My sister and I walk the streets of our town talking about Tyler Henry and ghosts. Decades removed from our atheist childhood, we are now bonded by belief. We find ourselves haunted by the absence of our grandmother nearly three years passed. Confused and perhaps a bit letdown that she has not returned to talk with us again, we trade our theories and inevitably kick up the past along the way.

It is here that I find myself being led to the shadow self, Carl Jung, and the tether of the umbilicus. We talk about the struggle to cut the cord that draws life from the mother into the child and how the stories too long held become trapped inside until they churn like a storm. And so we reminder ourselves that sometimes the only path forward is a severed one.

How foolish of us to pretend we are fully freed of the cord that binds. For a reminder awaits me in my mailbox. Threads stitched by the mother-hand sent to my daughter. Bypassing me, but not really. The refusal to fully release tugs away at frustration; an endless loop that looks for reason. We cannot control what we cannot change.

Yet, sometimes peace finds us in unexpected places. Here I am, a day later, sitting in a darkened room, waiting while my eyes adjust to forced dilation. The room is warm and quiet. A machine hums white noise, infusing the space around me with a soft peace. So content, I find myself melting into that state between waking and sleep. And in this liminal space where we are reminded of infinity, I welcome my absent grandmother to join me. In no time she is beside my right shoulder. My grandfather on my left.

There is no need for surprise, or resistance. After all, love is patient. Instead of forcing an invitation, it waits, ever ready for the opening.