I was driving my son Ian to daycare this morning and laughing about the old Star Trek television show. I was imitating Scottie telling Kirk he couldn’t hold the ship together much longer...then I burst into tears. It felt like yesterday that I was a girl watching that show with my Dad. I’m in a swell of feeling grief and sadness about my father’s death just 6 weeks ago.
After he died I dreamed I saw him lying in his coffin. He kept looking at me and I’d look away fast as if I didn’t want to stare. Then he gets on up out of the coffin and starts tinkering around my yard. I ask him what he’s doing. He says he’s making fertilizer for my weakest peony plant. Then he picks up his pack of Lucky Strikes and his lighter and says to come on. We’re walking arm in arm and I ask him what’s it like on the other side. Did he see Gramma? He doesn’t answer and I notice his cheeks look kind of waxen. I say oh I guess you can’t tell me that. Then I start to cry and tell him I hope he comes to visit me a lot in my dreams, that we could be closer than we were in life. Then he stops and shouts, Hey everybody I’m not dead!
I woke up crying.
When I worked on the dream with Marc we agreed that my Dad had indeed come to visit me. He isn’t really dead, he’s only changed. He has gone on to new life with God, able to come to me through the portal of God’s dimension: the archetypal realm. I knew already that Marc has seen frequently in people’s dreams that loved ones who have died sometimes come to us. But I didn’t know if I felt my Dad in my heart I wouldn’t need the crutch of the dream to feel his presence with me. It’s the same with the archetypes. If I could feel the Animus in my heart then I wouldn’t need a dream to feel His love. I would be in essence and He is always there. Dreams and the Dreamwork are a way to come into connection with the divine, through transformation and alchemy, to become the heart that knows. Then we are in essence and our hearts become the primary place for the relationship to unfold, the place inside where we can commiserate with the divine. We no longer need a dream to feel Him with us, though we still have the dreams because the relationship is ever changing. Marc experiences the love and support of the deceased in the same way. He can feel them when he feels his connection to the Animus. I’d never thought about it like that before.
I am beginning to feel that place inside where I am the heart that knows. Knows what? Knows God is there, knows His love, and feels. I’m noticing when I get triggered in the world by my pathology, I am more able to stay with the love. For me this means I stay with what I am feeling instead of going into the story my pathology is hooking me with. If I bite the hook I feel all stung inside and pissed and reactive about how that person is treating me. But if I can stay with the love I just feel all this pain. My homework is to stay with the love in the face of the tragedy. I am beginning to be able to stay in the place inside of the heart that knows.
I couldn’t stay there when my daughter died. Her birthday is in three days. She would have been six this year and I feel another great swell of pain. This is the first year since the tragedy that Thanksgiving falls on the 27th. Friday is the 28th and Saturday is the 29th, the day I woke up crampy in the 29th week of my pregnancy and as I turned from the kitchen sink my whole life changed. Blood was gushing out of me, cutting through the innocence of my morning daze, my long-desired first child, my hopes and dreams of the future. Even though I was in the dreamwork, I couldn’t stay with the love. I blamed God, felt judged, rejected, abandoned by Him and I turned on the love when I needed it most. I barely knew it existed anyway. I just couldn’t hold on through the shame and guilt and nihilism I’d always known.
But now I can look out at the late November sky and remember the hours I stared out the hospital window with Zoe lying on my chest. I remember the miracle of new life and the horror of her death and it just hurts. I hurt. Our time together was so short, can I feel her presence in my heart too? Oh, here it comes, I feel the first stings of guilt. The pathology is offering me a way out of the pain. I know where that leads and I’m simply not going to go there. I choose to feel the pain of how much I love. I’m going to stay with the love, go pick up my three year old from daycare and feel the preciousness of our time together and cry like I am right now.