Grief is a Fickle Mistress
I don’t plan out my writing, a more organized person probably would, so that they can stay consistent with a general theme or topic that they want to address. I’ve realized a long time ago that my whole life is a theme. Like any movie there are messages and symbols that play throughout that I need to fully understand to keep them from happening again. When I don’t get it the first time, it reappears time and time again until I do.
You must be both the observer, and the writer, of your life. It doesn’t just happen to you without rhyme or reason.
Even as I write this, I am bombarded by all of these thoughts and entities that I know are not organic to myself. Thoughts of doubt, of frustration, and perhaps the most prevalent of all– the feeling of unworthiness. I hear them speak within me, but choose to continue towards my calling as a healer. Perhaps these words will give you the empowerment that you needed to hear today.
And if not today, tomorrow. Or the day after that. Or maybe even ten years later.
I’ve written of grief before– she is a spontaneous mistress who comes and goes as she pleases. When I lost my dog last summer, she gave me a brief glance of the endless expanse of her eyes. When I lost my grandmother in September, she gave me a quick, sharp stab from her cold finger, and I had to be wary of the ice from spreading to my heart. When I lost my grandfather in February she teased me with a dark feather that tickled and numbed my body, and I stumbled, surprised at her power over me.
But when I had to let go of my best friend for the last twelve years on Friday, she took hold of me, and she did not let go.
She gripped deep down inside of me, and released a wail that made the earth shatter and crumble beneath my feet. I couldn’t find my breath, and searched for it in frantic gasps of shallow air that filled my stomach too quickly, leaving me with nausea in its wake.
“I lost my baby, I lost my baby, I lost my baby,” cluttered my mind as I rocked myself on the floor, struggling to breathe.
I screamed, as I knew I would, as I already had in so many of my dreams leading up to this point.
She gripped me hard and tight, and I was prepared for her to do so. I watched how she took hold of my body. She is a necessity.
Emotions are movements of God through you, and reminders of the vulnerability of your human self– but these are what make us strong. We as divine beings chose to experience a life as humans precisely because of these movements and emotions. Grief is one of the purest ones there is. It is a sacred and divine rite of passage for spirits into their next realm of life, love, and light.
It is painful, but necessary, for your human, your Spirit, and your loved one.
The Lion Sleeps Tonight
December was the season where I really channeled the Shaman in my lineage, as well as connected with my medicine woman template. I had so many powerful experiences of light and love that left me speechless, as well as messages that I didn’t quite understand yet, but trusted nonetheless.
One night during an especially powerful meditation, I felt the need to thank my boy. He was sitting on the floor with me, observing me from a safe enough distance to show that he just so happened to be in the room with me. It wasn’t because he liked me or anything.
“Emotions are movements of God through you, and reminders of the vulnerability of your human self– but these are what make us strong.”
“Thank you, Hero, for being with me all these years, and giving me the opportunity to love you. I thank you for being my guardian, and guiding me in this life. I thank you for being with me in all of my lifetimes. I honor you, and will forever treasure the time we had together in this physical realm and in this lifetime,” my Higher Self spoke.
I frowned briefly at what I had said to him. Why was I talking like he was going to die? Although I was slightly concerned, I was also filled with an overwhelming calm, and the knowledge that everything would be fine– this was part of the Divine Plan.
I nodded to myself, and a song emanated from my chest:
“In the jungle, the quiet jungle, the lion sleeps tonight. Hush my darling, no fear my darling, the lion sleeps tonight.”
Those weren’t even the right lyrics to the song, and yet that’s how the song came to me– came from me. The message was clear: my lion would sleep soon, but I should have no fear.
I was slightly concerned at how and how soon my boy would go, but I decided not to think about it to heavily. At that moment, I was mostly filled with a vague curiosity at the messages I was receiving from my Higher Self.
Hero began to drool a lot. I didn’t think anything of it because it only happened when he was asleep, and I figured that he was just getting some good rest. The next week, Hero fell while he was eating, and I took him to the vet in a panic. They found a lump that was growing in his mouth, which was causing his drooling. The vet suggested a couple of options that we could do for him moving forward– antibiotics and an anti-inflammatory medication to see if the mass would shrink. That, or a biopsy to see what it was.
He was a senior cat, and not wanting to risk his life with anesthesia, I chose the medicine approach first. Immediately, he had an adverse reaction to it, and was shivering in my bed, hot to the touch, refusing to budge. I immediately stopped giving him the medicine and contacted the vet.
“He shouldn’t be having a reaction like that, that’s pretty unusual,” she mused on the phone. “Why don’t you just skip the dose for tonight, make sure that what he’s reacting to is the medicine and not something else?”
“He was completely fine before I started giving him that, so I’m not giving him any more.” I struggled to keep my voice level as I spoke.
“Alright, well, I suppose that’s fine. We’re still gonna have to look at the mass next week to see if it gets any smaller on its own before we decide what our next steps are.”
I scheduled his next check-up. Their next availability was on my birthday.
I stepped away from the festivities and celebration that day– my smiling family members and the aroma of my favorite foods– to take him to the vet again.
It had gotten bigger. We scheduled a biopsy.
This was when I knew why I sang that song, and why I had thanked him for his presence with me in this life.
“It is painful, but necessary, for your human, your Spirit, and your loved one.”
In a previous post, I’d written about psychic gifts, and you can read more about that here.
They’re not hocus pocus like people seem to think, and they’re not always as overt as getting mystical visions and talking to spirits. Sometimes they’re as simple as just knowing.
There was a knowing within me that the tumor was malignant. I tried to convince myself that I was just worrying and imagining the worst scenario. I bargained internally– trying to convince it that it was benign.
Benign, benign, benign…
“Begin again.”
I heard Her voice speak within me.
“He’s dying.”
Bird Song
I was eating an egg-sandwich at the kitchen counter with my boy sitting next to me. He had started to drool blood from his mouth after the biopsy. It made my mother nauseous to look at him, and I would wipe it off with a paper towel. He would always turn his chin up at me in resistance, but he wouldn’t run.
I threw the paper towel into the kitchen trash can and missed. My phone rang.
“Hi, is this Claire?”
“Yes.”
“Hi, Claire. I’m calling about Hero’s test results from his biopsy last week.”
I walked into the living room and stared out the door. The sun was shining so brightly it was almost blinding.
“Are you sitting down?” she asked.
My eyes began to sting as I slowly sat on the carpeted welcome mat in front of the door. No one ever asks if someone is sitting when they need to share good news.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“I’m so sorry, Claire, but it looks like little Hero has squamous cell carcinoma, which is a pretty common form of oral cancer for cats. It’s very aggressive, and progresses quickly. I wish I had better news for you. I’m so sorry.”
“How long do cats typically live with it?”
“Two or three months. With him, where the tumor is in his mouth, it’s going to grow very quickly and will eventually get to the point where he won’t be able to eat or close his mouth. I know I had talked about removing the mass surgically, but this type of cancer is really well known for coming back quickly. With the size that it is now, I would have to remove part of his mandible, too. And even then, I won’t be able to remove all of it. The cancer will keep it from healing– so he’d just have an open wound in his mouth.”
“I don’t want to do that,” I say quickly.
“We can talk about your other options, like chemo…” she began.
“I don’t want to do that either,” I say. “It’s expensive, and there’s no guarantee it works. I don’t want him to go through all that for nothing.”
“Yeah, the success rate for this type of cancer isn’t great. It usually comes back, and just buys a month or two at most.”
“Can’t I just get some pain medicine to keep him comfortable until…”
“Yes, of course. I support any decision that you want to make about this. I know this isn’t easy, and it’s going to be very tough. Again, I am so sorry, and I wish I had better news for you.”
There’s a certain tone in their voice that people use when they want to be sympathetic to your pain, but it doesn’t quite touch them. It reminds me of a small bird trying to imitate the call of a larger one. You appreciate their efforts for trying, but you wish they had just said their condolences without affectation. It would have seemed more sincere.
So for the next couple of months, I did everything in my power to be there for him. I bought pet cancer supplements, I made his cat food, I dried the drool from his face and brushed out the mats from his fur when he couldn’t groom himself anymore. I took him outside for walks on a leash because he would beg me to let him out. I washed the discolored saliva from his once white face, and as time progressed, began to turn a reddish brown.
There was so much drool, everywhere. I would find wet spots on the floor, my clothes, my shoes, on furniture. Little dark-brown spots left behind on my bed sheets. But I didn’t mind– he was still here with me.
And every day, I would pray, and meditate, and beg, and plead with Her.
“I know he needs to go. I know that is the plan. But please, please, please, don’t make me watch him suffer. Don’t let him suffer.”
I was plagued with dreams of my elemental bodies adjusting to his loss. Dreams of blood and bones, cutting, and screaming. I screamed so loudly in one dream that I bolted myself awake in my bed, still hearing myself scream in the other realm.
In mediation, I begged for a sign to know when it would be time to let him go. I didn’t want him to suffer just because I wasn’t ready to let go of him.
One morning, she spoke to me in a dream.
“He’s ready to go.”
The Initiation
In the darkness of the early morning, I saw a figure sprawled on the floor, and for a moment, I thought it was my boy, gone. I gave it a brief poke and realized it was my meditation zabuton. I looked up from the floor to find Hero watching me silently from my bed. He looked down at me, his breath coming soft and shallow. His usual two beads of drool vibrated slightly as he purred.
When I fed him that morning, I watched him eat, as I normally did–he wanted company while he ate because it was so painful. He started gagging as he ate, his eyes bulging wide. He kept eating, and I petted him as he did. The tumor had gotten too big, and it was becoming too difficult for him to eat.
And eating was his favorite thing to do.
I wasn’t ready to call the vet, but I knew he was. I couldn’t be selfish with my boy, not with everything he’s given me. I had asked for a sign– and this was it.
In his last moments, his breath left his body before his purr did. I will never forget that.
What was the point of all this? What was the reason for this pain and suffering of living, loving and losing? Time and time again?
It was initiation, immortal soul. But what is initiation?
It is often an unheard of concept in the Western hemisphere, outside of the context of fraternities or the most secret of underground organizations. But what it is in its purest form– in the realm of its origins in indigenous religious practices– is a ritual of preparation for all aspects of the individual for unification with their higher self, and their higher purpose.
This can mean an awakening of psychic gifts, or in my case, building further confidence in these gifts; or recovering aspects of yourself and your shadows that have been hidden deep within your complex human subconscious, or even retrieving them from the trauma in your lineage.
You will know when you are experiencing this rite– it is the next stage in your evolution.
So, even when I was fumbling with this bodily possession of grief, I was also watching myself as a stranger might view me. It was a deep and bottomless ache that reached me, but there was still a quiet, refreshing knowing, that this was what was meant to happen.
This was my initiation with death. For death is not dying, but merely a transitioning of realms. So many of my loved ones experienced this transition, and I became more skilled with accepting this reality, and being able to commune with them in their new spiritual location. I do not claim to be a medium, or a psychic, because we are all naturally these things. There are just those who are more aware of these skills, and how to properly use them.
I still have the same sensations of his presence– the feeling of his gaze as he watches me from my bed, or seeing a flash out of the corner of my eye as he walks in the room. Most people dismiss these feelings as “being crazy,” either because they are scared of the implications of these sensations, or they’re in a state of denial about the reality of coexisting across realms.
My boy is very much still with me, and I can say that with confidence, and without a fear of sounding crazy. I feel his sprit and animal consciousness following me around. He has just as much sass, and his feigned air of indifference that he carried with him when he was in this realm. I find myself talking to him still– this was a habit that I formed while he was alive. I never thought much of it, talking to someone who wasn’t even in the same room as me. I now understand that this was also a training.
When someone moves away from you, you get sad because you know you won’t be able to see them nearly as much as you used to. You won’t be able to touch their skin, or look into their eyes. But you have photos and videos of the two of you together, and you treasure those. They make you smile a sad smile as you look at them. You allow yourself a bit of sadness, but you don’t feel sad for too long because you know that you can always visit them sometime, or call them on the phone.
When people transition, you visit them in your dreams. They talk to you just as vividly as when they were alive, if not more so. This is a ready means of traveling to their location, it’s just most of us have forgotten about the plane buried in our backyard. We can talk to them without visiting them, but we have lost our phones long ago.
Find your plane, immortal soul. Remember the phoneline that exists within you. That which connects you to your divine source. You may think it is broken, or nonexistent, but they are present and well. You just need to learn how to use them again.
The Wayward Minds Collective 
Leave a comment