Losing Marcel crushed me, and the grief lingered on, but I am writing from a point where I’m now in a much better place. With some soul-searching, a few little miracles and some “winks” from beyond, here are the little helpers that have put me back on the path to healing…
I was again lying on the bed, looking at photos of Marcel. All of my unfinished projects sat. My motivation for anything had been deflated.
I have a beautiful house at the foot of the Cumberland Mountains. There are birds and cicadas singing in the trees all around me. But, you can’t hear the sounds of the country if the screaming siren of longing within, is drowning it all out.
Someone said to me, “but you still have one dog.” I know, and he’s precious and adored. Grieving for one doesn’t minimize my love for the other. And vice versa. Just as my being here, perfectly alive, doesn’t minimize my Mother’s grief for my brother, who we also lost recently.
I believe the analogy fits because as I explain in my other article On Losing a Pet, the pet relationship resembles the parent-child relationship in many ways… It’s like having a baby, except in the case of a pet, the baby ages and becomes a little senior, while remaining in baby form. It is a very unique situation and creates a bond like no other because you’re never ready to lose a baby… it never left the house, never went off to get married, or start a career, never learned to live on its own, and never gave you time to adjust to its absence.
The Suffering Continued—
I joined a pet loss bereavement group. Okay, I joined a few. For a while, I found it comforting to share feelings and experiences with others, who were navigating the same kind of grief.
Yet the sadness, nostalgia, and the daily tears continued on… I even packed my heavy heart and brought it with me to France, where we spend a few months every year visiting my husband’s family and friends.
What I found strange, was that this “renewed” grieving for Marcel—now 1 1/2 years after his passing—was actually more intense than the previous year, when it would’ve been fresher and more raw. I became curious about this.
Throughout the following days and weeks, I came to see the mourning as a melange of things. The grief had collapsed onto a mounting home-sickness, combined with sadness from having also lost my brother during the same year. It all cumulated gradually, and was lingering because of the simultaneous challenges on this particular trip.
As one of my teachers used to say, the balance of levity was not up to the job in countering the gravity. So the gravity was winning. And I was sinking.
I went to a beautiful medieval chapel in one of the local villages. While sitting alone in the back, I asked for a deeper insight. Soft Gradual Shock, as opposed to Post Traumatic Shock, came to me.
It is softer, more gradual, and comes not from one specific thing, but from a handful of significant life changes, happening in a relatively short span of time. In my case, although we are very happy with our recent cross country move, it had followed many other significant life events… a divorce, a partial retirement, the dispersement of my beloved spiritual community and our sanctuary—which changed hands after the pandemic, and two major deaths. I was missing the places I used to go with Marcel… I was missing Yoga West, the one place I used to go for solace. The place where I taught others…
This insight, as I would later come to see, was the start of my healing journey.
On the last day of July, we could smell the smoke from the biggest fire in the history of France, which was swallowing up entire villages a few hours south of us. As if the fire wasn’t enough, it was the summer of an uncharacteristically long and intense heatwave that hit the entire country, as well as neighboring countries. No one had air conditioning. I was lying on the bed yet again, listening to Esther Hicks on the topic of grieving.
In the way that fire breaks open certain pinecones to release their seeds, something was born in me that day.
Miracles & Healing—
“You’re a lazy focuser,” Esther said to the questioner. Yeah… I know, I said to myself, as if she were speaking directly to me. Then, she shared stories about the funny ways in which the departed make their presence known to those who are able see, such as through the sudden appearance of blue glass, feathers, and butterflies, which I had heard her talk about in the past.
That very afternoon, I found a feather in our living room. But I didn’t want to fall prey to wishful thinking, as it was a grey, ordinary feather that could’ve blown in from the open window.
The messages however, were now coming in like a series of spiritual e-mails… I had opened up the channel of communication. The teacher of my teacher, with whom I had received messages a few times many years ago, sent me a mantra, which I promptly put to a little tune on our piano. This particular mantra, Ang Sang Wahe Guru, synchronizes the finite sense of self to the infinite Oneness in the universe. We are one with spirit.
I felt I was being pulled back into the light.
That evening, when it cooled just enough for an evening walk at the park, just behind the Boussac castle, I looked down to find another feather. Like the first one, it was grey and quite ordinary. I still didn’t want to read into it what wasn’t there, since feathers, in and of themselves, aren’t so unusual. My natural skepticism prevailed in that moment.
That night, Marcel showed up in my dream…
In the dream, he was inside a birdcage. Dreams are always weird… He then found his way out of the cage, from a side door. He was so clever, that this is just the kind of thing he would’ve done. I then held him, knowing that I was having a cherished last moment with him. In the dream, this scenario did not present itself as sad. Instead, it felt precious.
The next day, we went to the lake to cool off. When I was walking the forested trail that wraps around the water’s edge, I got to thinking about how I doubted the appearance of the two feathers… And so, did he show up in my dream just to make sure I could have no doubt that he was near? I recalled the blue glass and the feathers… Two minutes later, as I was stepping over a fallen tree trunk that was blocking the path, I looked down to find, not a grey feather, but rather, a little blue feather.
I returned to the beach chairs we had set up at the lake’s edge. An unusually bright orange butterfly landed right next to me and fluttered all around me while I was recounting my dream to my son by text.
I returned to the States the following week, while Thierry stayed behind for another two weeks. Knowing that I have a special affinity and affection for Mother Mary, my dear neighbor friend invited me to a centering prayer circle at the St. Mary Retreat near us. Afterward, while she was showing me the grounds and the view overlooking the Cumberland plateau, I looked down to find another little feather. It was also blue.
No Separation—
While reflecting on these developments and on this new way of playing with Marcel in spirit, something else struck me… As weird as it sounds to say it out-loud, on some level, we think that our continued grieving keeps us close to them. We think we need to show them how much we love them by continuing to mourn. But this is a mistaken notion. My direct experience was showing me that our continued sadness actually blocks us from communicating with them in spirit.
Being physically focussed, as Esther Hicks puts it, also keeps us blocked. In other words, we obstruct what I have come to think of as, “winks from beyond”… those little messages that the deceased send us, to let us know they are near…spiritual tweets, in the form of flickering lights, hummingbirds, appearances in our dreams… or blue feathers and butterflies!
There’s no separation and no death, when we see ourselves as eternal beings. The true relationship is soul to soul, not body to body.
My spiritual teacher told a story one day… He had his own spiritual teacher, and asked him once… but where will you go when you die? His teacher’s response was to the point, as was his way: I will be as close as the nose on your face!
Nobody goes anywhere!
So, when we say that someone is “gone”… We are mistaken.
Time is Relative—
While reading the stories on the Pet Grieving site, I came across many that broke me. Beloved pets leaving too soon, due to freak accidents or disease.
My son recently lost his soul-cat, Banjo, to a rare autoimmune disorder, at only four years old.
To our standards, a life has been cut short. But LOVE, as corny as it sounds, is all there is. And if that soul received love here, then perhaps its mission has been fulfilled.
I also read a story about a senior dog who had lived most of his life stuck inside, for 12 hours a day. But he was adopted by a loving family, as a 13-year-old senior, and for his last eight months, he lived his best life. He departed knowing he was loved.
Time is relative.
A butterfly lives 20 days, and a tortoise for 150 years. Taoism asks, which is superior? Those 20 days feels like an eternity to the butterfly.
Besides… that’s the deal with pets. We go into it knowing that we will likely outlive them. My Marcel lived 15 years… a long dog-life, by any standards. And he knew very well he was loved. He knew he was the king of the house.
Yet, I still had a tough time of it. Because feelings are slow to respond to logic, facts about life-span, and even mystic wisdom. Emotions have their own timeline.
But, part of conscious focusing is to actively place our focus on the spiritual, rather than the physical. I began to do this like a daily sadhana, or spiritual practice.
I reminded myself that energy is indestructible. This is a law. We really are eternal beings!
We are spiritual beings having a human experience. (~Siri Singh Sahib)
When I stopped focussing on the sadness, and instead on the eternality of spirit, along with the meaninglessness of time, things began to shift within me.
Focus on the love that you gave them… That’s what their soul came here to receive. How fortunate that they found you! That you found each other!
Seize the micro-moments of joy, available along the way. Notice the things that feel good. Notice the beauty. Laugh. Don’t think that mourning holds them any closer. It is actually the opposite… your joy is your call to them. It’s how they recognize you!
Donna Quesada Schollhammer 