconcile that they are so close and still so out of reach. The thing is that they come closer when we open our minds, when we talk to them, ask of them, invite them. I haven't been doing that lately. That's going to change.
*************************
I had a dream of my Mom before waking the other early morning. It woke me. I was still in the dark for a minute or two replaying it in my head...committing it to memory. It felt like much more than a dream. I told myself that I needed to remember it when the day dawned. I promised to figure out what it meant. The only thing I remembered an hour later was my Mom telling me that it wasn't a dream, but then I knew that.
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