A Promise About Grieving

    Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about grieving. What a year for it, right? There’s the loss that would happen anyway, just as we go along in life: the shock of an old friend stricken with disease, an accident that happens far away but close to the heart, an aged loved one slipping into the next life. Each year we can’t begin to imagine to whom and what…but they happen, and they are the “slings and arrows of [not so] outrageous fortune” that no human can anticipate but which we somehow survive from year to year. And this year—my god. On top of the terror and the anxiety—the departures. Oh. And not just the regular lifting off but the kind that reveal deep systemic fractures in countries and systems that before we thought we might trust…that before we were under the illusion were improving, becoming less elitist, less discriminating somehow.

    The world is in such a tenuous position—on the verge of a vaccination that may or may not prove safe, if indeed it is wholly effective, even against new strains of a virus that is relentless. Because in our best estimation it seems safer than not taking it, we roll up our sleeves for the needle. Whole countries are on the verge of economic collapse and everyone holds their breath to see. Billionaires expand their wealth while the masses go without. It’s apocalyptic in many ways, and yet we continue to hope for change. Will a shift in American leadership now, for example, be enough to save Americans from certain demise? Will the world somehow collude to make sure that everyone, not just a select few, have food and shelter and, indeed, viral immunity? So many questions. So much waiting. To see. To see.

    And then there’s the kind of grieving that comes not from a shock but from a slow change over time…a child no longer living at home, which then precipitates awareness of another kind of loss (one I quail to acknowledge, so ungrateful do I feel in calling it so, and yet—)…the loss of the infant/toddler/child that lives only in memory now, though in spirit through the adult child one loved up and into the current version of himself. And there is the loss of friends who have made a slow (or fast) exit from one’s life, whether intentionally or unintentionally—and there are family members who do the same. This kind of grief is quite intense, particularly when it involves a choice. I have moved all over the world, so it is usually my (nuclear) family and I who are doing the exiting…this year has proven to be no exception.

    What I’ve been doing lately is missing, actually grieving, the living. I miss my dad so much it hurts my heart—like actual pain in the place where my heart lives in my body. I miss my mom—I miss pleasing her and having her say multiple times a month how happy she is that I’m living near her. I’m grieving missing this year and maybe next of the growing and becoming my nephews are doing (and of course would be doing with me nearby, as well—all out of my sight). But still. It’s what we’re all doing, I think. We have to allow ourselves this. And we have to allow that there is more suffering, arguably much greater than our own…and it’s all connected.

Certainly the common denominator is Covid. Without question, this disease, ushered in on a virus, is responsible for so much of the hurt. We have lost loved ones, and we have lost livelihoods—stability and predictability seem like distant memories for so many of us. And our loved ones have made their crossing to the spirit world alone, it seems. This hurts the worst of all. We picture them alone in a hospital bed (maybe a kind nurse wrapped head to toe in PPE has taken a moment to show us their faces on a screen). We have talked into our computer microphones and prayed to be heard, only to watch our loved ones fade away from the voices we lift to them. This is a unique kind of grief, I think to myself, but then again, aren’t they all? Unique, that is. Because each time it is a different configuration…different relationships to the dying or departing, different circumstances, different filters of past experiences of loss. And now this: losing during a global pandemic.

People are continuing to die. Families continue to suffer. Individuals continue to be alone. And more and more, they feel alienated in their effort to care for their community by abiding by such rules as are put in place to protect the vulnerable. Suddenly they are sycophants, liberals, radicals…for wearing a mask or staying home. It’s such a catch-22, because like everyone else, all they want to do is travel and meet up with friends and family, and yet for the benefit of this raging, suspicious, ungrateful rabble, they don’t. It must be so tempting to throw in the towel. “Fine,” they might say, “you win.” But what if that one moment of weakness resulted in someone’s grandmother, who maybe survived multiple wars while championing a Civil Rights Movement, dying of Covid. Having her light snuffed out because we couldn’t take it any more and let our guard down just so. It’s that arbitrary. And we’d never know it, but what if…

So there’s the grief around losing our way of being, too. So many, I am hearing, are finding the “silver lining,” as it were. Expressing gratitude for moments not sought but granted amid this shit storm…to spend quality time with those we are closest to. To focus on the things that matter: our spirituality, our gardens, our health, our children. But these sentiments are also the sentiments of privilege. They are not the things my friends who have lost their jobs and are struggling to keep the lights on are saying. They are not the things that women caught up in domestic violence with nowhere to go but “home” are saying. And what of the grief that they experience? Sometimes it’s too much to consider.

Here is what I do know. I have seen, time and again, evidence—straight up evidence—that our loved ones continue on beyond their earthly bodies. I don’t mean I think it’s a nice thing to say and that we should all try to imagine them in a ‘better place.’ I mean I have sat down with people, again and again, and invited their loved ones to show us that they are near, that they can see us and that they are not simply ‘gone.’ It sounds crazy, and God knows I never aimed to be a medium, but these things often land on us like so many butterflies, and they must be taken for the gifts that they are. Sometimes the evidence is a reference to something shared between only the person I am sitting with and the loved one in spirit. Sometimes it’s evidence that shows they can see them…in their homes or in their day to day lives. It’s never messaging for me. I don’t write it down or keep a recording. I just have the “sitter” take copious notes as I share whatever is shown to me in my mind’s eye. Most of the time it doesn’t mean much to me, and I don’t ask for detailed explanations. Seeing the faces of those I am ‘reading’ for wholly changed—transformed by the sudden certainty that their loved is near—that is enough.

I suspect some of you will judge me for this one. Yeah, it’s weird. Who would have thought? But it’s a gift I’ve learned to embrace, and desperate times call for desperate measures. When a person is dying, they are not fully confined to their body like when they are firmly rooted in the physical. They can travel, see things, actually BE with the people who are already grieving them. We are usually numb to such spiritual experience, unable to feel them when they are near, and even when we do we dismiss the feeling as wishful and “crazy.” But that doesn’t make it not so. First hand accounts of near death experience confirm this again and again, and indeed when I was dying on an E.R. gurney in the West Hawai’i Community Hospital over 20 years ago, I saw it too. I was not stuck inside my body, eyes closed and vitals flatlining. I was in the air around my body, I was with my husband, whose tears ultimately convinced me to stay—because I was young and strong and I could.

But these loved ones whose bodies have been wracked by Covid, who have let go—they have gone peacefully. Maybe they fought for a while. Maybe even fought hard—it’s the body’s desire to continue after all. But in the end, there was peace. I promise. Because death is only a portal. I saw it myself, and I’ve seen many who have crossed it. I’ve heard from them and shared their messages with their loved ones. I’m still learning, and most of the time it’s like a not-so-awesome phone connection, but every time, and I do mean every time, they manage to send something through that is a doozie. Something that flattens me and the person I’m reading for—shocks us into believing. Again and again it is confirmed.

For me, it’s become pretty normal. I don’t do it that much, because it’s tiring, and I do a lot of other things besides. But I almost never say no if I’m asked. It’s an honour to read for someone. It’s an honour that they ask me and an honour that their loved ones who have passed feel safe enough to communicate through me. It’s not scary (though I would have thought it would be) and it’s not bizarre. It just is. In a year that has shaken us out of so many of our normal ways of being and thinking, why not this? I write this because I know there are so many of us grieving right now, and we are struggling with departures that seem especially cruel. If I can say or write one thing to reassure even one of you, then I need to, right?

Also, it’s not such a risk, because there are not very many people reading my blog yet. You are one of my, like, ten readers. And a handful of you are ones who have given me a chance to practise this new gift (and yourselves become the recipients of the gift of communication from your departed loved ones). So I’m not THAT brave. But I am willing to share what I know if it means lessening the hurt for even one of you.

So yeah, we’re grieving. We’re grieving those who have died and those who still live but are far away from us. It’s where we are right now. But let us know that distance is a construct, and it only exists because we are in these bodies. I believe, along with those who follow the Sun Dance religion of the Sioux, the Cheyenne, and the Crow, that before we existed in these bodies, we were out in the ether…amazing, bright, light beings, perfect in every way except that we had no experience of limitation. For that reason, our imperfection, we took bodies on this planet for these lifetimes, so that we might experience limitation…the limitation of the body and the mind. Like how we can’t walk through a wall or fly, yes, but also like how we are sometimes misled by our own egos. How many times have I thought, “Really, Kim? Why would you ever say something like that out loud?” And yet I have said the thing out loud. It’s my limitation. I’m learning it. Embodying it. And when I’ve finished learning what it really means to be limited in these ways, I will pass back into that perfection from whence I came…the collective ALL that is so beautiful and serene, and I will be complete. Sound like heaven? Perhaps that is exactly what it is.

So here we are with so many of our loved ones becoming whole all around us, lifting off moment by moment for the perfection out of which they were first born. And it is our task to recognise that it is only our limitation that keeps us from celebrating their trajectory toward what is perfect and light and divine. No, we can’t fully grasp it. We’ll weep and mourn. It is in our human nature to do so. And it is justified, all things considered. But I promise you, we will see them again. I don’t know all the details. I only know what’s been shown to me. I actually exult in the fact that what I can imagine/conceive of is not all there is. So even though I don’t have all the answers, I have enough to ease me into a space that is more tranquil. More fearless. May we all soften into the experience of the divine, including the visitations of those who have gone before us. They are here. They are near. I promise.