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| Blessings |
We are each blessed, at certain points throughout our lives, no matter how hard, with some events and people and circumstances that are just plain gifts from Heaven, probably having to do with what we choose to sustain us as we come in to this Earth life, even before we get here. I believe we work with other spirits before we arrive, to agree on certain possibilities, and I believe we recognize each other when we encounter these mentors and allies and beloveds during our lifetimes here.
I am almost finished writing my book, Coming Alive After Death, and here, present a couple of chapters to whet your appetite, should you choose to explore more after it is published. These are not the opening chapters of the book.
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| Divine Connections happen' here xoxo |
Divine Connections
We were so blessed to have my sweet husband in our lives, escorting us
through this foray into uncharted territory with my daughter so sick. My
husband is one of the most accepting people I've ever met, next to my sweet and
gentle grandfather. He doesn't judge people, and he believes the best in them.
He has faith that they can work out their troubles and though he is always
available to talk with, and his perspectives are always generous and
enlightened, he's not a meddler or a controlling person. Raising our four kids
with him was amazing. We were a blended family, both of us having experienced
divorce when our respective spouses became bored with us.
It was magical when we got together and has been pretty magical ever
since.
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My Littles in our tiny house in Colorado
when I first became a single Mom xoxo
Jess was 7 and Torey was 9 years old. |
When I moved from Colorado to Pennsylvania with my children as a single
mother, we lived in a three-bedroom apartment for a couple of years. We found
ourselves surrounded by lots of other single mother families, and many
students. And I found that most of these mothers were bitter towards men and
not really the kind of people I enjoyed spending time with. I love men. I
believe the world is full of really good ones, and I can't sit around dissing
them just because the one in my first marriage was not trustworthy.
So I started looking for a place to live that offered more of a
neighborhood environment, with a mix of families. It had to allow pets, since I
had a cat and wanted a dog, and it had to be small enough for me to comfortably
afford the heat in winter, and easy to take care of and maintain both inside
and out. I came across an ad in the paper for a duplex and arranged to see it
early one morning.
When I walked into the modest living room just inside the front door, I
heard myself saying "I'll take it!"
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All I had seen was the floor, the windows, and the empty bookshelves when I heard myself say,
"I'll take it!" |
This is exactly when divine forces clicked into motion, though I didn't
know it at the time.
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| Life-sustaining forces are everywhere. |
I am absolutely certain of divine forces working through
my life, to bring me opportunities, to place right in front of me just what I
need when I need it. I believe in this for ALL of us. And as I grow older, I
get better at listening, feeling, recognizing, and responding to these
beautiful, life-sustaining forces. I will add here, that I don't believe these divine forces are meant to save us from death, because death comes to all of us, and the beauty in death is how we navigate it both with those we love who are dying, and the grace in the experience ourselves. I also have come to understand that death is merely transition to another kind of LIFE, so all that we are given is ultimately life-sustaining.
The current tenant, who was showing me around said, "But don't you
want to see the rest of it?"
I said, "Yes, but I'm sure I'll take it," because I had fallen
in love with the immaculately finished gorgeous wooden floors, the wall of
built-in bookshelves along the back of the living room, and the beautiful, very
large, wooden, multi-paned windows punctuating the walls of every room in the
house.
The tenant showed me around the rest of the duplex and though the third
bedroom was very small, the place was just as beautiful upstairs as down. The
backyard was small, but had a very old weeping cherry tree in one corner, and
the cherry tree, viewable from the kitchen and dining rooms, bloomed fragrant
white blossoms whose petals fluttered down and across the yard like springtime
snowflakes. It was a dream come true to find an affordable place that felt like
home. Outside my bedroom window was a tall, sturdy sugar maple tree that made
the room glow pink as its leaves turned color with the cold winds of the coming
winter. There were kids in the neighborhood, and lots of retired folks, single moms with dogs, and starter families. It was good.
My two children and I lived there for three years, and it was a very good home for us. I
loved cooking in the tiny kitchen that overlooked the backyard, and the
children and I ate at the dining room table I'd inherited from my grandparents
when they passed away. Spaghetti dinners, late Sunday brunches, giggles and
songs and stories. There was much laughter at that table, lots of crafting,
homework, puzzle building, and so much of the sweetness of life.
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| Living room in the duplex was cozy. |
The family that owned the other side of the duplex (we were just
renting, with the dream of eventually owning) liked to spend time outside, and
they had lots of barbecues. The father spent a lot of time in their backyard,
gardening and tending to his beautiful plants, and they had a little custom-built
pond with a tiny waterfall. The pond was filled with beautiful goldfish and
water-plants. I could hear it from my open windows as I worked in the kitchen
or basked in warm water and bubbles in our bathtub upstairs. Sometimes I'd look
over and see the four of them, and dream of the day when our family would no
longer be lopsided, missing the comfort of a loving paternal influence. I
wanted to be like them.
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| Me at my desk in the little duplex living room. |
During those years I spent a lot of time working, holding down a
full-time job as well as doing regular freelance work in my off-hours. One
night I was working at my computer, tucked into a corner of the living room and
the doorbell rang. I never had any company so was curious to see who it could
be. When I opened the door, I discovered that it was the father from the family
next door, and he introduced himself and said, "I noticed that you left
the lights on in your car. Would you like me to turn them off for you?"
"Oh!," I said, "no, I'll go do that right away. Thanks so
much for letting me know." For the next few seconds we stared at each
other awkwardly. Then he said goodnight and slipped away to join his beautiful
family. As he left and I trotted out with my keys to turn off the headlights, I
felt my solitude keenly, wondering if ever I would feel the wholeness of family
again.
During the first year we lived there, I said hi to the neighbors once,
and the mother drove my children to school a couple of times when it was
thundering in the morning and I had to be at work by 8 a.m. Usually my children walked to school. I so appreciated the kindnesses of my little
community. Though we didn't socialize, I'd sometimes find my driveway shoveled
out after a hard snow, and once the father neighbor came over and sprayed a
huge ant nest that was in our backyard, because the ants were finding their way
into their kitchen next door.
One night while the family was out in their backyard barbecuing, my
children came to me with a dead bird they had found. Together, we picked tiny
wildflowers and a couple of nice big green leaves, and I gave them a garden
trowel and went with them to the far corner of our yard, underneath the cherry
tree. We dug a little hole and lined it with the leaves and flowers, and laid the
bird to rest. I asked the children if they could think of something nice to say
to send it on its way. They each, with very solemn faces, blessed the little
bird and I did too. We gently covered the bird with soft earth, and I went to
sit on the steps by the kitchen door that overlooked the backyard and my two
lovely children stayed with the bird for a while longer. My daughter was about
nine years old at the time, and my son, 11.
As I sat contemplating death so close to the life that was happening
right next door, I heard my children start to sing, and I had to run inside to
keep them from hearing the laughter that erupted from my belly, for they were
singing, at the top of their lungs, with all the passion of innocent youth
"FooOOOOr he's a jolly good fellow, for he's a jolly good fellow, for he's
a jolly good fe-e-e-llow, which nobody can deny!"
Oh Lord, I'll never forget that delightfully sweet moment. What a
treasure.
Were they too young to understand
the solemnity of death? Or were they young enough to remember it's a time for
celebration?
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| Celebration xo |
As I am writing this book, I take little breaks, to go out on the porch
and feel the warm sunshine, sniff the wind, and stretch my eyes across the
expanse of trees in the distance. As I live and breathe, here is what happened
to me just now.
I'm standing on the back porch, basking and sniffing and stretching my
eyes, when I roll them down and what do I see? A little chipmunk, quite dead,
that my kitty has brought to me. It's a gift, he thinks. And my heart sinks
just a little. So I go into the garage and get my garden trowel and then I pick
some lovely little flowers and a long, fat green leaf, and I pick up the chippy
and carry everything out to the front of the house. I can't bury it in the
backyard because I'm afraid the pups would be too interested.
The neighbors think I'm gardening. I dig the hole, line it with the
lovely green leaf and tuck the little chippy into its soft bed. I place the
flowers around it and check to make double sure it won't be awakening,
miraculously recovered, before I push earth's blanket of soil over it. Nope. No
chance of recovery.
And you know what I do then? Yes, I start softly singing, "Foooor
he's a jolly good fellow. For he's a jolly good fellow. For he's a jolly good
f-e-e-e-llow! Which nobody can deny." I sing it all the way through, and
my heart feels warm. I picture Jess up in The Garden in the Sky, and she's
picking Little Chippy up as he runs to her and they cuddle. I swear my kitty is
in cahoots with Jess as I write this book. They're both hovering pretty close.
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| Joey Max when he was a kitten xo |
Becoming Cinderella
Our lives went on, working, working, working, dreaming, sleeping,
growing, and I would often sit outside on the steps with my coffee on Sunday
mornings, soaking up the dappled sunshine and enjoying the peace of nature.
One morning the father from the other side of the duplex came out his
back door, which was only a few feet to the side of my back door, and he said
"Can I talk with you?"
I was in my bathrobe, which was perfectly decent, but my hair was a mess
and I had not had my shower yet, so was not at my best for entertaining
neighborly conversation, but something about him was quietly urgent, so I said
yes, come on over. He sat on the step with me and shattered my illusions when
he announced "My wife has asked me for a divorce." Oh, my heart sank
to my toes to hear this, as I had thought them the most perfectly wonderful
example of family. They were the stuff of my hopes and dreams, and I never
would have imagined anything wrong. I didn't want for them to go through what
our family had experienced!
He said, "I know you're a single mother, and you know more than I
do about this kind of situation, so I'd like to ask you a question." I
said, "Of course, however I can help you, I'm happy to share what I
know."
"Do you think that the children need a relationship with both the mother and the father
when a marriage dissolves?" he asked.
"If at all possible, and if it doesn't harm them, most
certainly," I replied.
We talked for a bit longer and he went back home, and I went inside my
little home, each to our separate chores and duties.
And that was the beginning, though I didn't know it. The beginning of Becoming
Cinderella with divine forces at work.
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| The pups, Tristan, Rob's lab, and Tyler, my sheltie xoxo |
We both had dogs. His family had a golden retriever and my beautiful
sheltie loved to jump over the fence between our yards to go and play with
their pup. The dogs would run shoulder-to-shoulder through the neighbor's
backyard, chasing the children and running after balls, and whenever this
happened I felt embarrassed that my dog was so shameless about trotting around
where he didn't belong. To make sure that the dogs would be friendly to each
other, I took to giving them dog biscuits whenever I saw them together. It was
the first bond of friendship, the love that those two pups developed for each
other.
Though the father had told me his wife wanted a divorce, she continued
to live platonically in the duplex with them for many months, and one day she
came out to sit on the steps outside her kitchen door. I spent a lot of time on
my steps, and so I went to sit beside her and asked how things were going. I
asked her if there was any chance of reconciliation between them and she
adamantly replied that there was no chance of it. "I'm done with
him," she said.
And as I went back into my home after our conversation, into my little
kitchen, I felt so confused that she would reject a man like him. He seemed so
very kind. Well it wasn't any of my business, so I stayed out of it until one
day in the late, late summer, the father stood awkwardly outside of his kitchen
door and said to me, "There's a little art festival in a town nearby, and
I was thinking of going. Do you want to go?"
I had decided after my gut-wrenching, life-shattering divorce that I had
no interest in any kind of a permanent relationship, and was not at all
actively looking for a relationship, and I knew he was feeling vulnerable. I
got ready to politely decline, but the words that came out of my mouth were not
my own and I heard myself saying, "Yes. Let's go."
What?! My brain was completely surprised at my response to his
invitation and I went inside to change and get ready to go explore the little
town I knew nothing about. Ah, to be around some art and music, after all the
relentless hard work of the past year. I scrimped and saved and the children
and I only went out for free things, like beautiful hikes. The only money I
spent on entertainment was to rent movies, and we practically kept Blockbuster
in business for that time, since it was affordable, and it was a fun way to
spend time with the children.
The little neighborhood was good for my children, and they made friends,
sometimes doing sleepovers, and I was grateful for their experience of normalcy
in other people's homes.
This was a sleepover day for them both, so my neighbor and I headed for
the festival in the early afternoon. As I sat in his car while he drove, it
felt awkward, since I was so used to driving myself everywhere and being both
the man and the woman in my household. My children's father was mostly absent,
living in another state, having relationships with women, partying, and
spending his leisure hours as though he'd always been single with no
responsibilities. He paid only half of the child-support the courts had awarded
me each month. I had no knowledge of how to press for the whole amount, and
truth to tell, didn't want any contact with him that wasn't absolutely necessary,
as he was unstable in character and behavior.
When my neighbor and I arrived at the festival, he parked and we stepped
out into the warm sunshine to walk through the streets, which were lined with
booths of beautiful craftware. There were puppet shows and street entertainers
doing skits, and coffee and wonderful foods and for a little while I forgot the
toil of rebuilding life for my little lopsided family. I felt grateful for the
reprieve.
My neighbor and I walked down to the beautiful gazebo located in a park
at the bottom of the hill in this charming little town, and there we sat,
alone, together, quiet in the twilight. It was a romantic setting, with tiny
white lights twinkling all around the roof of the gazebo and couples strolling
around the park. But he was not yet divorced, and so we did not kiss. Not then.
We did not touch, all day.
And when we got back to our duplex we went into our separate front doors
and slept alone, knowing the other was not far away, but unreachable for oh so many
reasons.
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| One of those dog-walkin' days just after a fresh snow. |
We took to walking the dogs together and we walked all over God's
half-acre. We covered miles and miles of sidewalks past beautiful homes and
gardens. We took the pups hiking through sun-dappled forests. We walked in the
rain and the snow and the sun and the day and the night. It was our only time
together. We talked. We laughed. We shook snow-laden branches on each other and
snapped water at each other from the branches in the rain. We sank into huge
leaf piles along the sides of the roads in the autumn, and we kicked and
crunched our way through the leaves when there weren't enough of them to sink
down into. The pups conspired to keep us close to each other, frequently entwining
their leashes so that the father bent over with his arms around me to untangle
them.
After several weeks of this, we returned from our walks dreaming of a
time when perhaps we would not have separate front doors.
Finally they divorced, she moved out, and shortly after that, we held
hands for the first time. I remember we were walking the pups through a paved
alleyway in a neighborhood not far from ours when he reached out and grabbed
hold of my hand and my body shivered inside the whole way home. It was the best
kind of shivers.
I remember the moment when I fell in love with him. We were in the woods
with the dogs, and by this time, his two sons and my two children hiked with us,
and we were talking about the beautiful, thick moss that covered the rocks and
boulders. He laid his hand on top of some deep green, thick moss, and as I
looked at that hand, I suddenly knew inside that I loved him. That I would love
him forever. No matter what.
We had the most romantic courtship that ever the world has known, living
beside each other in our duplex after his wife went off to pursue her dreams.
He raised his kids, and I raised mine, and we lived parallel lives for two
years. We never had to call each other on the phone because we were right next
door, and as the relationship grew, we shared our spaces with all of the
children, sometimes barbecuing in his backyard, sometimes eating together in my
little dining room. The children were able to get to know each other without
the enforced confinement of mutual territory, and it worked well for us all.
We wrote love letters, which I still have, and he would tuck a single
purple flower from the butterfly bush in his backyard into each envelope. He
would open my kitchen door just a crack and tuck my love letter into the door
as he closed it, and it would be the first thing I'd see when I woke in the
mornings, with time to read and reread as I sipped my coffee. I loved getting
his letters and I loved writing to him.
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| The antique desk where he wrote my love letters xoxo |
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| Vases and more vases! |
In the warm growing seasons, he would bring me huge buckets and buckets and
buckets of beautiful flowers from the trial gardens that he oversaw as a
professor of horticulture at the university in our town. Sometimes he brought
me so many flowers it took me hours to get them all into vases. I put them into
every room of our home. Big flowers, little flowers, all over the dining room,
living room, kitchen, bathroom, children's rooms, my bedroom. Everywhere! And
they were much appreciated since for several years I couldn't afford to buy
flowers but would sometimes treat us to just one. I scoured the antique shops
for inexpensive vases and sometimes used our drinking glasses and milk pitchers
to put these beautiful flowers in. Yes, he swept me right off my feet, and I've
been happily swept for all these many years.
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| Happies! |
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| Yep, that's Jess on the right : P |
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| Sillies in the kitchen having a cake fight |
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| Torey and Jess |
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| Torey and Jess right before Jess moved to Portland |
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| Alex and Danielle with Joey Max |
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| Trevor |
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| Rob and Jess |
This is the man who walked with me to scatter the ashes of my daughter,
the daughter that we partially raised together when he picked up the slack my
ex-husband had left behind and stepped firmly into the role of male provider
and loving head of our now balanced families. We married two years after
attending the enchanting art festival.
To this day, 18 years after that first time, we always attend the annual art festival in the little town of Bellefonte, where our magic first began.
Magic man. Wonderful man. Lovely
flower man. My man. My beautiful, kind, generous, loving man.
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| My Love |
So you see, my book is not so much about death as about life. It is not an easy read, as there is pain, but there is such beauty, and there is hope, faith, connection, and some mindblowing revelations as well as true comfort. I will post when it becomes available.
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| Namaste |
