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January-March, 2011

ONEderful JOYning

by Rev. Bob Thompson

This morning when I woke up I immediately noticed that Kathy had risen before me and gone downstairs. This was unusual because she always worked later than me and thus usually rose after me. I also wondered, “What is she doing downstairs that would cause her to rise so early?” And then I remembered… The day that my life ended? And the day (that same day) that my life, a new now, began again?

Seemingly, on July 19th, when I repeatedly kissed the river coldness of Kathy’s body, I immediately slipped into a twilight zone of another dimension.

Looking back now after nearly five months have gone by, I remember India’s old custom of “suttee,” where the widow casts herself onto her husband’s funeral pyre, and burns to death. “Suttee” is still used to describe the widow, in India, who voluntarily wishes to do this.

After kissing Kathy’s cold hands, lips and brow, it seemed as if coldness had entered me. I remember feeling that what I was witnessing, was not real — that what I was experiencing was a nightmare from which I really looked forward to waking up.

It would be such a joyous occasion to see her move and feel her warmth, again! The warmth in my own body had completely vanished. And I felt that warmth was gone forever. I was alive in the sense of being able to move my body, but I was not alive in the sense of my feeling any body warmth or feelings of my own. Kind of like a living, but cold, corpse? A shocked, corpse? Somehow, in my thoughts, I had  seemingly embraced and retained the coldness of Kathy’s body, and had done a “voluntary cold suttee” and given up my own zest for life, my body warmth for life and, in a shocking instant, entered into a dimension of no warmth at all, seemingly forever.

Numerous times I had said to Kathy, “I know that you are only a dream (and what a dream!), but I am really attached to my dream of you.” And Kathy’s response was always, “It is only a body” — Kathy’s five words, her belief, which now, after all these months finally are unfolding their meaning for me.

A psychic friend shared with me that Kathy’s greatest fear was that I would die before her. Now I understand the reluctance of the survivor to continue living a life that has lost its meaning, lost its warmth, because the joy and the warmth in that key relationship are no longer there.

But help does come unexpectedly, when one is willing to be open to guidance. And so it finally happened for me.

A loved one mailed me the book Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart, by Gordon Livingston M.D., a psychiatrist. I am now reading the book for the fourth time. (I recognize myself as a slow learner.) 😊 . It is thirty short essays based on Gordon’s personal experiences and those of some of his clients.

One of the short essays is: “Love Is Never Lost, Not Even In Death.” Gordon’s two son’s died about 13 months apart, a six year old to leukemia, and a brilliant 21 year old, to suicide. Gordon admits, that in his own grief, he contemplated suicide. Then this insightful, grieving and distraught doctor went on to talk about how the death of our loved ones invokes in us, or brings up in us, feelings of love that are much stronger for that lost person than we had ever suspected were in us while the loved one was still alive.

Thus the dilemma — What do you do now with that exceedingly great love, greater than what you were aware of during your loved one’s life? Especially now, when that loved one is no longer alive to share that love with? Gordon’s answer? “You give that love to others, thus honoring the memory of the beloved.” (And, in so doing, I believe, honoring all others, self, and The Divine.)

NOW it seems as if the real twilight zone has crept up on me and seemingly whisked me off into the true dimension — A dimension of gratefulness so complete that it slips over into unspeakable awe and then, profoundly, into inner peace.

Teacher Kathy lived such a life, hour by hour, every hour, day by day, every day. Two of her favorite words were, ONEderful and JOYning. Kathy said them and wrote them frequently.

She is my role model. Others have said and written that Kathy is their role model, also. And so, now, I am always warmed with the JOYning presence of angels, angel bodies and angel spirits in me, in front of me, on the phone, or in e-mails. Now, when ONEderfully JOYning…. I always smile, because… in the oneness… an angel joyfully dances….

© 2011, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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