Toto, We're Not in Kansas Anymore!

Losing people you love can make anyone feel crazy at times.  Thinking that you may be hearing, feeling and receiving from them after they're gone, well that phenomena, it takes the feeling crazy to an entirely new level.  At first I thought it was just a survival technique to cope after Thomas passed.  A game I was playing in my head to keep the conversations going this winter.  This, despite the fact that I've already come to accept that I receive information randomly for others close to me from their loved ones.  It's never been detailed communication though.  Up to now it's been feelings, a few words or gestures.  A nudge to reach out to whomever to check in on them.  I was comfortable with it because I could explain it.

Then the oh shit, how do I explain THIS moment happened.  Well, the first one at least.  A phone call.  A lengthy conversation with the family of a friend (Whom I didn't know before the person we both knew left us).  One of the first questions asked of me was if my deceased friend had confided in me about an incident eight months earlier between himself and this family member.  No, he had not.  However, since his passing, I had received a request that I didn't really understand from him and frankly was unwilling to do for him in its entirety.  Sitting in my office having this deep conversation, I couldn't believe what was was being told to me.  This fragile and sad person, I wanted so badly to tell her what he'd asked me to do after he passed as she shared the story, but I couldn't.  I was frozen in fear and in utter and unbelieveable shock.  I wasn't losing my mind afterall.  Wow, just wow.  Eventually we ended the call and all I could do was sit in silence with teary eyes mouthing the words thank you.  Thank you my dear friend for letting me know I'm not losing it.

What was exactly that he did want from me?  He wanted me to send her flowers on a specific upcoming Holiday and write on the note that he was "sorry about last year's" (the last one between them).  I agreed to take her flowers but I told him (if he was in fact really communicating with me telepathically) that there was NO WAY I'm going there with her with the apology.  It just wasn't my place to do so and I didn't want to cross that comfort river into the unknown.  I had no knowledge of what had transpired between them just 8 months before he passed.  Yet here she was on the phone affirming the why behind his request. 

Mother's Day Sunday would come, wherein I was to take her the flowers (and withholding the message), only to find her leaving town in her new toy for a view of the ocean.  At some point I hope to find the courage to sit her down and tell her about his visits since passing.  How she will receive it isn't for me to question, I know this.  I just have to find the courage to honor his place in our lives and open that door, to let her know beyond a shadow of any doubt that he does in fact live on.  For all I know, she's reading these very words and has already placed it together that I'm speaking about them.

It was the first time since Thomas passed that I realized that maybe I really WAS getting information from Thomas and others on their side of existence.  Yes, I knew things had been moved in my home unexplainably, just as I knew of others who have this phenomenon.  Despite the same, I was in resistance to what was going on with myself.

The second incident was sitting in my car talking with a girl I barely knew after a mutual friend's funeral.  Talking about our friend, he was all of a sudden there, loud and clear, giving me cold chills in the hot sunlight, making my heart race, my stomach flip and dumping word after word into my mind for her.  I'd never had that happen before.  I trusted her enough though in that moment to just blurt it all out and not fear judgment for the same.  I left that memorial service forever shifted into a new reality of what was possible.  It's one thing to watch others proclaim to be mediums, it's an entirely different thing to have it happen in your own life.  Indeed, holy shit balls, did that just really happen to us?

Then came two separate incidents of a personality I didn't know here popping in for a dear and close friend.  Both times it happened while traveling in the car with him and both times my friend also received in how own way as well.  These two incidents also created severe physical symptoms (similar to what some would term an anxiety attack) during the exchange of information and the second happened to occur at a time when my close friend felt comfortable enough to reach out to this guy's mother.

My friend wanted to make sense of all that was pouring out of me.  Some of it he could explain on his own and affirm, the rest of it he had to deliver to her to connect the dots.  Boy did she ever connect those dots.  He was blown away.  I was blown away and it was from that point forward that I decided that I seriously wasn't losing my mental capacities.  That something else was going on and that I just needed to learn to accept it and if possible, control it.  I wasn't scared.  I wasn't anxious.  I was just kinetically overwhelmed with that person's energy. As my friend said, "he was as strong in death as he was in life."  Sure, if that's how you explain it.

Bottom line, Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore.

Copyright ©2014 Nita Clewis All rights reserved.  For personal use only.  Commercial use without permission of the author is not allowed.  Sharing with friends and family is warmly welcomed.  
      

The Next Chapter: Now What?

2014, some question if it has been a cruel joke at times.  People call and ask how exactly are you doing all of this with such love, compassion and grace?  Seriously, it's all from beyond me.  Some call it The Cosmic Forces.  Others label it Faith.  God.  Jesus.  Buddha.  Spirit.  That yummy stuff we don't really have any true evidence of other than the unexplainable.  I'm human, vulnerable and fragile at times, just like you.  I question, I get angry, and I even get depressed.

On June 6th, I sat next to my grandfather in his last stage of life, listening to his breath as he was in a slumber, talking to him as I had each time I was there by his side these last few months hoping, then accepting, and finally learning to let go.  I knew it was time.  I knew he was ready.  I felt it.  I saw it.  I heard them as well.  As they'd been for the weeks, they'd been waiting for him.  My grandmother, his parents, his siblings, his friend from the Lodge all on the other side.  They were all there in that room again. This day it was different though.  This day I told him goodbye because I knew.  This day I told him thank you again for all that he'd done, made promises I knew that would bring him peace enough to surrender, and felt his embrace one last time through spirit.  Then I went to bring my son home for the weekend and planned to be back by his side again Saturday morning.  Before dawn though he was with them; happy, free and whole again on the other side.

Towards the end it was difficult for me to be there, their energies so intense around him.  It wasn't hard to see him as he was because I knew inside that he was only there in brief moments with us. A kiss.  A hand held.  That was him in his beautiful state of being.  Of knowing.

My last lucid conversation with him had been a mere two weeks earlier in the living room.  He was asking about Knowing, about what if I'd written for it that day, and about the band I was excited to have the opportunity to write for named Exilia.  He was fascinated that they were from Italy and had been touring in the States.  It was in the last few weeks that he learned for the first time the reach that is Knowing.  He had no idea that it was read all over the world by thousands of people in 45 countries (and counting).  He was incredibly proud of his granddaughter and questioned why it wasn't a "business" generating a living for me yet.  Because that wasn't the intention that I attached to this endeavor.  Why haven't you written a book yet Nita?  All of these people that you connect with, inspire and help by sharing your own story, they need a book.  Every single day that he was with us in a clear state, he asked about it.  Going forward, that will be his legacy carrying forth through me.  Just as when I sit to pen those questions and craft that piece on Exilia it will be for him, my fellow Italian.   

My mom and her sister are now entering the next chapter of their lives. It's a bittersweet and painful journey.  Saying good-bye to those you've loved for decades upon decades, those who molded you into who you would become is so damn hard.  It's a day I dread myself.  The day that both your parents are gone from this earth.  It's part of life though.  Part of the circle.  If things play out in their natural states, we reach this chapter with a support team of those who love us and bring meaning to our lives around us.  Not all of us have this though.  Many of us are single and childless when we bury our parent(s).  My mom and aunt have it better than most in that they can find meaning to life in their remaining family members.  

What happens though to those who don't have anyone?  No significant other to hold them at night through the grief, no children, grandchildren or pets to dote on.  How do they hold on?  How do they navigate the pain to find peace in it?  I've learned that they do so through community and friendships.  I've watched a few friends find family in their Tribe and give gratitude to their role in writing the next chapter of their lives.  It has shown me that truly, the Universe will rise up to greet you exactly where you are.  You just have to be open and ready to receive.  I believe in you.  I believe in our collective consciousness.  I also know that no matter when we go home, all is as it should be, as we (on the other side when we planned this life) wanted it to be.  We all come to learn.  Trust in the story.  Trust in the next chapter.  You wrote it.  Remember that.  I love you.

Copyright ©2014 Nita Clewis All rights reserved.  For personal use only.  Commercial use without permission of the author is not allowed.  Sharing with friends and family is warmly welcomed.