Pictures - As Above, So Below?

Autumn around my house in Virginia.

Drew and Me in Colorado

The Lake in Springtime. Drew's playground.

Our winter playground in Vail.

     These places were and are all part of our lives. If time is not really linear as we know it, then all the time we spent here, lived here and played here must still be very much a part of our lives.
  
     Late one night as I lay in bed reading, I felt one of those sudden whoooshes of warmth. This happens whenever I sense that Drew is here. I'm past the hot flashing stage so unless I'm getting younger, these whooshes have nothing to do with hormones.

     And then I heard, "I haven't gone anywhere Mom. I'm as close as I ever was. I look the same - still handsome (Chuckle) I sound the same - nothing's changed. I'm the same as I always was." 

     It's more like a thought transference than actual speech. Telepathic communication, but as clear as a bell. When he communicates, I can feel his energy, smell his skin, see him as clearly as if he's right in front of me.  I feel his mood. I know whether he's happy, sad for me, not for himself, amused or excited. 

He's told me where he is, what he's doing now and what happened when he crossed over.

     "Dad was there. He took me back to our house."

     "Our house?"

     "Yes - exactly like our house on the lake. He told me what had happened and then he told me to  sleep. I must have slept for ages - in my room at home - everything is exactly the same. And when I woke up, he cooked for me."

      "You have to cook over there?" What!

     Laugh. "If you feel like it. Mostly you just think up something you'd like and it's there. He cooked for me to let me know I was home." 

     Drew's room is the downstairs room at the foot of the stairs behind the French Doors. I'm glad you're home, Drew.

     I've read, been told and now I've been shown that Heaven is exactly like our physical Earth. Only Much, much better.  Let's talk about "What's out There" in the next blog.

     Thanks for coming!

Signs

Here are two photos of white doves sent by Drew, when I asked for signs. An ice dove in winter and a summerdove in August.

  Early in the winter that I lost Drew, I sat beside my fireplace, holding his picture and talking to him. I talked and talked until it was dark outside and sometimes I cried. I lit candles and as I talked to him somemore I began to feel lighter. The firlight seemed warmer suddenly and my shoulders weren't bunched up around my ears anymore. My hands unclenched, gently caressesing his picture that I held to my chest. It was almost as though he was beside me on the couch. I could feel his warmth and his image in my mind was as clear as mountain rain. Thoughts of him as a child, as a young man flooded my being. Not just my mind, but every cell of my body. I could hear his laughter as we talked about his first big dance, his fishing days on the dock with a piece of string and a raggy piece of bacon for bait. Drew tramping the woods in summer with his blonde lab puppy looking for squirrels. I felt his love filling the room.

And very late, when I got up to go to bed I smiled something close to a smile and said. "I could feel you with me... were you here, Drew?" and then, "Will you give me a sign? How about - a dove. A white dove." This has more significance than you know dear reader, as you will see when "Show Me Heaven, Drew" is published.

Feeling more peaceful than I had in days, I gently placed his picture on my dresser and stood back looking at it. And then I looked again... and then I grabbed it. There, across his chest painted on the tee shirt he wore, were not one but three white doves. 

And he kept sending them. the dove in the picture below is an ice remnant perched on the Spruce beside my deck in late winter.

The second dove came in summer when I revisited Colorado for the first time since his passing. It was an emotional time and I cried when I saw the bird. I was told by the people who lived here that no one had ever seen it before - and that when I left after a few days, they never saw it again. 

There's something about birds... I think they are all messengers of Spirit.

I'm not sure if this is a dove or a pigeon - it looks like a dove, but isn't a pigeon traditionally a "messenger"? Drew was here.
                                                                                 ***
   And so, onto the Zebras!

   My friend Cindy raced up to Smith Mountain Lake to see me, spent a whirlwind evening mostly reminiscing about Drew and trying to figure out this Spirit talk that her daughter Katharine and I were immersed in. Katharine gets this stuff too. (She had a dream the night before Drew died - one of those "Heads Up" dreams which was especially goose bumpy because Katharine had never met him and none of us had any idea at that point that anything was wrong.)
   "I just don't get it! Katharine never even knew Drew but she sees him in a dream! Why don't I see him? Drew, " Cindy raised her voice, "Are you forgetting your old friend? I want to see you!"
   "You'll have to ask him for a sign - ask him to tell you when he's around." Said Katharine.
   "Okay I will. What kind of a sign?"
   "I ask for birds. " I said. "And flowers." 
   Cindy snorted. "And Katharine wants to see peacocks! Well I'm not asking for flowers and peacocks - anyone can see those. I want Zebras."

   Three day later she phoned me from Raleigh. "You ought to know," she said in measured tones, "There are NO zebras to be found - anywhere! I'm going blind looking for these things! NO Zebras!"

Well, you don't have to go blind looking for signs - they just show up. And the next morning the phone rang again. It was Cindy. Blustering, tripping over her words in her excitement.

   "I want you to know my friend, that there are Zebras everywhere!" She took a breath. "I was driving to the gym this morning and there, right in front of me, is a giant van with Zebras painted all over its sides! AND THEN - I turned on my TV monitor at the gym, ZEBRAS! Everywhere! It was one of those Africa shows. And not just plain zebras - they were fornicating! Zebras making more zebras! The TV screen had a giant red X across it. Zebra porn."
   I was laughing so hard I was crying. Holding my sides gulping and keeping my legs tightly crossed. 
   "And get this... " She went on. "I'm sitting in my car at this moment - as we speak - and there's a woman walking accross the parking lot wearing the most hideous pair of Zebra leggings you've ever seen!"

   Tally Ho!

Back on Monday with pictures! This blogging stuff is pretty cool. Enjoy the rest of the weekend.



Ethereal Pats

   Sometimes these guys - spirits -  can take you by surprise. In fact, that's usually when these "pats" from the other side happen. It goes something like this:  The room is quiet, you're sitting doing a crossword, writing a list, concentrating on a piece of embroidery you're working on. Or changing a tire. In any case you're minding your own business concentrating on anything but ghostly taps on the shoulder from 'somewhere out there.'
   And someone calls your name. Or just says, "Hi!" You may recognise the voice immediately and if that person has left our world you're liable to prick your finger, drop the wrench or wet your pants. But it might be a voice you've never heard before. Which wouldn't be surprising. I havn't a clue what my great-grandparents might have sounded like. If it spoke French or Gaelic though - that would be a dead giveaway.
    Very often you'll be on the edge of sleep as my daughter was when suddenly, loud and clear, she heard someone call her name.
   "Karen!"  She started awake. Turned her head clutching the covers. Her husband was sound asleep beside her. The sounded of his breathing was low and even. She patted the covers, no kids or dogs in the bed... There was no one else in the room.
   Light from outside the bedroom window blanched a path across the floor picking up the pale pile of used up socks and one of the children's toys.  She waited. "I now know what they mean by bated breath." She told me.
  And it happened again. "Karen." The voice belonged to her father who had died earlier that year. "There was no doubt in my mind it was Dad's voice."
  "So?" I asked.
  "It scared the crap out of me! I grabbed the side of the table so hard my ring cut into my finger."
  "Then what?"
  "I asked him not to scare me like that... I said, Dammit Dad! I know it's you, but you can't come ghosting around my room like that!"
   "And..."
   "Two nights later, it came again - but this time he was laughing. I knew it was his laugh - no one else laughs like that. And it didn't scare me. It felt nice. And he hasn't done it again."
   When something like this happens, you sometimes can't believe what you've just heard or seen, or sensed - or dreamed.
  And when this happens, I just say, "Okay. I think it was you - actually I know it was you - and I think I know why you did that ...but would you mind giving me a sign? Something that will make me totally sure it's you."
   And you will get your sign. You won't even have to hunt for it, looking behind doors and under rocks. It will be right in front of you. And you get to pick your sign.
   "Show me a wild red fox," You say, chuckling to yourself. "This isn't going to work, I'd like to see a wild red fox in New York City. HA!" (Clearly this could be a problem if you live in NYC.)
   But not to spirit.
   Tomorrow I'll tell you about the Zebras.

  

I Wonder...

   I went to Raleigh, North Carolina this week for a quick visit to see good friends.
   While I was there, I met three of my book readers, listened to their comments, registered their thoughts and discussed the content of the book and how this "out there " theme affects different people. My readers come from all different sectors by the way. Some of them have no doubt that there is spirit life out there, that there is a place beyond this and that we can communicate. Others wonder about it, picking and choosing what feels comfortable to them and then there are those readers (usually my dear, loyal, loving friends who are the scientists among us.) the engineers, the number crunchers - you know - the left brainers - who say "Show Me!" I'm trying.  And some surprises. A couple of scientists who say, "Why not? It actually compliments science."   We had some really constructive discussions.
   But what excites me the most is when people suddenly say, "Yeah! I know exactly what you're talking about!"  or "Let me tell you what happened to me just after my dad passed..." then "Oh gosh! I always wondered was that dream was about... and yes! I met the stranger in the dream about five years later!"
   How neat is that...I love it. People just like you and me have been tweaked by something in the blog or in the book and it triggers their own experiences. This is what the blog and the book are all about, Possums! (I used to love that old Dame - where is she now? Was it Dame Edith? The one who called everyone "Possum"?)
   I especially love the replies from people who say something like, " I lost a child ...I found this so uplifting. Thank you!" Thank you - and thank you Universe for helping me to reach someone.
   Sometimes it opens flood gates allowing the old memories to seep out, dust off and shine. Sometimes this discussion loosens old tears with remembered laughter. 
   One person told me that after reading my story, he began to write down his own story following the tragic loss of his police dog, a partner in every sense of the word, who gave his  life for his master. A few days later he was walking down a familiar street and heard a dog barking. A german shepherd puppy had fallen into a trash can and couldn't get out. The man rescued him and returned him to his owner, a rookie policeman who had been given the puppy to train.There are no coincidences.
   The really great thing about this is when I'm talking to a child about these things. Suddenly his eyes will get a faraway look. A smile creeps across his face and he says, "I remember that place..."
   My heart leaps and then I think, "Why wouldn't he?" It hasn't been very long since he was there. 
   Remembering is good.
   Tomorrow!

Dreamscape

   The vision I told you about in yesterday's blog wasn't a dream. I was wide awake, Karen my daughter was with me and as the images appeared I began to talk to her, telling her what I was seeing - terrified that I would forget something or it would vanish before anyone but me knew what I'd witnessed. 

   Here's the thing about dreams. They come in all sorts of forms, colours and shapes.
   Have you ever had a dream that wasn't a dream? A dream that was so real you felt as though you were standing close beside someone. So close you could feel the warmth emanating from that person. If you dreamed you were holding a baby, you could feel its softness, see the love in it's eyes, feel the pleasure as you hold it close... In another dream you could smell the flowers nearby, feel the wind blowing through trees that were vibrantly green. You could feel the energy in the dream whether it was joy or sadness, love or laughter... here on earth in a place you know, or most likely in a place you've never seen... 

   When you woke up the energy was still with you. Did you wake up laughing? Or crying? Or just filled with a feeling of warmth and love like none other? And somehow you just know you were there with that person ...somehow. You wonder how, but you know on some level, a soul level, that it was no dream. It was real.

   I call those dreams, visits. Do you believe that you have a soul, or as some would call it, a spirit? And might it be possible that that spirit might leave for a moment or two while you're asleep and go and find something to do? Maybe it gets restless or bored and you're sound asleep and God forbid, snoring. What's a spirit supposed to do? (I can tell you, mine isn't going to hang round drumming it's fingers while the physical me sleeps. Or snores.) Or is it feeling compelled to leave for just a minute to merge with someone it once knew on this earth, someone it loved dearly? Someone that left your soul behind and moved to another dimension.

   It's all possible. In fact, over the last year I've come to believe that there is a massive field of possibilities, probabilities and other realities out there. All you have to do is open your mind to the limitless pontential of the universe and let it it in.

   Of course, that spirit of yours might just as easily be missing and longing for a friend, a child, a parent or a lover who's still on our earth. And it might take a short flight over to where they are. When that happens, especially in that time just before waking, you might dream of that friend or lover or relative and feel all the joy of a real life reunion.

   I once dreamed I was at a party. A very rowdy party. And as I stood there, listening to music I didn't recognise, chatter I couldn't quite make out, this dreamy guy (I mean hot) walked over and handed me a scrap of paper. He wasn't someone I remember ever meeting before. I felt very warm in his presense.  Melting almost and why not. You should have seen this man! I liked him. We communicated soundlessly for a few seconds and I got that he had written his phone number on that note.

   I awoke with a start, flushed and excited, opened my hand - no note. My heart fell. Why hadn't I looked at that number before I woke up! 

   It's a warm thought. One soul seeking another - lives touching for one brief moment - maybe to say "I love you" or "I'm here..." and then the moment passes.

   Sometimes a dream will come with a "Heads up!" Something's coming. Something's going to happen. A warning, that we sometimes take note of but mostly, we just mull it over after waking.  

   For now, I wish you sweet dreams and, happy reunions.

Page One

   Chapter 1.

   
   " ...  That's right. I see Spirits. I hear them, I talk to them and I feel them.
    Most people do but you'd never know it because they don't always believe it themselves and they would never tell you about it even if they did. That would open them up to sideways looks and in some cases, ridicule. In fact, it wasn't long ago that if anyone casually mentioned thyat they could talk to dead people, they would be hauled up before some council and after a great deal of bluster and spraying spit from middle-aged men with large stomachs and pitted noses, they would find themselves in the back of a trundle cart on the road to the nearest bonfire.
   It's possible that heretic burning is outdated in the 21st. century so that doesn't worry me and strange looks and ridicule are not my concern. I see Spirit as certainly as I could see you if you were sitting in front of me - and I've been observing them from the outside for nearly twenty years.
   The story I'm about to tell you has an element of magic, only because it is not told often enough. It is not a new idea. It is older than time - whatever that is. This story has no agenda but to open doors for anyone daring enough to walk through them and pick up a roadmap. A roadmap so unique that it works for no one but you. No one can follow it or walk it but you.       
   My roadmap however, must have had a fold in the wrong place. Or a coffee splatt right over the mountain I'd been approaching all my life, because I never saw the rockfall  coming, never heard the rumble until the mountain was on top of me on November 28th 2008.
   On the day after Thanksgiving that year, my world was thrown into chaos with the death of my 26 year old son Drew. Disbelief filled my being. Everything secure, believable and sane was suspended in the space around me. My young family and I moved in slow motion, disturbing the air around us but with no feeling of self.
   And then just as suddenly, five days later in a Denver hotel room, with the wind blowing snow against the window as we waited for the arrival of his ashes, a shaft of light appeared like a midnight flare across the sky, stinging my awareness into sharp focus that Drew's soul had survived death.
    Was this real? My brain struggled from somewhere deep inside me to grasp what was happening. 
   With no warning, in a vivid flash of irridescent blue light, Drew was in front of me, vibrant and whole.
His face was alive with emotion, he communicated soundlessly through thought ... and my senses, now as sharp as thin ice, picked up the essence of his prescence, the almost tangible density of his energy.
   My world convulsed again and I was hurled into a place beyond imagination.
   As the fog cleared and I gazed beyond my earth, beyond my sky into another place my roadmap had hidden from sight, I knew that I was on the edge of an unknown space in an indeterminate frame and I strained to see more."

 Back Soon.
Thanks for being here. If you liked this, please post a comment on the blog. I value your feed back, your input, your own experiences. And prospective editors scan these sites all the time. 
           

The Begining

   I'm so glad you responded - that was kind of you and much appreciated.

   A good friend of mine gave me a leather bound journal soon after I got home from Colorado and insisted that I start writing down every little thing that happened around this grieving space I was in. This, at a time when it was doubtful whether I could remember my name from one day to the next. In fact, If I could remember my name, it was likely that I had no clue where I was. I missed appointments, I forgot to mail out a bill or two - not good - and the harder I tried the worse it got. There were days when I couldn't remember if it was spring or fall. Then I saw the daffodils.
   Finally, I came to the conclusion that this state I was in - bottomless grief - had a mind of its own. You can't push it or hurry it. It goes in phases and in the end, all you can do is to walk with it, every step of the way until, in its own time, it lightens. And I was going to have to use every tool in my toolbox (which was pretty much empty) to begin to heal. I decided that pulling through this, was going to have to involve Body, Mind and Spirit. 
   So I exercized myself down to an embryonic size - I've never actually been an embryonic size since I was an embryo but it was close - I read everything pertaining to this that I could get my hands on, lived on my computer googling stuff I couldn't find in the library and then...my spirit began to write.
    "Show Me Heaven, Drew" was born.
   Things began to race and it wasn't long before the journal was reincarnated into book form.
   But there was a snag. I belong to the Zodiac sign of Libra. Which is all well and good but we librans have a small problem. We can't make a decision to save our lives and the decision facing me was, Where to Start?
   Agony, agony as Bugs Bunny used to say.
   The suddenly, in a flash of brilliance that came from who knows where, it occurred to me to Start at the Beginning!
   It goes something like this:

"The last time I saw Drew alive was at the station in Springfield, Virginia. The next time I saw Drew alive he was in spirit on a cold, snowy night in Denver."

  On Monday (If I can remember how to get back on this blog thing) I'll tell you about it. I will show you the beginning.

And So...

    Oops! I didn't get to the blog machine yesterday. Here's what happened. I know! Excuses! I get so tired of people making excuses. But here's mine, anyway. Old friends came to dinner last night and whereas I had everything under control the day before, you know, get the roast in at this time, the vegggies in later, the desert - ahh the desert. Start that at 3:00 - It only takes 10 minutes to prepare. A cinch.  And after the ten-minutes-to prepare, I would visit my computer.
    Well, my best laid plans went awry. Kaput. Because at some time during the day, I happened to turn on the Cooking Channel and this French chef was making a most intriguing chocolate desert. Change of plan (Never a good idea when in the throes of what my husband used to call dinner party frenzy.)
    To cut a long story short, after the unscheduled run to the store for ingredients I never have on hand, a call to my neighbor to borrow an exotic saucepan, and nearly two hours of preparation, the result was - no blog yesterday. In fact I was lucky to be out of the shower when the guests arrived. A streak of chocolate in my hair shrieked I still wore yesterdays hair, but nobody said anything. I can only hope they thought it was something new and exotic.
    The desert, by the was was quite extrordinary. Dripping dark chocolate and bourbon caramel sauce...nobody could finish it because it was so rich. It kept me up most of the night.
   But here I am. My hair got washed, I'm a little pale from a lack of sleep - but unbowed.
  
  "Show Me Heaven, Drew."  Is on the ride to being published. I don't have any dates, in fact I don't have any publishers which fact would ordinarily come before the date-setting. No probem. That'll all fall into place, but suffice it to say, it will be sometime in Summer. Summer's on it's way. It must be. It always gets here eventually. And when the book is published, I will publish the news here.
    In the meantime, it's riding the waves of the process. It hit some shoals earlier on in the way of a few rejections. I hate that ...why am I so insecure? It's such a great story. Some people (those who could publish it if they were so inclined) don't want it, though. I have to accept that. I can do that... No stalking publishers. Or editors. No annonymous - or threatening - letters to reluctant publishers. That sort of thing. I can accept that. But then I've also heard that I should expect rejections! Nay!
   But I have had to accept that too. In any case, bloodied but unbowed, (I'm a survivor) publish I will. I read somewhere, that John Grisham received 50 rejections before he got his first book published. Unbelievable. So I've still got time, and work to do if I want to catch up.
   I've taken too much of your time for today. The real purpose of this blog is to tell you about the vast beyond,beyond I've discovered out there. And those buried creases in the brain we don't even know are there.

Tomorrow I will.
  

A Shaft of Light

   For many years before Drew died, the afterlife and soul-survival, consciousness and all of those topics that intrigue us, intrigued me more than anyone.  So with shaky bravery and much trepidation, I embarked on a course of study that started about ten years ago and will probably not be done until I'm whisked over into the next dimension - euphimistically known as The Other Side.
    All of these topics I mention are the nuts and bolts of the Twilight Zone creators and at times, I'm sure, the stuff of madness. 
   My approach to the study came with both feet squiggling in the mud of terra firma squelching through my toes, thoroughly grounded in scepticism, while the ethereal me soared into the stratosphere of soul searching. Literally - looking for evidence of a real and tangible soul that is said to reside within or without us or at least lurking very close by - and quite uniqiue to each of us.
    My, my! A soul that would shed light on all the questions I had. Imagine! A mystical me who had all the answers. A buffet of knowledge. What bliss. (These are the thoughts dreams are made of.)
   A lot of us take comfort in the relative sanity of a squinty eyed disbelief in in such things. But those of us who choose an open-minded approach, embark on a journey that not even Disney could imagine - although he's touched on it.   
   Can animals speak? You Betcha! Bambis, Mickey Mice - baby grizzlies too. Is there another dimension - beyond the third that we supposedly live in? Many other dimensions. Is there life out there? Oh My God Yes! Come ON! On other planets or in one of these other so-called dimensions? Both. Don't squint at me, young lady. 
   During this long study course of things we might call "Supernatural", never once did it occur to me that it was all dictated by some unseen hand, a preparation for what was coming into my life in the form of a giant rockfall. But it was. Fate, destiny, unseen hand - whatever you want to call it - was merciful in blind folding me, deafening me to the rumble in the mountain that was about to come crashing down.
    
Tomorrow!   
  

First Light

   Have you ever marvelled at and wondered why, on a cold night in winter in a high meadow, a lost lamb will shiver and bleat forlornly for its mother - and from somewhere deep in the darkness of the valley, she will hear him although he is much too far away to be heard. Somehow she knows he is somewhere out there and she will walk all night, stumbling on the rocky hillside, to reach him.
   Then just as the first rays of sun spark the dawn, she will crest the mountain and in the first light she will find herself in a flock of a hundred strangers, but now she can hear his cries and she will pick him out of the crowd in minutes. 
    The mystical bond between ewe and lamb, a lioness and her cub, and a mother and child. The bond is as strong in the most domesticated of creatures as it is in the wildest. And it is infallible.

   I know this because five days after Drew, my youngest son died, from somewhere high above the layers of devastation that engulfed me, I heard his cries. 
   "Where are you, Drew?'' I whispered through the pain. He was somewhere - out there - how , dear God, how will I reach him... Panic threatened. I could feel its insipient encroachment crowding the edges of my mind  ...  feel its icy fingers reaching for my wits, clawing at the tiny residue of courage I had left.
   And then. A shaft of light ignited my world, ethereal and real and in its blue white center I saw my son.     
  That bond had reached from the valley of my devastation across the great divide of death.
                                                                         
                                                                         *****
  
  Not long afterwards, and as one event lead to another, I began to write. At first I journalled the mind rattling visions, words, and signs that Drew was alive. His soul had survived death. And that journal soon became a book I've called "Show Me Heaven, Drew."  And he has.

    I'll tell you more tomorrow.