Who is Haunting Whom?

I will be there for you  I have taken your hand already my love  in fact I have never let go and we are going right where we need to!

Scott, April 1996

Channeled Writing

Even as the weeks passed and it became increasingly clear that death had indeed not brought an end to my relationship with Scott, the mystery only thickened.  What exactly was going on here?  I’d heard of “mixed relationships,” but this was ridiculous!    My rational skepticism left no stone unturned, reminding me at every opportunity that I could be weaving a intricate web of wishful thinking.  With no real guidance available, or provable assurances that I was on the right path, all I could do was resolve to stay open, and follow my heart.  And though the signs kept on coming, too frequent, loud and clear, and diverse to ignore, each seemed to raise still more questions without answers.

If the relationship remained vital and ongoing, what dynamics were at play?  In a telephone conversation a couple of weeks after Scott’s death, Laura casually mentioned in passing a fragment of a dream experienced by her sister Michele that seemed to me a tantalizing clue.  “It was kind of weird,” she said.  “I guess that’s why she didn’t tell you about it.  You were asleep in your bed, and Scott was this kind of ghost wandering around the room.  While you were sleeping, his spirit was just hanging out there in the bedroom, sitting in the rocking chair, walking around, passing through walls, watching over you.  You know, just hanging out.”

Going on to tell me about Michele’s extraordinary psychic abilities as a child, she said that her sister had wrestled with the question of whether or not to tell me about the dream.  Finally she had not, and Laura had mentioned the vision only in passing.  Nevertheless, the graphic image both thrilled and disturbed me, awakening my curiosity about the reality of the spirit.  I had been lost in my own pain, but suddenly found myself burning with curiosity about what life was now like for him.  My heart and my mind stirred with unanswered questions.  Why was he still hanging around the bedroom, or me for that matter?  Was I somehow keeping him from attending to more  important business?  Was he restless or at peace?  Did he ever need to sleep?  Did he still perceive time as an endless succession of days and nights?  Was his experience boring or exciting?  How did his new state of being feel to him?  Did he miss the hardness of walls?

Answers to these questions eluded me, but I felt their power in the asking.  I had begun to find a place within me to carry my love for this man, still burning brilliantly.  A bond of love that survives death, I began to understand, must be a sacred one.  Fully realizing that the experience of being “on the other side” might not be mine to know, I nevertheless longed to share Scott’s experience and to be with him.  His death had not changed that.  I sensed that my juvenile questions probably widely missed the mark on his current reality, one now completely beyond my grasp, but I had to ask them.  This was no mere academic pursuit.  Scott had taken my heart with him, and I could not rest until I found him.

Later, another experience had an unexpected and important impact upon me.  I finally watched the video of the movie Ghost that had been loaned to me by a friend several weeks before, shortly after Scott’s death.  He’d inquired if I had seen it, and smiled and put it in my hands when I told him I hadn’t, saying “Why don’t you take it with you?  I think you might like it.”  The tape had subsequently sat on a shelf gathering dust.  If I thought about it at all, I probably thought “I don’t need to see any hokey Whoopie Goldberg movie about ghosts.”  My heart heavy, it just didn’t seem appropriate to my situation.

When I finally sat down to watch the film, though, I found it a powerful experience.  The graphic images of the spirit stuck in the physical realm and desperately trying to break through, played by Patrick Swayze, stuck in my mind.  The victim of a murder, Swayze’s character was fully conscious and present even though in spirit, and painfully aware of the anguish of the loved one he’d left behind.  Somehow left to wander among the physical world but yet invisible to nearly everybody, he burned with desire to communicate with her, to heal her, to at last bring her a sense of peace.  The very first words that had come through in a channeling from Scott in a moment flush with pure power, I just want to touch you so bad, came vividly to mind.

Agonized by his invisibility to the object of his affection, still in the physical, and increasingly frustrated by his total inability to communicate, he dedicated himself to the task of breaking through to her for purposes of healing.  Finally, through sheer force of will and the spiritual coercion of a psychic played by Whoopie Goldberg, contact was made.  And the communication that resulted healed them both, helping to finally set them each free.  In true Hollywood fashion, this troublesome drama was finally neatly resolved in a happy ending.

Nevertheless, the images in the film affected me deeply, hitting with such power that I stopped the movie part-way through to sit down at the computer and sort out some of my feelings.  Did the plot of this film bear any resemblance to the reality I was experiencing?  Were Dee’s mystic abilities, like Whoopie’s in the movie, a “bridge to span the gap?”  Dee had told me that Scott had been frustrated by my pain and his inability to reach me or to comfort me, but somehow the dramatization in the movie vividly brought her words to life.  Even as my mind raced with questions, something within me was opening.  Without my being fully aware of it, I had been provided with another key.  As usual, I began writing to Scott.

That night, however, he wrote me back.

Published in: on September 5, 2008 at 3:05 pm  Leave a Comment  
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A New Journey Begins

We seem to edge nearer to the edge of the edge…and a new beginning is dawning

Scott, April 1988       Journal Entry

Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.

John Lennon  (1940 – 1980)

How could I have known that Friday morning, the morning of the death of my beloved life partner, Scott Richard Gillen, that I was standing on the threshold of a miracle? There in the bedroom we had shared, looking down at his dead body, I had never felt more assaulted, or alone. With his passing it seemed as if love had forever slipped between my fingers, every door been forever slammed shut on me, all light extinguished from my life. I found myself horribly, irredeemably alone, in a world that no longer seemed my home. I knew not where he had gone, but knew beyond doubt or reason that part of my heart had gone with him.

As an added twist that felt like torture, after Scott’s death I could somehow not remember what he looked like, or the sound of his voice.  I did in my dreams, of course, but not while awake.  In a way, I still cannot.  To this day, I do not understand why, though I have some ideas.

With all of my soul, from the very beginning, I burned with a desire to know where this one I so loved had gone. I had always been a spiritual seeker, searching here and there for the divine peace about which I’d read, but suddenly my passion to really know, to look beyond the veil, had been lifted to a new level. For the first time, I had lost to the other side the one I loved most on Earth, my best friend, life partner, advocate and playmate. Even through my pain and sickening disorientation, my mind raced as my soul began grappling with questions that had suddenly become fundamental to me. Where was he now, and where had he gone? Had part of me not been taken with him? Why had I been left behind here on this sterile promontory, so alone and so far from our spiritual home? How could I be in such pain and yet standing here still?
After Scott had stopped breathing, I called emergency rescue on one line and some friends living nearby on the other. He was dead, but had clung to life with such tenacity, and such joy, that the possibility had not even occurred to me. I had never met anyone with a lust for life to rival Scott’s, and it never seemed as if the Dark Angel would be able to get the better of him in a fair fight. So when the troop of paramedics finally rushed in, asking brusquely and matter-of-factly “When was the last time you saw him alive?,” shock broke over me like a wave. All they could do was say “Sorry, he’s flatlined. There’s nothing we can do,” and turn away from the uncomprehending anguish of my stare. There was no way I could have known that day, much less accepted the fact, but it was Scott’s time.
So I asked everyone to leave the room, to leave me alone with my baby. I laid beside his body on the floor, hugged his still chest, and began to grieve from the bottom of my soul as I felt the warmth leaving his body. Crying out in pain, I told him that I loved him and that I always would, gently shut his eyes with my fingers, spoke soft words of love like a lullaby as I brushed his hair, cleaned up his face, kissed his cheek. There was nothing I could do, but loving him was all I could do. As I looked at his body, I knew that this was in no way him, that it had simply been a shell for which he had no further use. No, this really wasn’t him, I knew, but what had become of him?

How could it be, I anguished, that such a soul could be lost to us? It seemed worse than meaningless. He had packed a full lifetime, perhaps overfull, into his thirty-six years. What had become of his memories, the rich tapestry of his life experience, his dreams, longings and desires? Had they all come to naught? Were they all extinguished suddenly in the black void of death? If so, what’s the point of life? How could this be part of any divine plan? Indeed, how could there be a God to allow such a bright light to be snuffed out so untimely?
They finally took the body away, leaving me truly alone. I found myself deeply wounded and sick at heart, with little energy or will with which to face the journey that lay ahead. In the heart of my heart I cried out silently in anguish, but there was no one to hear.

Published in: on September 4, 2008 at 7:34 pm  Leave a Comment  
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