Creative Communication and the Beyond

When my mother passed away unexpectedly last Christmas, I felt our conversations ended, but they had merely evolved.

As was our custom, we had our long weekly talk 2 days prior, just as we had done for 30 years.
“I’ll will call you next week, I love you” was all we said at the end of that call. How I wished that call had been longer.

We had a very unique and unusual relationship. We were very creative co-communicators. Writer and scientist that I am, I left home early to study the natural and supernatural realms and really never returned.

Home was my backpack, my journal and myself. I studied, travelled, grew very ill, and then well, then ill again. I traversed several continents, many countries, none of them English-speaking. I wrote and wrote more. My mother, whose name is appropriately Angel, was my ever guiding force. I followed my drummer and my dreams fully, and she loved me anyway.

“Dream your dreams until they come true,” she would say, “write your book with your own happy ending. If you don’t like the chapter you are living, rewrite it.”

We corresponded and conversed over years and miles, mountains and minutes. Sometimes my letters were scribbled on a napkin with a foreign name, shoved hastily into an envelope. Sometimes they were more elegant on letterhead I made or cards I created.

She always wrote back, in her beautiful handwriting on cards with museum reproductions or paintings, musical cards or ones with bouncy pieces.

We were creative in our communication. Years after computers arrived, we wrote, we never stopped writing and it is these letters I most miss.

I have a different understanding of death, I do not fear or run, cry or grieve in traditional ways. I do not rationalize death as one’s time to leave, being called home or being better off. I see it as a natural closure to the cycle of life whilst simultaneously continuing energetically in an evolved state.

Every living thing has an expiration date; it is the natural state of existence, but energy never fully dissipates.

As was our custom for many years when we were apart I went into my room where my plethora of books resides, many of which were gifts from Mom. I spoke with my hearts voice: “Mom, show me.”

I rested with my books and shortly, a small blue one of poetry sang. I opened it to a random page.

“Life is a journey, the breadth of which one cannot imagine, Death is but a detour.”

As I read these words I smiled sadly, but at peace. That night I dreamed that Mom was in the yard, healthy, hair shining, voice singing. She was in a corner of the yard speaking with my canine companions. In a recent conversation, Mom had told me she wanted to come visit and meet my dogs, but she had a cough and wasn’t feeling all that well.

I crossed the yard to reach her, “Mom”, I said,” I’m glad you are here.” She took my hand, she was warm, living, I felt her pulse race up my arm, it entered my heart and my heart shifted to make room.

“I’m always here” she smiled. She looked all around the gardens and our woodsy cottage home and nodded, pleased. “It’s so beautiful. “ She kissed my hand, and I awoke.

Love, in her truest form, transcends death, it is eternal. Love, the purest of all energies, evolves but never disappears, in the ever steady stream of constant and creative communication.