I just hold you tight and let you experience your release and understand the cleansing nature of tears and I ache for you with you When my baby hurts I hurt too
Scott, May 1990 Journal Entry
As the fact of the continued relationship became ever more clear, the basic questions only began to multiply. From early on I had worried about whether my ongoing attachment was a good thing or bad from his perspective, and whether my burning desire might seem to him a “ball and chain” in his the progress of his soul’s journey. In the first session, immediately after picking up on the “Scott noise,” Dee had assured me, quite astoundingly, that those who have passed over lose not a bit of their personality or sense of humor. She explained “He doesn’t lose any of it. Especially when you get really down. That’s when his sense of humor comes out, see? He earned happiness. And when you get sad he’ll go away from you. He’s not going to be unhappy; he can’t be. He’s earned that.” Though elated with the idea of my lover’s new-found freedom, Dee’s message did not feel right. “How can that be?,” I wondered, suddenly more alone. “Does he not know the pain I’m in?”
Nevertheless, she continued to make her point. “When you show love, that’s what you receive in return. When you receive him with humor…you get humor. But as soon as you put on that sad countenance, where you feel nothing, he’ll leave you. Because he feels bad there’s nothing he can do about it. There’s not a thing he can do about it.” After the session, I discussed the idea with a couple of friends. One, en route with me to a client’s funeral, responded “That’s no surprise, because guess what? That’s what he used to do when you were alive.” I had battled occasionally serious bouts with depression during our time together, and he had indeed been frustrated by his inability to reach me or to bring me relief during the darkest of those times. At times, he had given up trying altogether. It hurt too much.
Even still, the idea did not sit right with me. Had he not recognized in the first channeling that Your pain is the flip side of your love and it must be and I understand that? Then, the following month, he had communicated through the third channeling that Dee was wrong about my leaving you when you’re sad, where could I go? I don’t like it, but I know you are administering the medicine needed by your soul, and it will all work out in the end. For some reason I had a glimmer that those in the spirit realm hold a bottomless compassion for those of us still struggling in the flesh. Though now beyond our limits and blessed with a vast new spiritual perspective, they had once walked in our shoes and understood the delicacy and pain of our predicament. How could they abandon us in our hours of darkness, withdrawing their unseen protection and powers of healing when we needed them most? The idea just didn’t make sense to me.
In a later session, Dee now clarified the point. “You see, you have to be really, really open to them to bring them through. You have to really feel them. In the beginning you didn’t do that so well. He was literally holding you in the beginning because you were pining so.” Images of the movie Ghost flashed through my mind as she spoke. “Yeah, he said he literally held you because you didn’t know he was there. And he said, the sobbing he couldn’t do anything about. But he said he literally held you and he said the most he could send you were feelings of tingling.” Even as she spoke, I felt dancing across me the tingle that had come to signify his presence.
“He was trying to send you love. How can I explain this to you?,” she paused briefly. “They can’t relay the message, only through feelings. That’s how they do this. He said he sends you tingling sensations.”
“He said he might pick up a book and he may guide you to a passage to read, as though it might be he talking to you. A page can flip open.” Far from abandonment, it seemed that Scott was still trying persistently and by any means possible to penetrate my gloomy thickness and doubt to reach me. Perhaps his difficulty in doing so had been part of the “strain in our relationship” perceived by Dee at the beginning of the first session. She had accurately picked up on Scott’s distress and his frustration, but misinterpreted his response. Or maybe she had not, and Scott had eased into greater understanding and patience between this reading and the first. Perhaps he’d grown more calm and resolved as my panic had subsided. Or maybe the first message had been forwarded as a spiritual “kick in the tail,” intended to help lift me out of my bottomless doldrums by prompting me to consider his benefit rather than my own. Were not each of these interpretations possible?
Later, following his admonition to “listen to the words” and explore the rich legacy of his writings, I found the following entry in his journal dating from early into our relationship. Spending the night at Scott’s home, I had received a phone call from my mother breaking the news that my favorite aunt had committed suicide. She had been a spiritual seeker, always a brilliant and loving light, but had (unknown to me) been shadowed over the years by mental illness and severe depression. Immediately passing into a deep state of shock I hung up the phone and completely broke down in Scott’s arms. He was there to hold and to comfort me:
Tears flow freely and I hold you in the dark images of love and loss and abandonment and evil and grief fills you up and explodes in wracks of sobs and I feel your grasp and nails dig deep into my back and your tears fall softly onto my cheek and I stroke you calm and become afraid at the intensity of your feelings but just hold you tight and let you experience your release and understand the cleansing nature of tears and I ache for you with you When my baby hurts I hurt too
Though he was now freed of his body and bathed in glory, I intuitively felt that he still celebrated my joy and likewise honored, or at least tolerated as necessary, my pain and loss. In the realm of metaphor, a precise answer to these conundrums is often elusive. Thus, I let my heart choose an answer and follow it. The essential truth, no matter what the interpretation, is that Scott’s soul has never left mine. He now sees from an entirely different perspective and his response might well have changed; we will grant him that freedom. Yet my heart tells me simply that he understands deeply and well, and that much, if nothing else, is clear to me. His present journey, like my own, after all, must bear its own share of peaks and valleys, respites and toil, crowning glory and ultimate challenge.
Despite it all, though, alone or embraced by the celestial, I just sometimes hurt, and bad. Such times come and go as they will, apparently the cost of life fully lived and sweet love risked. For both our sakes, (and maybe just in case!) I make a special effort to turn inside and seek out the still waters of peace when the choppy waves cresting around me threaten to pull me under at last. And finally the blessed calm always returns.
For a while. But that’s enough.
To Chapter 25
Stumble It!