This month I have three anniversaries of loved ones passing over to the world of Spirit. Although they have happened over a number of years it took me a while to feel joyful about their loss.
I know it might sound strange to say that their loss was joyful. I felt the pain of their going. An empty space was created just at the point of the year when I feel the connection most to family and friends. Grief at a time of celebration is hard to handle. With each loss I struggled to immerse myself once again in the festivities surrounding the turn of the year. Sitting around the dinner table knowing that these people had gone beyond my means of connection. Remembering that they were frozen in time now. Lost to me as my years clicked by but theirs didn’t.
This was long before I understood about the Spirit World. The afterlife that I now believe waits for all of us. I walked through my grief thinking I had lost these loved ones forever. Each December I remembered their absence with a pang. Death happens. It is a certainty in an uncertain world. Yet I struggled to understand why these people had been taken away from me. I wanted them back. There were lots of natural reasons for my desire to make the world back into what it had been. In some ways I was still a child, afraid of the unknown, wandering in the dark.
Eventually I started to discover my ability to communicate with Spirit people. It was a frustrating and joyful process.
My views about the exsistence of an afterlife changed as a result of my experiences. I learned that there were Spirit people ready and able to talk to me. So long as I paid attention to them. I also learned that they enjoyed making the connections with us. They wanted to remind us of their love. But I found it hard to get to speak to my own loved ones. Over and over I asked them to talk to me. It seemed that they had gone silent. I wondered if they were really there. Or if they did still love me. It was my lesson in patience.
Of course I asked my Guides to help me all the time. Even they seemed slow to respond. Until one particular day. They must have decided I was ready to hear what they needed to tell me. I’m not sure I was listening as much as I should. But they have told me exactly the same many times since. My Guides asked me to think about death from the perspective of the person who had passed over. They asked me to think about this change as a birth. A new beginning or a return to where we had left off in the Spirit World.
My Guides wanted me to consider what it would feel like to wake up dead. And to find myself surrounded by loved ones.
It was a question which I thought about a lot. How would it feel? I thought at first I would be a bit shocked. Perhaps sad that I’d had to leave the Earth. But I would also feel glad to be seeing the people I loved once more. Maybe I would wonder if I’d left anything unfinished. Perhaps I would be relieved that all physical pain had disappeared. Or wanting to go back and be with someone I’d left behind. I began to see that moving from this life to the next would provoke such a mixture of feelings.
At this point my Guides reminded me that I would be reunited with people I had missed, perhaps for a long time, and there would be catching up to do. I finally had a light bulb moment. It would be a celebration to find myself back with those people. I would be joyful to see all of them again. And surely they would see this as a joyful occasion too? Even if there is no such thing as time in the Spirit World they would be meeting me as a changed person from the one they knew. One of my grandma’s died when I was a child. I wonder what we would talk about if I met her now?
That became another interesting question. How joyful to finally reconnect, share, and discuss our life together with a lady who I will always remember from a child’s point of view. Inside or perhaps hidden underneath the grief is an opportunity to once again share the love we had in this life. I am remembering my loved ones tonight with joy knowing that they found joy in returning to their loved ones. And I will share in that joy when it is my time to become Spirit once more.
Day 401 of my blogging challenge.