PROLOGUE

 

Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

–Jesus of Nazareth, The Beatitudes

Death ends a life, but not a relationship.

–Scott Gillen, Poem (Untitled)

My heart tells me it’s time for the story to be told, and this time I might finally believe it. So I sit down, take a very deep breath, and dare to start writ­ing about great mys­ter­ies far beyond words, life and love and death and the mirac­u­lous thread that weaves them all together. 

It is no sim­ple task to explore such depths in a way that will mean some­thing, to mine the bless­ings of my harsh expe­ri­ence so that the way might be eased for oth­ers. Part of me feels called, as if in a dream where every­thing is just out of focus, to some high wire ill– pre­pared for the steps before me. The stakes are high, and I stand trem­bling and revealed. Yet it is here exactly that I belong, for I have expe­ri­enced mir­a­cles of a truth and power that can­not be denied even though I can never, will never, fully under­stand them. 

In this moment my heart pounds; my mind is stilled by the daz­zling impres­sions of height, depth, and color. Dis­tant music sur­rounds, aris­ing from else­where. I have loved truly, lost all, and stand scarred by grief for all to see. How strange even the air feels up here; I’ve been laid low for so long and wan­dered so far. I can­not be sure where I am, but I am not lost. My eyes wan­der, catch the bril­liant col­ors of light danc­ing rest­lessly off the shards of my shat­tered heart! My wounds are deep but I am still stand­ing, sus­tained by a love that defies all rea­son, refus­ing to die. Where am I to go from here? How am I to probe the unexplainable? 

I have absolutely no idea. Only instinct can guide me through this dream, and that voice tells me that the time to move for­ward is now. Despite the unde­ni­able wounds, the mon­u­men­tal self-doubt, I am assured that the story is not mine alone but some­how meant for the shar­ing. Its mes­sage may carry hope or the promise of heal­ing for oth­ers lost in their own worlds of grief, those who feel them­selves ghosts and more alone than they could have ever imag­ined. I tell it pre­cisely not because it is unique or spe­cial, but because I can­not doubt that the same lov­ing spirit is just as busily at work in your life right now as it is in mine, and will remain so beyond our con­cepts of time or place. 

Life is indeed hard, some­times even a bru­tal hor­ror, and the pain of death’s rav­ages often intol­er­a­ble. But things are not always as they seem, and that’s the very best of news. The truth is sweeter and more pow­er­ful than you can imag­ine, enough even to reach you wher­ever you’ve wan­dered and to keep your spirit alive long after you’ve given up all hope.

 

Spir­its Hav­ing Flown___ P. Crock­ett

Here’s a won­der­ful truth, and this I now know: I was com­pletely wrong in much that I believed about death. And I con­se­quently paid the high­est of prices, mea­sured out in despair. The pain of grief is itself more than enough, the added cost of false belief pos­si­bly enough to break you. Not so very long ago, it seemed all too obvi­ous that death meant the end of the story, clear and sim­ple. The empti­ness fol­low­ing one’s last breath was com­plete and for­ever, a final insult silenc­ing all rhythm and mock­ing all that was now so gone. In one ran­dom instant every­thing that a per­son had touched and felt and seen, all they had ever dreamed and known and been, evap­o­rated like a mist that left no trace. Dumb and damnable death stalked its prey with a ser­pen­tine hunger either mind­less or rav­en­ous, who could know, but in the end sim­ply swal­lowed all that lived. It was just a mat­ter of time.

If life inevitably birthed death, spawn­ing in turn only noth­ing­ness, exactly what man­ner of insult was love? What could pos­si­bly be its point? And all that aside, how high was its cost? Did the whole setup reflect some cos­mic cru­elty or even mal­ice, or was it all sim­ply point­less? Such awful ques­tions became impor­tant to me only after death sud­denly became real, after I’d watched my loved one so warm and ten­der just a moment ago trans­form into a cold corpse that quickly began to stiffen and mottl e into an ashen pal­lor. An unthink­able rip­tide had capri­ciously swept in and torn from me my heart, cast­ing him away for­ever. From my life, our home, our bed, right out of my arms. The sand cas­tle walls of denial I had so art­fully and painstak­ingly con­structed as my only defense sim­ply dis­solved, leav­ing me wet and cold. There was only empti­ness, and a long­ing too painful to bear even for an instant in an awful new world where the clocks had no hands. 

Before the direct strike of death’s light­ning bolt I’d been too engaged in liv­ing to spend much time or energy con­tem­plat­ing its absence. With each new day pre­sent­ing its own full share of ordeals and chal­lenges and tri­umphs before unfold­ing into the never-ending drama of tomor­row and next week and so on, who really cared what was to hap­pen after that almost imag­i­nary last day? In any event who could know, and so what was the real point of ask­ing? And who in God’s name really wanted to pon­der the mat­ter, anyway?

It’s no won­der, then, that the sud­den arrival of that last day for my loved one, mark­ing also the death of our days together, left me wholly at a loss. With full pain and lit­tle thought I embraced the con­ven­tional wis­dom on the sit­u­a­tion, con­clud­ing that he was for­ever gone and his pre­cious being entirely and irrev­o­ca­bly lost. The rela­tion­ship most sacred to me had been sev­ered as quickly and cleanly as if struck by the falling edge of a sharp­ened guil­lo­tine, and felt no less vio­lent in impact. What did it mat­ter that his death had changed noth­ing of the full­ness of my love for him, my burn­ing need to con­tinue the seam­less shar­ing that had so sus­tained me and enriched my heart, even come to give my life meaning? 

If I longed as never before to con­tinue casu­ally shar­ing with him my dreams and fears, hopes and visions, the sim­ple events of the day, that was my tough luck. Yes­ter­day was just gone and so was he, of less sub­stance now than even thin air. Any gifts I might feel the need to give him, no mat­ter how wor­thy, were hence­forth unde­liv­er­able and thus wholly use­less; he’d left no for­ward­ing address. I would obvi­ously never again hear from Scott or enjoy his com­pan­ion­ship and find com­fort in his warmth and devo­tion, feel his touch, or enjoy the delights of his unique sense of humor. Though my hope began to wither into despair with the deep­en­ing of that real­iza­tion, noth­ing could change the awful fact.

 

Self-portrait (cam­era on time delay), sun set­ting on New York City 1993

I now know that I was wrong on all counts, and that Scott’s death by no means brought about either the extin­guish­ing of his soul nor the end of a vital and ongo­ing rela­tion­ship. I have at last grown to under­stand that his pass­ing sig­naled not only an end­ing but the mirac­u­lous begin­nings of an entirely new jour­ney for us both, a time­less rebirth. But the road to get­ting from there to here has been far from either direct or easy, and along the way I have been repeat­edly shaken to my foun­da­tions and pushed always another step beyond any prior lim­its. It may be impor­tant that you real­ize I am now writ­ing in a vocab­u­lary of ideas and expe­ri­ences once barely known to me, even beyond my imag­i­na­tion. I can­not begin to fully under­stand it all, but my expe­ri­ence of death has taught me vol­umes about life. 

Death remains essen­tially mys­te­ri­ous, and I would not pre­sume to speak oth­er­wise. Despite its absolute uni­ver­sal­ity, indeed life’s one guar­an­tee, it refuses to sub­mit to any insults of sim­ple expla­na­tion or to the reduc­tion of its realms to any map or chart. At this point I have learned much more about what death is not than what it is, yet found even such glimpses of the truth pro­foundly lib­er­at­ing and wor­thy of shar­ing. Mine is less a story “about death” than the daunt­ing chal­lenge of get­ting on with life. At its essence, it is about liv­ing freely, and lov­ing deeply, and savor­ing the expe­ri­ence we are given with a feel­ing of safety and an atti­tude of abun­dance that in some ways defies reason. 

Although it once seemed very much oth­er­wise I have come to under­stand that death is no enemy to either life or love, and with­out excep­tion or acci­dent serves only accord­ing to the pur­poses of its undis­puted mas­ter, love. Death is as every bit as essen­tial to the grand cycle of being as birth, and lies just as near the cen­ter of its heart. And though we observe in nature that night fol­lows the day fol­low­ing the night, and wit­ness each sea­son yield­ing grace­fully to the next, time after time into time and past time, we often fail to remem­ber that we too are part of it all, or to make the basic con­nec­tion between the cycles of our lives and the greater pageant always sur­round­ing. Win­ter is no enemy to spring. 

There is a greater plan, and we are all in it together. It only seems as if our jour­neys from birth to death are iso­lated and soli­tary, the weight of the frag­mented choices con­fronting us along the way ours to bear alone. In deeper truth we are always uni­fied by the roles we share, and jointly par­take of one Spirit. Not one of us walks even one step of our jour­neys alone, unguided, or with­out such pro­tec­tion as may be required for the ben­e­fit of our souls, ever.

Look­ing back on the raw hor­ror of my experi ence and the wind­ing lengths of the jour­ney that fol­lowed, I can­not help but feel that the process need not have been so damned dif­fi­cult. I could not have had less of a clue, or been less gen­er­ally pre­pared for the event had my beloved been the first mor­tal to ever pass, and imag­ine I am not alone in that feel­ing. Had I known then what I do now, or sim­ply been open to the ques­tions, the entire expe­ri­ence would have been dif­fer­ent. Not nec­es­sar­ily eas­ier, but most cer­tainly dif­fer­ent, and in a way promis­ing of heal­ing.

Aware even of the pos­si­bil­ity that love truly shared can never die, I might have been bet­ter able to face up to the grad­ual dimin­ish­ment and final phys­i­cal loss of my loved one. With the unbear­able weight of antic­i­pated loss lifted at least in part from my shoul­ders, I could have more fully been there dur­ing that sacred time. Know­ing that my real trea­sure could never be lost, I might have found it eas­ier to begin to let go. And, after his death, been bet­ter able to cul­ti­vate an atti­tude of grate­ful­ness for what we’d shared instead of sink­ing into a black hole of the spirit with­out bottom.

But none of that was to be, for I had unknow­ingly swal­lowed the bit­ter and skimpy offer­ings tossed out as real­ity by “those who knew.” Strangely for a cul­ture in which the mir­a­cle of res­ur­rec­tion pro­vides a com­mon bedrock of faith, our insti­tu­tions have proudly embraced in this realm of the sacred a form of col­lec­tive myopia, and pre­sumed in unthink­ing arro­gance to strip death of its mys­tery. For­get­ting that death always has been and remains the great­est of the great unknowns, the most vocal, “real­is­tic,” and assertive among us have pre­sumed to pro­nounce its occur­rence the end of the story. Not merely the end of a life, but also the final and irrev­o­ca­ble dis­so­lu­tion of every human bond and the sud­den end­point of each ongo­ing journey.

It is no won­der that those trau­ma­tized by the rav­ages of death and its atten­dant losses often feel exquis­itely alone. Their hearts whis­per from within a com­fort­ing knowl­edge of deep­est truth, that their love is not only still vital but received, even ten­derly rec­i­p­ro­cated here and now. The “experts” pro­ceed to nod patron­iz­ingly as they inscribe in their crisp notes such clin­i­cal terms as “denial” and “wish ful­fill­ment,” mean­while men­tally pin­point­ing each expe­ri­ence neatly within an author­i­ta­tive list defin­ing “Stages of Grief.” In the place of mean­ing­ful guid­ance or sup­port those bro­ken in spirit find await­ing only a ster­ile vac­uum over­crowded with an abun­dance of cheap and dam­ag­ing “answers” on this great­est of human ques­tions, backed pri­mar­ily by cyn­i­cism and lazi­ness.

Yet on the basis of what expe­ri­ence can so many with such smug­ness make such pro­nounce­ments, and upon what “evi­dence” offered? Those claim­ing with author­ity spe­cial knowl­edge of death’s nature and mean­ing need to be ques­tioned, and hard. How would they pre­sume to engrave upon mystery’s great blank slate their “knowl­edge” of the here­after, offer­ing only small and dingy answers in return, and why? If both our true ori­gin and real pur­poses in life remain ulti­mately clouded and thus glo­ri­ously rich in pos­si­bil­ity, why should the next phase of our jour­ney be any dif­fer­ent? Who among us can cred­i­bly claim an abil­ity to first fix and then define the anatomy of a miracle?

Those reel­ing with grief and short on hope often fall easy prey at the great­est cost to such stock “knowl­edge” and advice, for the phys­i­cal absence of the loved one is pal­pa­ble and the pain of loss a pound­ing real­ity sec­ond to none. Yet if these “experts” are wrong and their assur­ances coun­ter­feit, how much unnec­es­sary dam­age and human pain have been caused as a result? The cost is incal­cu­la­ble, and its toll in suf­fer­ing beyond mea­sure. Any door to heal­ing that our intu­ition and instincts might have had us open is left shut tight in fear, the well­spring of our soli­tary tears finally dries up and dis­ap­pears, and part of us slowly dies. We remain unnec­es­sar­ily alone, a vague sense of shame and painful absur­dity weight­ing down our grief, and have lost the abil­ity to sup­port and share from the heart pre­cisely when we need it most.

Here is why I there­fore take that step out on to that thin wire over such deep and sacred ground: not to pro­vide answers, but to facil­i­tate the ask­ing of heal­ing ques­tions. To re-open doors of pos­si­bil­ity once thought slammed for­ever shut, and encour­age the explo­ration of the rich and pow­er­ful mys­ter­ies that gleam like stars amongst the dark­ness, offer­ing a promise of heal­ing to those will­ing to acknowl­edge them. It only seems as if death and its harsh silence imme­di­ately bring to an end all being and sti­fle any fur­ther inquiry. In truth the expe­ri­ence offers a rare por­tal to entire new realms of know­ing and shar­ing and being, despite its raw open­ing in grief. Any who would dare find that door­way and step through it will encounter a vast new world of the spirit, richly abun­dant in pos­si­bil­ity and reflect­ing an ancient lan­guage of the heart. 

Gen­uine open­ness to inquiry, even if lead­ing squarely into the unknow­able and at times painfully soli­tary and uncom­fort­able, must there­fore serve as the best and only life­line for those strug­gling to effec­tively cope with the rav­ages of grief. Despite the “cookie cut­ter” approach to death, grief, and loss that soci­ety might impose for its gen­eral com­fort and con­ve­nience, each path to heal­ing is unique, and trav­el­ers called upon such jour­neys must ulti­mately seek out their own solu­tions hon­or­ing their own needs and heed­ing their own intuition. 

No rules uni­ver­sally apply here, at least that I know of. Only we can know our own hearts, have a true feel for our his­tory, and even begin to under­stand the depth or tex­tures of the rela­tion­ships we have shared. Only our own dis­cern­ment can tell us whether the event of a loved one’s pass­ing marks a com­ple­tion of that rela­tion­ship, or a new phase of the con­nec­tion, or any point in between. If unfin­ished busi­ness remains with one still very much loved but now in the spirit, what might be the poten­tial costs on either side if the issue is never even examined?

From the very begin­ning of the appar­ent “dead end” of my jour­ney, the seeds of my promised sal­va­tion took root with the coach­ing and uncon­di­tional sup­port of my loved ones not only to sim­ply keep on, but to dare lis­ten to the voice quiet and steady within my heart along the way. At that crit­i­cal point, blinded and frozen nearly solid in pain, I was gen­tly encour­aged to con­tinue to open when that seemed an impos­si­bil­ity. In the deep­est part of me I knew not only that real love had been, but also very much still was, yet had absolutely no idea what to do or where to go with that knowl­edge. At exactly the right times, I was given the per­mis­sion I so craved to sim­ply ask and to explore new possibilities. 

Thus was the start of my dif­fi­cult path smoothed, and my life ulti­mately greatly enriched. As I allowed my heart and mind to open and began to sim­ply pay atten­tion, I observed that love rec­og­nizes none of the lim­its we do. I learned that dead does not mean gone, or fin­ished, and that mirac­u­lously even the indi­vid­ual per­son­al­ity remains fully intact fol­low­ing its pas­sage. I expe­ri­enced in the most imme­di­ate of ways the pres­ence and touch of the angels, and came to real­ize they are a part of our every­day lives larger and more real than even the most con­scious of us can imagine.

If this book were to suc­ceed in but one task, it would be to sim­ply pass along that same gift of encour­age­ment to oth­ers shat­tered by loss, or left dazed or frozen in con­fu­sion, or oth­er­wise feel­ing locked down in pain with no pos­si­bil­ity of parole. I have cho­sen to share my expe­ri­ence here not to pro­vide a guide or any sort of blue­print for yours, but rather in the hope that doing so may sim­ply help open you up to a new range of pos­si­bil­i­ties and thus ease the way upon your path. I have learned that love is the sole refuge we can trust, and that in the quiet voice of our own hearts lies our surest guide through the dark and wholly uncharted ter­ri­to­ries in which so many of us will one day be forced to wan­der, out­cast.

Through dia­logue with oth­ers I have learned that expe­ri­ences of liv­ing rela­tion­ships with the hon­ored dead are in fact extremely com­mon across all imag­in­able lines of age, race, gen­der, faith, sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion, and socioe­co­nomic sta­tus, yet often stored away as trea­sure most pre­cious and kept safe­guarded pri­vate and close within the heart. Our hearts and even expe­ri­ence fre­quently tell us that a liv­ing link with the spirit very much remains, if we even know how to lis­ten, but such thoughts and feel­ings are con­sid­ered “crazy,” and thus first dis­counted and then dri­ven under­ground. When was such fun­da­men­tal and sacred human knowl­edge yielded to the unknown, and why? 

Are we not con­se­quently los­ing a unique oppor­tu­nity for mutual enrich­ment, shared heal­ing, and a col­lec­tive preser­va­tion of the essen­tial wis­dom of a cul­ture? These pow­er­ful links with the spirit are often deeply enrich­ing to the sur­vivors’ daily lives, and held by them as inte­gral and greatly heal­ing as they move on with life. And if our ongo­ing rela­tion­ships with the dead are very much a two-way street, how might our will­ful blind­ness be some­how imped­ing their progress, mar­ring their peace, or pre­vent­ing the deliv­ery of the guid­ance and other pre­cious gifts they might not only want but need to bestow?

If we have sur­ren­dered in mat­ters most sacred our sov­er­eign right to honor our­selves by lis­ten­ing to what we know inside, and yielded the wis­dom of our inner voice to the chilly clamor always sur­round­ing and dis­rupt­ing our search for true guid­ance, some­thing huge and pre­cious has been lost. We may have unknow­ingly cast away the key to our sal­va­tion, and with it closed the door on those we’ve loved. What exactly has been gained in return?

 

No mat­ter where you stand in life, or whom you love, death and its great mys­ter­ies will sooner or later play a role. And may it be that in the great pas­sion play of your life you will have the strength and peace of mind to live fully and abun­dantly, hold­ing noth­ing back. Risk heart­break, cul­ti­vat­ing the under­stand­ing that death is sim­ply another tran­si­tion, from which the soul con­tin­ues its jour­ney upon the com­ple­tion of its mis­sion here. Know that death need not end the rela­tion­ships you hold as most pre­cious, and that despite the pos­si­bil­ity of heart­break your only real safety is in love.

It is with con­fi­dence that I assure you that you can find your way, but the going may not always be easy. To start heal­ing, to make progress, you need not fully under­stand or believe. Just try out the assur­ance that love is what got you into this mess, and it is love that will see you out. It only feels like any mis­takes have been made, no mat­ter how great the pain. No love shared is ever a mistake.

Fol­low it through, and move on with your life as and when you are damned well ready. Move for­ward and open up, or don’t, and only at your own pace. Remain open to the pos­si­bil­ity that noth­ing is quite as it seems, and know that the love you still have to give is being received, loud and clear. What­ever emo­tions may still burn within your breast are nei­ther out of place nor in any way in vain. It may very much seem oth­er­wise, but you are on your path and can­not be else­where. If you still breathe, your mis­sion here is not yet complete.

And no mat­ter how the idea might feel to you, here’s the truth: you are loved and needed, more than you can ever know. Right here and now, forever.

Let’s explore.

 

Tags: beatitudes, colors of light, death is an impostor, great mysteries, life after death, loss to healing, scott gillen, surviving

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