Tag: dealing with loss

The Labyrinth of a Life #animalmessengers #leylines #nhhikes #knottingcook

On By Alethea KehasIn Reflections12 Comments
Following the lines in New England

Outside my window a falcon calls out his hunt. A screech piercing the too dark morning. It doesn’t feel like summer today. It’s cool and the air is laden with moisture yet to be released. Just now I hear a few fat drops plucking the gutters. They have squished through the membrane of the clouds, which stubbornly wait to release their bounty. I have not felt much like blogging since Sue’s death. Sometimes I even ask myself what the point is to all of this writing about a life perceived through the lens of my eyes.

And some days I wait for the play of her light across my screen, scrolling the darkness to bright. I hover somewhere in the middle most days. The canvas of life fills with vibrancy and shadows. A play of sun and night. Such is the fate of our human existence. This strange world where disorder appears as order and chaos plays with truth.

Yesterday, while hiking together, I told my friend how Sue gave me the ending to my book. But I still haven’t finished it. When she fell ill, I let it sit, mostly, simmering on a back-burner fueled by hope, denial, and everything in between. Now she must know the dedication holds her name and that of the winged being who grasped both our hands and held tight.

She sends me birds and feathers. Signs from Horus and her beloved Raven clan. It couldn’t be more fitting. Three times she grew the light on my screen so that I would not miss the dragons and suddenly I knew where she was waiting for the ending. Of course she knows. How could she not?

Now I am blessed with an ending that feels like chaos and order. Is she laughing? I can see her face filled with the sun. Oh yes, she undoubtably is, but it is a good laughter. Full of mischief and knowing. I try to imagine what time must be like loosened from the confines of the body. Woven like the tapestry of the spider web. Her labyrinth, but also mine.

I follow the lines now, here. She knew that time would come, but how I resisted! It is not England, but it is New England. I don’t always like change. It is with a great deal of reluctance that I release the pull of the old home to find magic in the new. Yet the dragons stir beneath my feet when I walk new paths back to memories that must also be mine. Underneath, the labyrinth joins it all. Invisible, yet visible when the eye opens. The fire quickens the breath and life returns to the place of magic. In these moments the mundane slips into the dull corners of the canvas and sighs with release.

Doubt and Density at the End of a Tough Week #doubt #grief #loss #grieving

On By Alethea KehasIn Reflections12 Comments
I took this photo during my first Silent Eye Workshop

I imagine anyone who knew Sue is having a tough week. I am no exception. Forgive me for processing my grief so openly. Writing is how I come to terms with struggle and heartache. It is how I come back to myself. I am trying to get there again. Back to the center where peace resides.

Each morning, when I open my inbox, Sue’s name appears. Another post penned in her hand flows her essence onto the screen. For a few moments, she has returned and I find myself wrapped into her landscape. It is with reluctance that I leave the past and move into the day’s reality. Which, basically, has not been great this week.

“I hope you are finding time for self care,” a friend of mine messaged me yesterday.

Grief is a tangle that only the self can unravel. It shuts out the world and one must walk into its darkness alone to explore each knot that binds the path back to light. No one can know these knots, but you. The individual’s own pain body creates them, and thus must set them free.

I am not a master of self-care. I’ve spent the majority of the week caring for others. Tending to my family’s needs, teaching yoga, and covering classrooms in my local middle school. By yesterday afternoon I felt entirely drained. I have only myself to blame. I am not good at asking for help or admitting I need support. I have carried on as usual, and my family has allowed me to. I live with needy beings and balance is upset when “mom” is not okay.

So mostly I pretend that I am okay. I cry when no one is looking. I sink into memories when the house is silent.

It is cold today, as it was yesterday. The sharp bite of the return of winter’s wind reminds me of the Aprils that brought me to Peak District of England. Outside, my frozen fingers pinching laundry onto the line, I remember standing on a hillside exposed to the elements to welcome in the new dawn. I see Sue’s face smiling into mine, her hand pressing the day’s gift into my palm.

Had I known we would only have a brief time together in this lifetime, perhaps I would have altered my role as a caregiver to create more. But, life has a way of creating circumstances that, in hindsight, are more right than they are wrong, even if we would have preferred them to be different. I felt Sue’s hand softly pushing me out of the nest three years ago when I completed my studies with her through the Silent Eye School of Consciousness.

Sue was, as those who knew her are aware, both ready to leave her earthly form, and reluctant to do so. Sometimes, during her illness, I would cope with this impending loss by imagining how Sue would return to me, and others. I’d see her form in the shifting clouds. Her spirit drifting into my dreams. I’d hear her voice guiding me through obstacles. Feel her hand, nudging to find the magic in the wild places.

Now that she has passed, I find mostly doubt and emptiness. I found myself wondering if my fantasies had any value but to deny this inevitable cycle of life and death. Each journey, as Sue taught, must ultimately be walked alone. Teachers can enter our lives for a period of time, but we have no control over how long. They are there to guide, but not take over the journey. When we become too attached to the hand, we become dependent upon it. In turn, we neglect the inner light that persists inside of us. And we doubt that it is all we need to connect to the light that surrounds us.

Maybe by tomorrow, or many not until several tomorrows, I will find my way back to that place. It is here, I know, that she will be. In that soft, quiet place that weaves into unity.

Day Two without Sue #denial

On By Alethea KehasIn Reflections29 Comments
Where I imagine Sue and Bratha found reunion

It is said, by some, that when we think of the beloved who have departed from their earthly forms, their energy rushes through dimensions to embrace us. I am not the only one who has noticed the soft cocoon of her light.

“All is light.”

I keep thinking of her words before and after, as I imagine what she would say to me each time the labored hand of grief seizes reality.

Sometimes we laugh at my absurdity.

While chopping vegetables for dinner, I tell her I am “not happy.”

“I know,” I imagine her saying, but she is also smiling. We both know better.

“Well,” I tell her, “It’s simply not very fair. We had lots more adventures to go on.”

“Who says they’ve stopped?”

We laugh before I cry, again.

And there she is sitting beside my left shoulder, wrapped in her feathers. She is not alone.

On the other side is Bratha, but she is less defined. A haze of energy to show me that Sue has returned to her, and the others. I think of the crow, kin to raven, who flew across my path after I learned of Sue’s passing.

“I know,” I tell them. “I know, and I am glad. Don’t get me wrong, but I am also a little envious. You left the rest of us behind.”

We’ve made some sort of deal, I think. I tell her I don’t want to be needy. That I don’t expect to take her away from other “places” and “people,” which simply means I am trying my best not be needy. On the other hand, I promise to be open. To whatever is offered.

Reluctantly I accept that it may not be what I want, but what I need.

She seems to have established the realm. For the second morning I wake to what I know are her words, even though the voice has already changed.

I begin to wonder when the form will too as I think of the photos that are disappearing from my computer. She wouldn’t want us to hold onto the temporary.

“All is bright [light].”

Still infused with clever mischief, asking for the mind to be stretched.

“Don’t expect to see me as me. Be open to seeing me in everything.”

When I went to the grocery store after dinner, the bill came to $77.77.

Magic comes in many forms.

“Open your eyes.

I am still here.

I am everywhere.”

I Dream of Laundry, Resisting Letting Go #dreams #denial #death

On By Alethea KehasIn Dreams, Reflections14 Comments
Photo Credit: Pixabay

Another night passes fitfully, laden with soiled laundry, much of which is not my own. Each night I slip into uneasy sleep only to find myself sorting soiled clothes of family and sometimes strangers in homes that I once lived in. Washing. Ever-washing to try to get them clean of the stains left behind.

There are always machines waiting to spin the soiled garments clean. Sometimes too many to the point of the absurd. Homes becoming laundromats to cleanse the filth of the outer layers worn to shield the inner. The symbolism does not escape me, yet the dreams continue and I must ask myself why I turn backwards, again, to release the stains of the past.

If you study the mysteries, you may be familiar with the symbolism of robes/clothing worn to cover up, or mask, the true self. We often hide what we don’t want others to see, but most importantly, what we don’t want to see ourselves. Yet what resides inside the layers needs no washing.

Stripping ourselves naked requires trust and vulnerability. And it requires faith and letting go.

Each night as I pour through the soiled garments, a stack of towels waits for me. Their surfaces colored with floral blooms, drawing my eyes to their tall stacks. Yet the towels will do nothing for the garments, and I have yet to strip bare and immerse myself in a body of water to find my own cleansing. To release and rebirth.

Instead, I travel back through past homes, even though they are no longer mine. Seeking belonging, no doubt, but also approval. Acceptance. Healing. “Heal me,” my mother begs, showing me a leg riddled with arthritis, her face grotesquely distorted, too big for life and thrust too close for comfort against mine. How can I say no? She is my mother after all. The one who birthed me in this lifetime.

Sometimes life seems more cruel than kind to the human mind that tries to find reason and logic. If I could collapse time it would be by thousands of years and not a mere lifetime of long months. I would go to the place of heather and stone and find the one who wears the feathered cloak and embrace home.

I know why I am sorting through these endless garments soiled by life each night, yet I cannot quite let go of them. “It’s time,” they tell me, and I want to shout back, “I am not ready to let go of her, though.”

“You will and you must. Just like the bird trapped inside your porch, you will release this tie to life. Just as you must release the others that hold you back.”

The wren appears in uncanny ways, surprising me with her visits in the daytime. “I will never be truly gone,” she reminds me, but I want to hold her. To cup her feathered body against my heart. Just once, before I let her go.