3 Years Ago Today

 

The SONG

That was US

STOPPED

Abruptly

With your breath

Yet it PLAYS

On

And

On

And

On

With the BEAT

Of my HEART

Our HEART

Pulsing through

My Life

ALL THERE

And

More

STILL

Flooding me

In the quiet

In the thunder

In the tears

In the laughter

In the pain

In the joy

YOU ARE HERE

With me

In me

Vibrating through

My bones

The CONNECTION

Unbreakable

Even deeper

In ways

I never imagined

My shattered HEART

OPENED

This world

WORLDS beyond

Merging

Colliding

Illuminating

I KNOW

With ALL of me

What I lost

AND

What I gained

Who I was

Who I AM

Who we were

TRUTH

Ever-springing

What I thought I knew

What has been SHOWN

LIVING in the OPEN

Yesterday

This day

This moment

I SEE

With my GRATEFUL Heart

Only BEAUTY

From the beginning

Our SOULS

Knew

The ENDING

Veiled by grace

From our consciousness

Our human Self

Could NEVER have

Contained

Held

Allowed

Appreciated

The JOURNEY

The Contract

Our Souls

Signed on

To

EXPERIENCE

Together

As US

As You

As Me

United

Eternally

Through

Solo Journeys

Necessary

DEATH came

I couldn’t stop IT

IT couldn’t stop US

IT couldn’t stop ME

My life

Still physical

Here on Earth

YOUR life

In Spirit

STILL

Flowing

Guiding

SHINING ON

A New LIFEtime

Came knocking

I answered

THANKS to You!

THANKS to Me!

THANKS to the Heavens!

HERE I AM

You are here

With me

Within me

INTEGRATED

Mystically

I had it ALL

And

SURPRISE! SURPRISE! SURPRISE!

There is MORE

Wow! Wow! Wow!

We had a GOOD TIME

And

MORE Good times

Come

And

Come

And

Come

You are part of it ALL

Smiling through my Presence

Those who never met you

KNOW YOU

Because they KNOW me

Miraculous!

How could I ever have KNOWN?!

This IS NOT the Life

I WISHED for

Or planned

AND

It is even MORE

Magnificent

I LOVE IT MORE

Than I did before

That day

3 years ago TODAY

November 17, 2010

The day you died

The day I died

The day we died

AND

The day new LIFE

MORE LIFE

Began

The REBIRTH

Of me

Of us

Of the ONE LOVE

I flow with

Breath by breath

Moment by moment

Day by day

MADE

Sweeter

By

The Bitter

This BLISS

This JOY

This GRACE

This HOPE

This FAITH

This TRUST

YOUR GIFT

To me

I AM FREE!

I stand

Grounded

WHOLE

Because of your LIFE

Because of your DEATH

Our Souls’ JOURNEY

STILL

Alive

Invisible

And undeniable

MORE ALIVE!

Fully engaged

ALL I can say is

THANK YOU!

ALL day long

I TRUST with ALL of me

That EVERYTHING is Perfect

Every single moment

Of every single day

This EVER-PRESENT

Beauty I KNOW

A field of GRACE

SO Vast

My LIFE

ALL Life

SACRED

RICH beyond measure

Here I am.  3 years of traveling this world without my beloved husband, John Threewits.  The last few months, I have found myself saying over and over and over:  How could I ever have known?!  smiling with all of me.  How could I ever have known that I could love life so fiercely from letting go of the conditions I used to place on it.  Living open, allowing the totality of this human experience leads me into new depths of knowing with all of me the magnificence of life – all life!  And I know there is more – there are incredible things and experiences waiting to be known.  This fuels my passion for living as I anticipate the good, the sweetness, the beauty that awaits.

The gift of John’s death is it untethered me from all I thought I knew, a fixed idea of life and living.  Spiraling, tumbling, flowing into the abyss, I have discovered a depth of richness that wasn’t known to me before.  Here I am – all of me – more of me showing up for the party that is life.  Wow!  Wow!  Wow!  What a great surprise every single day is as life is magical and mystical in the divine comedy that is this vagabond journey guided by my soul.  And John is a part of it all – every breath, as he has integrated with me at the level of mind, heart, body and soul.  I have known this since that fateful day and this truth resonates still:  I am not a victim of John’s death rather a recipient of great love that continues to fuel my life, my passion for living this new lifetime I am in.

The essay below Cutting Off My Arm was a blog entry from 9 months ago and a recently published article for KIT Magazine.  It speaks volumes about my shift into this new lifetime that began only a year ago and the powerful responses have inspired me to share it on this most sacred day.  My wish for YOU this day and all the days of your magnificent life is to LIVE the passion and come ALIVE more and more and more understanding that you have EVERYTHING because you have life; and it ain’t over ‘til it’s over so do what you gotta do to show up each day grounded in what you want for your life and OPEN to all that is yet to come as the depth of life’s sweetness is truly limitless.

NOTE:  My nephew, Chris and his wife, Jan were visiting me in Nashville and just left yesterday.  Jan said over and over and over again:  OMG!!!  You are John! as she observed me in my new lifetime, my new home and surroundings.  I am not John nor am I trying to be John.  I am definitely me being me who I am now. But like John, I am now FREE and she was experiencing for the first time this phenomenon, this amazing grace that flows through me enlivening me more and more every day that has sprung from CUTTING OFF MY ARM!    

 

Cutting Off My Arm

2 years after the death of my beloved husband, John, an image of me cutting off my arm flooded into my psyche.  Like a rock climber with an arm pinned under a boulder, I had to find a way to cut off my arm in order to live.  I pulled out a dull pocket knife and did the unthinkable in digging deep to find a way to cut off my arm.  Slice by slice, I experienced a pain that I didn’t know was possible to feel.  I watched from outside my body doubled over on the floor, wishing I would just die or be free of this pain.  Both happened.  I died.  And in my death, I was set free.

It didn’t happen all at once and there is no way I would attempt to instruct anyone in cutting off their arm.  I simply did what was in front of me, what organically came forward moment by moment.  There was no strategy.  I lived the answers, allowing my soul to instruct me as I never had before.

John was the happiest person I had ever known.  He lived each day as if it were his last and reminded me daily, “There will never be another day just like this one so enjoy it.”  I would return the favor reminding him that there will never be another human being just like him.  And there won’t be.

 

He was my hillbilly Zen master, appearing to be ordinary in his camouflage pants, T-shirt and baseball cap.  But embodying an abiding sense of joy no matter what life brought his way and sharing wisdom in one-liners that opened my mind, heart, body and soul. 

Our meeting is the reason I believe in fate and destiny.  John gifted me in his life and has gifted me in his death, showing me how to be alive, living the passion, freeing the spirit and reminding me that we can live many lives within a lifetime.

John was no stranger to heartbreak, witnessing at age 3 his little brother’s death following a car accident where he walked away without a scratch.  His dad died when John was only 10.  And he left for Vietnam when he was 18 seeing the horrors of war take the lives of men, women and children.

He teetered between this life and the afterlife countless times in his 60 years.  We used to tease that he had already used his 90 lives, ten times more than any cat.  He knew that life is now and someday may never come.  Knowing there was no promise of tomorrow, he didn’t wait to enjoy life when everything was going his way.  He loved each day as an adventure and lived it all playfully, walking in a field of kindness that engulfed all who experienced him.

Now, I am living life in the way John did because I know that my death will come but as long as I am here, I am going to LIVE.  I like all that I am even the ugliest parts of me and love my life more than I knew was possible in the wake of John’s death.  His legacy is the love, the passion that lives in me and fuels my new life.  I have had other women whose husbands have died challenge me, saying that I can’t say that I now love life more than I knew was possible in the wake of John’s death.  They fear others will think I don’t miss John and that I shouldn’t love life more without him here.  To this, I respond that the heartbreak opened me to a depth of Self that didn’t exist before and in that depth, I found a well of abundant peace, love, joy.  This doesn’t mean that I didn’t love life before but the well is deeper than I knew and I gratefully rest in it.  In this space, I am unconditionally present to life.  This is a wondrous way to be in the world!  And it cost me EVERYTHING to know this.