Death is an Impostor

A Light Breaks Through

No circuits remain uncompleted where truth lies

Scott, November 1996     Channeled Writing

As I waited the next evening with some apprehension for the telephone to ring, hope, doubt and fear all circled and danced through my mind. I sensed that I was on the threshold of an important experience, but had no idea what shape it would take. When Daviea finally called we chatted a little, as I was too terrified to get to the heart of the matter. The stakes were simply too high, and “what ifs” were running through my mind. At last, Daviea said “I asked her how Scott was doing.” In the momentary pause that followed, my heart seemed to stop beating in my chest. “What did she say?,” I asked after what seemed an infinity.

“She said that he’s smiling!,” she reported, ” and that he’s doing very very well where he is. She said that a couple times, ‘he’s doing very very well.”’ Even as she spoke I began to feel unaccountably light, as if a breakthrough were being made. “She said he’s much better off now than he was in the body.” She briefly paused, then continued. “And she said that Scott told her that he was surprised that he went so quickly.” Though those last words could not have meant much to Daviea or to Dee, they immediately struck me to my core and reverberated there as true. On the deepest level of my intuition I felt that I was being handed a real communication from Scott, experiencing a genuine sharing. It suddenly dawned on me that he had chosen to communicate that specific message not only to penetrate my veil of rational skepticism, and to touch my heart that way, but also for the purpose of greater healing.

During his last days, Scott and I had become of one mind. Even as his physical challenges mounted and his body tired, and we fought battle after battle side by side, we grew in our love for one another and our souls melded. Given one last opportunity for union in this lifetime, each second became precious and an experience to be savored. The night before he died, we sat on the sofa together as usual, just talking and watching Thursday night T.V. By that time the infusion lines disappearing into the port in his chest had become part of the scenery, no longer any big deal. To us it was an ordinary evening, yet we both recognized it as sacred time.

We were easy together, having spent enough time together of sufficient quality to make words unnecessary for communication. I knew that Scott had made plans for the next day as the ones before, to simply survive. I knew that his death had taken him by surprise, and on some level that was part of my shock at his parting. Thus, in hearing Scott’s message third-hand, I intuitively felt that this was true, that Scott had effectively answered my prayers and made contact. My heart flooded with joy, flush with the dawning realization that Scott’s beautiful consciousness, his soul, had not died along with his battered body. The implications were staggering.

On a deeper level, Scott’s brief communication offered a message of healing in another important way. During the years we made our way through life together, we had faced everything as a team. All of life’s joys were made sweeter in the sharing, and the inevitable slings and arrows softened by the shield of our love. But yet there I had been on the morning of Scott’s passing, left unable to share this most momentous of experiences with him. I had seen him all the way through, bearing witness to the crowning “experience of a lifetime,” but now felt keenly the depths of my isolation. More than ever before I longed to be with him in this experience, to talk it through with him, to somehow help soften its impact in the sharing. But death had slammed the door shut on me, and hard, leaving me unable to do so.

Not until I heard Daviea speak those words did I realize how deeply frustrated and out-of-balance I had been left by my experience of Scott’s death. Even if I couldn’t have him back, I’d burned with longing to find at least a measure of closure with the event of his passing. In hearing Dee’s simple words through Daviea, I began to feel that an important circuit had been completed. More than ever before, I felt ready to start letting go of the bottomless pain I carried within like a heavy stone.

Feeling lighter than air, full with the dawning realization that my journey with Scott was not over, I literally laughed and jumped for joy after telling Daviea that I loved her and hanging up the phone. In spirit, Scott smiled.

A Window Opens

A few days later, I ran into a friend during a lunchtime workout at the gym. I had found that trying to return to my prior exercise routine, jogging one day and working out the next, helped to lift my sadness more effectively than any prescription medicine. My friend, who had not seen me since the memorial gathering, asked with sincerity and warmth how I was doing. It had been a tough journey, I told him, about as dark as I could stand, but I felt that maybe I might be just beginning to heal. I was proud of the small steps I had been able to take. I was proud, and somewhat surprised, to find myself surviving, to find myself still here. And even, at times, starting to tentatively embrace life if I wasn’t paying attention.

And I shared with my friend my fledgling awareness of a spiritual connection to Scott, my dawning feeling that maybe part of his consciousness had remained with me though his body had not. “I’m not exactly sure what’s going on,” I told him, “but something is definitely happening here. I’ve been writing him every day in my journal, and it’s like my sacred time. I still feel like I need to communicate with him; death hasn’t changed that.” Looking into my friend’s eyes, deciding I could trust him, I said “But that’s only part of the story. The weird thing is not that I’m writing him, but that I get the strong sense he’s listening. And sometimes, I swear, I’ve felt like he’s really been there with me.”

My friend listened spellbound, not sure exactly what to think or how to respond. “In fact,” I continued, I’m not sure why, “I feel like he’s here right now.” Feeling a chill pass through me, in pure desire, I said “Come to me, baby!” Standing with my back to the wall of large metal windows behind me, I saw my friend’s mouth suddenly drop open. Turning around, I saw one of the large, vertical windows lining the wall of the upstairs gym standing open. “That window,” he said slowly, “just unlatched itself and flew open.”

At the time I just smiled, not making much of the incident. No big deal, I figured, it must have been the wind. The timing was just a coincidence. But when I walked over to the wall a few minutes later, all of the other windows were latched shut. They were all several feet tall, framed in metal and quite heavy. And the day was still.

To Chapter 9