Tag: grief

Born into Loss #grief

On By Alethea KehasIn Memoir, Poems, Reflections36 Comments

Years ago, I walked into the office of a healer, and before she placed her hands on me she looked into my eyes and asked, “Why are you so sad?”

I recall being offended. I had not felt sadness that day, but rather excitement for this new experience I was about to try. But she was right. Sadness lives inside of me. It always has. This sadness, I am realizing, more and more, is something I need to address rather than ignore. Grief made a home inside of my cell before birth. Some of us are born into loss before we realize we have lost anything. And, so I need to begin at the beginning. I need to begin at the origin of cells finding union before separation.

It was never a secret that I was an unwanted pregnancy. My parents were too young and unprepared to have a family. Yet, first my sister was born, and then I. Sometimes, I find myself wondering what words and emotions my body molded into being as my cells became tissues, organs, and bones. A human molded into form without the tightly woven threads of love to support her came into the world as a girl named “truth.”

Rejection did not take the form of abortion, but of unwanted birth. And in those days before sonograms warned us of sexual organs, I was expected to be a boy. But love found me in a complicated way, and I was not given up. Instead, I was wrapped tightly inside the wants of my mother, who never seemed to understand that I had wants of my own.

And so I made her my everything, as all babies do who have the privilege of a mother-bond. I followed her through the leavings that became losses as grief began to make an uncomfortable home in my growing body.

The first leaving left everyone I knew behind except my mother and sister when I was two-years-old. That was the spring and summer we went into hiding with the Hare Krishnas. I never knew what it was like to wear PTSD in the body until four decades later when I was in a mantra class for yoga teacher certification. That day, while practicing the “Guru Mantra,” the traumas of the two-year-old girl living inside of me cried for release as my body shook and my mind swirled into the past.

“Why are you so sad?”

The words haunt me with their call for recognition, and so I follow their story and watch a two-year-old girl leave behind her father, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends. I watch her struggle to unravel the structure of DNA until her genes float unmoored inside of her wondering where they came from. Wondering why there is nothing to tether them home. And, I see her longing grow into a wave that she swallows over and over again until she can no longer swallow it because it has become her.

Grief is the manifestation of lost love, and I now realize how much it has become a part of my cells. It is the ripping apart of connection. A boat unmoored from its anchor, floating alone on the sea. Yet it is a human condition, and not a metaphor.

And, so I return to the two-year-old girl and watch her cling to her mother and the tangle of her wants. I watch her follow the only bond she feels she can cling to as they travel across the country to form a new extended family. Here she finds friendships. Some of which become the untethered loss named grief. Here she also finds new grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, yet their love is complicated, conditional, and not woven tightly with the strands of DNA.

But it is this DNA that complicates their union. Her mother has chosen to love a man that is her cousin’s son. The cousin is her father’s nephew, but they are of the close age that they lived together as unhappy brothers for many years. I have been brought into a family that is not wholly welcoming because of the strains that can be imposed upon DNA. It is a tethering without want.

Yet, love finds me. I grow to love my stepfather who has made himself the sun in our small system of orbiting planets. I dutifully cross out the name of origin that belongs to my father, and learn to separate the strands of DNA inside of me without realizing those strands are beginning to tie knots of ache inside of my belly.

And I learn to love my new cousins that come into being, and their grandparents. Even the one who has a hard time looking at my face, as well as the faces of my mother and sister. I call them my own. All of them. I have a new father. I have a new large, extended family through which I share birthdays, holidays and the long weekend of Labor Day on a tiny island in Maine. But I will lose all of those connections. Another choice made by my mother.

“Why are you so sad?” The words tangle with my grandmother’s “Why did she give you up? Why did she choose him over you, and your sister, and her grandchildren?”

Because she made him our sun.

But I tried to stay in his orbit. Oh, how I tried, even when I watched unhealthy patterns that I experienced as a child take form in the grandparent-grandchild connection. I tried until I could try no more, but long before I let the orbit, my mother decided to disconnect from the family she married into, and so, by this law of attraction I have with her, so did I.

When I left the orbit, my mother stayed.

I have come to realize that reconnection after separation of these genetic bonds we carry inside of us in the form of family is like trying to reattach a limb with nerve damage. But I am trying. The loss of my mother, stepfather, and step-family has come with a re-connection with my birthfather, and some of my paternal cousins, aunts, and uncles. The love we share has deep roots, yet its unearthing exposes the grief of all the losses. All those birthdays, holidays, and celebrations not shared. All the words never uttered, the hugs never felt.

But, how grateful I am to have this reweaving.

I have learned, through grief, to love from afar, even those I have lost forever, because I know forever loss does not exist. In each loss that has led in a death of the body, I have found the reunion of the soul-connection. Each of these soul reunions have felt blessed as they do not carry with them the burdens of hurt. They carry only the light of love.

“Grief” in spoken words by Alethea Kehas, video credit attributed to Danilo Riba of Pixabay

A Tribute to Sue on the Anniversary of her Passing

On By Alethea KehasIn Reflections36 Comments

Sue and her beloved companion, Ani.

A year ago today, the winds sang of spring. Rebirth toppled half a maple in my front yard and I woke to the lyrics of “Silent Night.” A soul had passed back into the realm of pure consciousness after a life well-lived as Sue.

I have yet to meet a more remarkable being. I doubt I will. Sue had a way of connecting to Truth that made you feel like you belonged, and everything around you did too. She was the embodiment of divine feminine energy in physical form. It is no surprise that Isis chose her as a vessel to tell her story.

The last time I saw Sue was the last time I traveled to England. She cleared space in her busy day to take Larissa and me to Uffington Castle and Wayland’s Smithy. I had tried to find the white horse during my first trip to England, but had landed in the other Uffington, miles away from my intended destination. Fate, it seems, had other plans for me.

I can say with assurance that my life would not have been the same without having had Sue’s presence in it, even though I knew her for less than a decade. Death, though, does not bring an end to the essence of life and Sue’s presence has not wholly departed. Today, on the anniversary of her passing out of physical form, the dogs drew me outside an hour before they usually do. It was with some reluctance and a fair bit of annoyance that I set down the writing of this post, gathered my coat, gloves, and hat, leashed the dogs and made my way outside into a blustery day much like the one I woke to one year ago.

Instead of turning right, down her favorite path filled with sticks to chew, Rosy pulled me to the left. There, above us, was a falcon dancing across the vast canvas of sky. I have no doubt Sue has managed to keep herself quite busy with her work on the other side, just as she did here on Earth, but somehow she still manages to make an appearance when it is most needed.

Horus tries to teach me the subject of death, reminding me I’m not so good at it… #horus #death #loss #grief

On By Alethea KehasIn Reflections3 Comments
Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

Today I met her guardian. The falcon stood in wait over her sleeping form, holding the liminal space. Waiting. Watching. Guarding. When I asked to see more, I was brought to the sands of time. Golden specks slipping through the hours, reminding me that I can get stuck inside the glass. Made up of the same elemental substrate that holds that ephemeral symbol of life, it is also an illusion of the mind. “You have seen the expanse,” he reminded me as the sand became that golden light forming a bridge to the stars, expanding out of the false container to spiral into infinity. Yes, I have seen it, but still I resist.

I am not good at Death. It is not a subject I have come close to mastering. I’ve got a history of stumbling through its lessons. When experienced the loss of my first grandparent to death (aside from the one that died before I was old enough to remember), I didn’t cry. Instead I felt the torment of our troubled past. Rocked into my armor, I listened to my mother announce the news through the corded phone like it was an annoying aside she had to pass on before she could talk about better things. Beside me, my college roommate looked worried, and later shocked when I told her it wasn’t a big deal. I would be fine.

Well I wasn’t.

A year before, my husband’s (at that time boyfriend’s) own grandmother had passed away and when I told my mother the news, she gave me a funny look. “You really cared about her, didn’t you?” Surprised by the tears stealing into my eyes. I couldn’t explain it if I had wanted to. We experienced only a handful of brief encounters together before her passing, yet in that brief time my husband’s grandmother had seen a truth inside of me that some who knew me since birth would never see.

Years later, death found me sitting in my office chair at work. Once again, the news was passed on by my mother, who was sitting beside death at her father’s bedside. Weeks before I let her convinced me I didn’t need to go with her. I wouldn’t recommend saying good-bye to a beloved grandfather from an office chair at work inside a cubicle that offers no escape into sorrow. That day there was no avoiding tears or pain. Or regret.

Years later, my grandfather tried to show me the impermanence of death’s form. Coming to me in spectral form, just once, to part the veil of dreams. It was enough, but it wasn’t.

When my beloved Daisy died on the 11th of February six years ago, I knew it was coming, but it didn’t make it any easier. Six months before, while walking together in the woods she told me she would soon be moving on. Wrapped in aura of violet light, my canine guide’s spirit shined strong and true. It still does. Two days ago, during a tough night, I saw her curled at the end of my son’s bed. Rarely now do I feel into her presence, yet she is still there for us when we need her. I have gradually loosened my hold over the years since her passing, but I resisted her leaving the corporeal world with a hold so tight I knew she lingered longer than she should have.

No, I am not good at the subject of death. I have fought with its teachings. I have failed its tests, and I have struggled to embrace its release. Now I find myself counting, once again, those false hours. Wondering if time will allow me a real goodbye. Horus turns his head to stare at me with eyes the color of night. His wings ruffle annoyance. “Why,” he asks, “after all we have shown you?”

For a moment time slips away and we fly back to that sacred chamber that holds a bridge to Earth. Wrapped in a copse of guardian trees, the light filters from the beyond. Once again, I see the white horse, waiting. Memory weaves light into my cells. “Was this not enough?” he asks me.

It should be. But I’m having a hard to accepting it. There are things I’d still like to say. Arms that still want to hold a temporary form. So many adventures that won’t be shared.

“Ridiculous human sentiment,” he scoffs at me and turns back to his guard. “Your perception is clouded by those human eyes.”

So I allow the salted waters to bathe them in their warmth. Cleanse, I urge. Clear my clouded sight.

Taking the lead

On By Alethea KehasIn Animal Messengers, Dreams, Memoir3 Comments

Recall the Bird of Spring who appeared to me on the the 24th of January. I have not forgotten her, nor have I forgotten how she appeared in the days before the 11th. She often watched in silent vigil from the bush filled with winter berries in the neighbor’s front yard, while I waited for Alex to get off the bus. You were usually inside.

There was the flock of robins, Dad said there must have been 20, if not more, outside his office. Did you send them after you came to him in a dream, telling him you were leaving? Of course, I already knew. How could I not? I felt you release the tug on the orange nylon that bound us together months before you finally let go. I knew last summer you were patiently urging me to take the lead, knowing well before I did, that I was ready. That you had, in the heart-beat of 5 and 1/2 years, shown me how to walk the path of love, and to take the lead. The last 6 months were a gradual letting go, your final gift to me in your physical form.

Oh, but you knew I would weep and rage. You knew I would cling fiercely to the memory of  the brown silk of your fur pressed against my lips, and feel of home when I wrapped my arms around your body. You knew, even, that I would miss the tug-of- war, the constant test of who was in charge.

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You knew I would hold on, even after I let you go. So you sent me robins and hearts. I saw the love that you wore on your face everywhere, in the days before you left, and even more now that you have crossed the rainbow bridge without me. One thought, and you are back. I see the symbol of your love burned into snow, etched in ice on windows and carved into the life-lines of wood. I saw your love two nights ago, when you sent me the barn owl (with face of a heart) in the cypress tree. I see it each time I remember your face.

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Your rebirth into pure spirit, was my letting go. To become my own spring and bloom new. Even though I still shed the waters of sorrow, my garden is ready to birth strength. How many nights, as I was preparing to let you go, did I dream of a home, my home, surrounded by the rebirth of life? I woke happy, filled with hope. Filled with promise.

Even the 3 crows that caught my eye, circling the invisible wheel, made me think of the magic of birth and not death. You were the 3rd, though, in a close trinity of passings. My days and nights were filled with the numbers 3 and 7, even when they appeared with the numbers 10 and 11. The 10th was the day I knew for sure you were leaving, the 11th, when I opened the door to let you go.

On the 8th, two days before I decided it was time, I saw two robins. That evening I fell into dreams of rebirth. I played through the game of life, recording scores, which reduced to the number 9 – the complete cycle for birth. I searched tables of food and ate. I took the driver’s seat and drove, with the top open, over a bridge, where above me a green wheel turned. I watched my child (who looks so much like me) let go and felt only peace as he released his hold. I turned back time and became a young woman again. It was summer, 74 degrees (reduces to 11), and I was among a crowd of peers heading down a hill to swim. At the intersection of paths, I decided to walk alone. I went to the rocky shore, instead of the sandy, sun-filled beach, and stripped bare of my white shorts and flowered blouse, before I lay my body on the pebbles and let the water wash me clean. Here, I felt freedom. I felt release. I shouted back, fearless, to the girls who taunted me, calling them out on who they really were. I swam away from the boys who followed my naked form through the water, and pulled my clothes over my wet body before I walked back up the hill, alone. Later, in another dream, a messenger hugged me and told me it was time to surrender. To let [you] go. So I did.