Death is an Impostor

Never far away      always as close as your heart.

Scott, November 1996        Channeled Writing

The Artist’s Home at Night 1997   P. Crockett

One of the best things about going on vacation, I have always felt, is coming back home and seeing familiar surroundings in a new way.  After passing time in new places, eating and sleeping elsewhere, I find comfort in the warm embrace of my home, again enjoying the company of my quirky cat, Priscilla.  After Scott’s passing, people not knowing any better asked “How can you keep on living in the house that the two of you shared?”  Though the question remained unvoiced, I sensed they were often thinking “How can you sleep in the bed he died in?”  Such questions, though well off the mark, helped clarify my thinking.  Scott’s death had forever changed me, immediately and completely turning my life upside-down.  Hit hard with the lesson that nothing is permanent, the ground beneath my feet suddenly turning to quicksand, I found great comfort in the familiarity of our home.

In an absurd world, suddenly stripped of meaning by the loss of my heart, I felt grounded by the history behind each object surrounding me.  This sofa here, that lamp over there, that dusty silver flask and Katchina Doll resting up on the shelf, all whispered to me with quiet messages of comfort.  Here were the tangible reminders of a life we had built together, the love we had shared.  Our beautiful 1938 Spanish-style home, built in a gracious style of architecture now faded into the past, had provided a fairy-tale backdrop for the unfolding of our story.  We had brought it to life with joyous dinner parties, a constantly changing kaleidoscope of art work, countless celebrations, and the laughter of friends.  During those same years it had been consecrated by our struggles against illness together, and become a sanctuary and refuge from the overwhelming world that went on outside its walls.

Gladiolas 1994   P. Crockett

Suddenly alone in a world I believed to be without Scott, I became painfully aware that moving anything in the home, or putting it away, might erase a sign of his having been here.  The food sitting in the refrigerator was left over from meals we had shared.  My dear friend Michael Daigle had arranged immediately after Scott’s death to donate his extensive drugs and infusion supplies to those in need, and for the first time in months the home was stripped of medical equipment.  While folding the laundry the week after his death, I felt punched in the gut and nearly fell to my knees as I realized that I was putting away his clothes for the last time.  For months afterward, I could not bear to bring back downstairs a plastic measuring cup sitting atop the file cabinet in the library, one I had used to bring up ice cubes to help cool his raging fevers.  Finally, Michael quietly returned it to the kitchen.  Noticing its absence a few days later, loving Michael for doing this, I smiled wistfully and thought “Yes, it’s time.”

True, this was the house in which Scott had battled illness, and finally died.  But we had also enjoyed here the richest fruits of life, good food shared with friends, music and laughter, the physical expression of our love and lust.  Through hard experience, the unrequested baptism by fire of Scott’s passing, I had learned what some of my friends did not yet know: that death is integrally bound up in life.  Death was indeed a sacred experience, one of great power, but so was each living expression of a love between souls.  This was no place to mark off in my memory as “sacred ground” and move elsewhere, but rather one made more holy by the completeness of the experience.  This, I could sense Scott telling me, was the place to live and to keep on living, part of the rich legacy left for my growth and enjoyment.  Though he was now free in spirit and no longer needed the comfort of a roof and four walls, he realized that I very much did.

Back from the West Coast, so glad to be home, I lay on the library sofa that Sunday evening allowing my mind to wander back over the miraculous spiritual journey of the months before.  Wherever I traveled, it seemed, Orlando or Washington DC, Mississippi or Seattle, Scott walked with me.  Though still burning with longing for communion with my beloved, in the spirit and thus aggravatingly invisible to me, even I in my thickness could no longer doubt his presence.  As promised, his death had indeed not ended the relationship, but simply initiated a new phase.  I had been provided with numerous “peeks behind the veil” and thus been comforted, but still had no clear answer why.  Did a greater purpose underlie his actions and messages?  Where were we heading together?  Could I be sure that I was on the right path?  The continuing refrain again arose: What was mine to know?

That evening, grateful for the comforting presence I felt in our home, a long journey behind me, I sat down at the computer and wrote him.  “Honey I just got back from my Seattle/ San Francisco journey and it feels so very good and so very magical to be back in our home.  I just lit a candle and looked at your picture and I am just thinking that you have been in touch with me as much as is right right now but who knows what the future will bring?  You were so with me God bless your soul getting through to all of my friends and sharing your love your big old heart how can it be that such deep rivers run underneath the surface of our lives here on Earth?  It is almost too much to bear to think of it.”

“Yes baby I don’t really have any doubts anymore about your presence or your love or your involvement, it just keeps on changing, and here we are six months down the road.  I guess we are in a sacred time aren’t we and the only thing I feel for you is love love that increases that grows in intensity with the passage of time that’s OK because I am pushing the envelope as I say in your being so very much with me.  You have always taught me to love and you continue to do so.”

“Do you want to come through?” At that moment, a chill running through me, the following words flowed out in response:

I have been with you every step of the way and that is the way it will continue.  Can’t you see my love we are on a journey together without end?  Rejoice, you will never be alone, you are growing in love and that is the way it is meant to be.  Yes you are opening that is OK you need to take your time and I know how much you want to really reach me trust me but you need to trust that I am here and that we will communicate as directly as we need to over the course of time.  Then you will understand the reason for everything, and you will rejoice.  You have wondered about the block you must understand that it is necessary to go through certain processes after all your love for me was and is the deepest and you are still on Earth, back in the classroom full of challenges pain and doubts and that is the way it is supposed to be my love.  While you are there it is your part to embrace your humanness, to learn those lessons.  You are a great and bold soul and you are there to help others in helping yourself this will happen, this is the rhythm of the tides

I really don’t want you to worry about a thing.  Can’t you see how very much on course you are, all the messages I have been sending to you?  You are being drawn towards spirituality you are on the path as I told you before and you are learning those things it will be yours to learn.  You must trust that I am there with you every step of the way.  Go on now!

Tired and full of love, I gratefully sank into the comfort of my own bed and fell into a dreamless sleep.

To:  http://deathisanimpostor.wordpress.com/2008/12/11/awakening-from-the-dream