Words From the Spirit: A Birthday Gift

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Yes I guide your hand my love

you steer your heart

and it is there that I will live with you now and forever


Scott, April 1996     Channeled Writing

On July 10, my first birthday after Scott’s passing, I reached the age of 36.  Sitting at my computer passing the time as I awaited the arrival of a few close friends for an intimate dinner, the melancholy thought occurred to me that I was now as old as Scott would ever have the chance to get.  Writing to him as usual in my journal on that special day, thinking of him, I watched as my musings made a seamless transition into a channeled message.  Was this a birthday gift?  I wrote “I am now awaiting the arrival of friends, the chosen inner circle for dinner tonight.  I did not want a big production; these will all be people I can be comfortable with although at the moment, babe, I’m just not feeling very comfortable.  I feel like something is haunting me, it’s a feeling that is hard to capture and even harder to put into words.  Is it the prospect of Death that haunts me still, despite my declarations that it frightens me not after your passing?  Or is it the prospect of illness?”
“Something in me is out of balance, and I am not sure what it is.  It is hard for me to look within deeper than my broken heart and to see what is really going on.  I have deep doubts about the meaning of it all, deep doubts that it does mean anything.  At the same time, I don’t know why I am so hung up on this question of meaning.”

At that moment, suddenly caught up within a flow, my fingers began easily typing out a response.  The process was without thought, as though I were taking dictation, and here are the words:

This is a time of transition, give yourself a lot of slack.

Can’t you see, baby, that life goes on as it always has?  The river flows on uninterrupted.  We are all just beautiful bubbles that emerge for a while.  Glory is your native home, my love.  I am with you, I do not need to wait.  Please know that I am with you.

Yes, the messages that I have sent to you are meant to be comforting.  I do have the benefit of a different vantage point.  You are also in a position to know infinite bliss.  You are part of God’s plan, you are a kind person, honey, and you never do anything with the intention of hurting anyone.  To the contrary, you are all too ready to lay yourself down for the good of others too easily.  Be assured, my love, that things are unfolding as they must.

You do not recognize it but you are in a time of great change and growth.  It can be frightening to see your coordinates shifting, I know, especially when I am not there with you physically to hold you and to love you in the ways that we became used to, to share the blessings that we both knew.  But that does not mean the dance is over, my love, I tell you truly that we have only entered a new phase, just as you have entered a new phase.

I have told you before honey please enjoy where you are that is the reason for things right now it is time for you to enjoy and I mean to really enjoy.  I want you to think about what is fun for you?  I know it’s not easy, but that’s your challenge.  You are better at taking care of others than you are about yourself and you always have been, and I want you not to dwell on the fact of my physical absence, instead I want you to be at peace with the lessons of our relationship.  You loved me and still love me, the challenge I bring back to you is to love yourself with the same intensity and resolve and persistence that you bring to me.  That would be your birthday gift to me.

I want this to be a special year for you, darling, and it will be.

sunflower-impression-amped

Sunflower Impression    P. Crockett

“This is Not a Test, It is an Experience.”

Scott was apparently not yet through, for the next night he had more to say.  As before, I began writing him in my journal and received back a response.  I had just finished watching again a videotape Bruce had made for me about his brother, the fruit of his annoying and ever-present video camera.  “Hey, Dollbaby,” I wrote.  “Just watched Bruce’s tape again, saw the changes in you over the six years we were together.  Grief is a weird thing, the most complex bubbling pool of emotions, which I do not pretend to understand.  There are times when it hurts so bad that I cannot stand it, when the pain of losing you still hits me so hard.  There is nothing I can do during those times but get through them.”

“Honey, when I look at you, when I think of the times we shared together, when I think of everything, when I feel everything I know that I can never replace you, and that will never be my intention.  I know what you want for me, and I’m clear about that, you want me to be happy, but in the truest and highest sense, you want me to be supremely myself, you want me to ride it through and to do good things just because that is who I am and that’s the way my gifts go, and there are millions of lessons to learn and to teach, and a great number of experiences of all kinds.”

“But honey please understand from my perspective although I am now in my fifth month after your passing (Imagine that, when we hadn’t gone hardly a day without talking during our living time together) it still just kind of overwhelms me sometimes.  I feel you telling me to look well to the day.  Here is where I am meant to be.  Tomorrow we will go painting and will pluck the golden apples of the sun and I will make the heavens shine a little brighter for you, even if I can’t even polish your soul!” [As a huge fan of author Ray Bradbury's, I had loved his anthology titled The Golden Apples of the Sun," and as I headed out to paint had lightly fallen into the ritual of exclaiming "Honey, I'm going out to pluck 'the golden apples of the sun' for you!" The book, by the way, is highly recommended.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Apples_of_the_Sun ]

“Help me both stay open to you, baby, because I am not ready to let you go, and I hope you aren’t ready to go yet, must you ever?  Can we be together for infinity?  Are we together for infinity?  Is the only ‘time’ that really matters, or the only time that really exists, now?  What was that beautiful quote John Hicks told me, ‘Time is the reason for the beauty of the long road’ or something like that.  How do you see ‘tomorrow’ and yesterday?’

Without effort, the following response then came through:

Honey, I have many lessons to learn but the major and most important one is to learn to simply “be,” that’s what everyone needs to know, to absorb, and to radiate, that what they are is O.K., there is truly a reason for everything, there is a reason.

And your mind will never know what it is.  Trust, baby, that’s what it all comes down to.  You are in exactly the right “place” and the right “time.”  Does that mean you cannot change?  No, not at all.  It’s just means that you’re starting the game from the right point.  You are always firmly ensconced in the loving arms of God, even though you may fear violence or be subject to illness and death.

Tests of faith don’t really say it right, they get at the concept but again as usual you put your human desire to be punished into it.  Think about all the therapeutic notions people ascribe to punishment, the “spare the rod, spoil the child” school of thought, the “parent’s rights to discipline” being separated by a fine line only from brutal abuse.  This is not a test, this is an experience.  I told you I was in a schoolroom, with the idea that life is a learning experience, but get this, and this is especially important for you to really grasp, my love, this is not a test in the usual sense (as you can see nothing is what it appears to be in the deepest sense) because it is not a competition, number one, and number 2 because this is not a test you can fail.  These are truly illusions, they are not the heart of the matter.  You see, one is great only because another has consented to shine less.  What makes one shine though takes nothing away from another, although the feeling might be that way.

Don’t be afraid, honey, it’s O.K. that you hurt, and I would have been the same way a total mess had you gone before me.  You are really doing great, that is what I want you to know.  Again, I want you to be suspicious and to look deeper whenever anyone including me uses the language of success or failure.  Look deeper.  These are only “markers” that we use for convenience, but never confuse the location with the coordinates, nor the reality with the word.  Without driving yourself crazy, as you do tend to do, use your powers of discernment.  They will serve you in good stead.  This is the growth path I spoke of, it is a process really without ending forever, and I know that can seem like a drag but at its root there is a severe beauty to the universe you will have to trust me on this right now.  You know what I am talking about.

But anyway when I say that you are doing great what I want is to impart to you that you really are exactly where you need to be, not one step further ahead or behind of that point.  You can take a long journey, but you never really leave the loving bosom of God.  She is there for you, and always will be.  You are the highest and the best of the universe, baby, and I was part of the play sent so that we could continue along our path.

Honey, you will ultimately be at peace with my death you will not always hate it so very much and feel so keenly my absence because like I told you damn it I am not lost!  What am I, spiritual chopped liver?  No siree, Bob, the rules of this game do not require you to suffer or to be alone or for that matter to do anything else other than get through it, do it with flair, the world so desperately needs love.  The power of God will protect you are surely beloved and there is much for you to do.  But you have been acting my part you have been sowing the seeds and you will be standing back and watching a very beautiful garden grow.  You are my baby and always will be

You have no idea of what it’s like over here.  Reality is simple once you strip away things and see them for what they are

Go to sleep honey and get some rest for Christ’s sake!  I told you about that!

Take what you will from the channeled writings, for they are gifts of the spirit, offered in love.
Scott was apparently ready to take a break from communication through writing, for I was just about to make a new friend that would forever change my life.

To: A Miracle Unfolds On Lincoln Road

Published in: on November 4, 2008 at 5:44 am  Leave a Comment  
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Always a Bridge to Connect the Gap – Part 2

During that first session with Dee, a multitude of messages came through, many of them unique to my situation and virtually all of them accurate. Some of the insights, however, unbounded by time, only later came to pass. In rapid fire, she reported images laden with meaning to me. Out of the blue, she asked “You drink soda, don’t you? You know, soda or pop?” “I guess so,” I replied, uncertain what she was getting at, “Why?” “Yeah, cause he’s showing me that. He said he was very thirsty at the end. Did you know this?”

Suddenly, I got it. She was referring to the Gatorade that was Scott’s beverage of choice. His last act, prior to dying, had been to pull himself up with great effort to the tray table I had set up by the bed to reach for the glass of Gatorade there. Just as his hand had grasped the glass his entire body had suddenly tremored, spilling the liquid all over himself. He had fallen flat backwards into bed, his head landing on a pillow, mouth open and eyes staring, and stopped breathing. That was when I started panicking.

Dee continued “I see he was thirsty. He wanted to, you know, drench himself. He says he was very warm. He says his thoughts were running rampart.” “Running what?,” I asked, and Dee impatiently spelled the word for me, “r-a-m-p-a-r-t.” “Hmm,” I thought, “maybe the word is his and not hers.” “He knew you were there,” she continued, “but somebody was there holding his hand. The hand I see was never a human hand. It’s an angelic hand. He was not alone. He’s saying that even when you went off that morning you didn’t leave him alone. He was never alone.”

Later, when Dee asked “Who is Anne?,” I answered “my mother.” My parents had been there for me throughout the ordeal of Scott’s illness, and after he died I had left his body to be held in their arms while I cried. A couple of years earlier, Scott and I had been forced to cancel a long-awaited weekend trip to Key West after he began coughing up blood in the early morning hours that Friday. I had called his doctor at home and made arrangements to check him into the hospital, and driven him there through the deserted predawn streets. As we watched the pale sunrise together from his hospital room window, both of us frightened and exhausted, I said quietly “Honey, we’ve got to hang on to life loosely.” Later, in his journal, I saw that he had written down the words.

That Friday morning, before being able to sleep, I had had to drive to yet another hospital, many miles south, to keep an appointment to have a will signed by one of my clients dying of AIDS-related lymphoma. He was in pain and disfigured by the ravages of disease, but had the grace to ask how Scott was doing, to ask if I was all right. Meanwhile, his life partner, who had been in our office only months before for estate planning, causing a sensation with his beauty and his gentle, sure manner, lay in the same hospital two doors down, also dying. No one was sure which would go first.

I finally got back home and called my mother, having no idea what I wanted to say. Words started pouring out of me. “We had to cancel our trip to Key West, and Scott’s in the hospital, and I just had to go do this will and this guy and his lover are both in the hospital dying, a couple doors from each other. This damn disease. I just…” I broke down crying. I had been pushed beyond my limit. It was all too much. My mother, sharing my pain, spoke soft words of comfort, knowing that there were no easy answers.

“I know, darling. I know.” She was just there for me as I cried, feeling as if I would never stop. Finally, she said “Darling, now get some rest and when you wake up why don’t you come by for some ice tea and a sandwich.” And I did, lost in darkness, and we had talked. She had been through it with me.

i-love_my_momma

My Mom, Anne Howe O’Quinn Crockett

A woman whose loving nature had found expression in her Christianity, she had come to terms beautifully with the fact of her gay son, and later my HIV-positivity. Just days before, I had discussed with her my feelings that Scott’s love was still present. To her, the idea was the most natural one in the world. Is not the essential message of Christianity that death is not what it seems to be, and its core commandment an imperative to love beyond reason? She too had felt his presence, she told me. In fact, she had found herself having a conversation with him, “thinking to him” as she put it, before going to sleep just the night before.

Now, Dee was saying, “He said to give her his love.” Laughing at some private message, she asked “Does she believe in the after-life like that [as in communicating with the departed]? Cause I think he visits your mother. He does. He goes to see her.”
Wow, I was thinking, this guy is busy! Little did I know.

Finally, Dee wound up the session by offering a breathtaking new perspective on the relationship Scott and I had shared, and its future promise. “See, I believe that you two have really grown together. That’s why…that feeling of wanting to be with him [as in suicide], it can’t be. That would separate you if you did that. You can’t do that. But when the proper time comes, you’ll be with him, you see, then you start all over again. It’s beautiful.” I thought Dee was talking about reincarnation, but wasn’t sure. As I requested clarification, she responded. “Yeah, I believe in the last life you both lived you were the teacher. In this one, he was. That’s where you’ve grown together. There’s always one ahead of the other.”

“Yeah, he was the teacher in this life,” she said, “but in each lifetime, the two of you have left a legacy. Which is beautiful. There is a bond between you. Each life that you weave together is better than the last, although you forget…you forget, along life’s path. In other words, you two better yourselves. You better each other.”

“But he’s left plenty to keep you busy,” she said. “She’s got that right,” I thought to myself, thinking of the various creative endeavors we had begun together and which now awaited me. “He doesn’t want to see you dragging your feet, pining away to be with him. He says he’s left you the music, his writing, his poetry, the play, everything that’s built up around you, and there’s more than enough there to keep you busy.”

To  Chapter 13

Published in: on October 7, 2008 at 3:58 pm  Leave a Comment  
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