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A Mother's personal story about the loss of a child
Chapter 3
BEGINNING THE JOURNEY
Events happen when least expected, or so they say.
I think the unexpected happens when the mind and will has prepared
the way. This desire to have
knowledge about my son and his condition was intense, maybe some would
call this desire a burning desire.
My desire was soon to be fulfilled.
One Sunday afternoon, I had invited Carol to dinner in my
apartment. We were sitting
around my smallish, “what I had from my marriage second-hand table”.
We had just finished a wonderful dinner and were drinking coffee.
When you are living alone in an apartment and working to support
yourself, dinners as a routine are rather casual to say the least.
Open up that can of soup, or cereal for dinner routine marks the
modern newly divorced.
Both Carol and I missed those wonderful home-cooked Sunday dinners
that brides cook for their husbands and families.
So periodically we would contribute something special to the cause
and feast on what we had missed.
This Sunday, the coffee was accompanied by Carol’s raspberry
cheesecake flavored with Chambourg an after dinner liquor.
My palate sizzles just thinking about it.
This followed a baked and stuffed chicken with some special
trimmings that I had cooked. Coffee and cheesecake can make you real
mellow. We were just feeling
how smooth the cheesecake felt on the tongue when the light in the
chandelier which hung over the table blinked on and off.
The first thing I thought of was, “what is causing an overload on
the electrical system in this building”?
After a few seconds the lights did the same thing again. Carol said
someone is here. I said,
Carol, you’re crazy, why are you saying that?
She said, I can “feel” them.
Since nothing else happened, I chalked it up to a stuck quarter in
the pay-washing machine in the basement of the complex, and Carol having
too many raspberry seeds in her cheesecake.
The next time Carol came to the apartment, we finished up dinner
and I was showing her some favorite possessions that were still boxed up
from my recent move. We were laughing about the problems of getting boxes
unpacked and the necessary hammer grips women needed while trying to hang
pictures. It seems that Carol
put three holes in her wall while trying to hang a picture.
I told her she needed a larger picture to cover the hole.
After hanging three progressively larger pictures over the spot,
she needed a bigger picture.
I told her we would shop for the biggest picture we could find.
We were trying to decide who we knew who could help her fill in the
holes in the walls when she was ready to move from the apartment. The cost
for repairs would probably be more than she could afford.
It seems that Carol also tried to hang curtains with no better
luck. I guess drywall is
thinner than it used to be.
It was at that time that we heard a bang in the hall closet.
We ran into the hall and I opened the door to see nothing
exceptional except a tablecloth, which I stored in a plastic bag and had
set on a shelf, was sitting on the closet floor. I picked up the
tablecloth and put it back on the shelf and we went back to our fun.
About a half a minute later we heard the same sound again and I
opened the closet door to find the same tablecloth on the floor. I looked
on the shelf and I said Carol, there’s nothing wrong, there was something
under the tablecloth causing it to slip from the shelf. I moved the book
and put the tablecloth directly on the shelf, and turned around to
reassure her that everything was under control. But Carol was in the
living room sitting down on the sofa.
I followed her into the room. It seemed to me that she was in deep concentration and not
hearing
what I was saying.
She said “His presence is here, there he is”. “He is peaking abound
the corner at you. While
Carol never knew Shawn, she had seen his picture on my table and she could
recognize him.
I had been grieving for over five years for this son that I loved
and I wanted to know if he was safe and happy.
I wanted some contact between us and for him to say “Mom I am OK
and I love you”. I especially thought of him as Mother’s Day and Easter
approached, because he always brought me flowers on those days.
We were approaching Easter, and here was someone in my living room
telling me that my son was here, in this room, if only it were true.
I could hear Carol saying to him, “You have to be stronger, you are
fading in and out”. Well he was just sixteen when he passed over; maybe he just
didn’t have his new skills down yet.
She said to him, “You have to be stronger”, and she got up from the
chair and walked over to him and put her hands up to greet him.
She said there is an aroma, a scent, so that you will recognize who
it is. Many times the
departed will leave a recognizable scent, so that if the person has a
connection with roses, they might leave the scent of roses, so you could
identify the event with that person.
She said that Shawn’s scent was the scent of the earth after a rain
and there was a fresh woodsy smell.
I knew exactly what she was describing, because many times I have
driven through a section of woods after a rain and I could smell the
beautiful scent of the earth and woods.
How appropriate it was for Shawn to use that scent, this person of
the outdoors, this person who I had taken hiking, camping, skiing so many
times.
If there was anything that Shawn was, he was an outdoor person.
He loved to fish, to ski, and he loved to roam the mountains. How appropriate that he would leave the scent of the fresh
earth at this meeting. If
there was anything that he could use for me to recognize him, it was
certainly this smell of the good clean woods after a gentle rain.
Carol smiled at Shawn.
I told her that she did not have to be afraid of him because he was a
beautiful and gentle person.
He would not harm her and she said that she knew that and was not afraid.
But Carol said he is very sad.
He was so sad...My heart did some flips, I wanted to know that he
was happy and here Carol was telling me that Shawn was sad.
Carol must have understood the feeling that I was experiencing
because she said he is sad for you not for himself.
She elaborated, he is sad because of what you are experiencing now
and what you will have to go through in the future.
Tears started rolling down Carol’s face.
Though not a muscle in her face moved, the tears started rolling
over her eyelids and down her face in several streams and dripping from
her chin down her blouse.
We noted later that these were not thin human tears that we are
accustomed to seeing and touching, but rather streams of something that
was clear and thick, almost gooey, and it literally took off her makeup.
She had her two arms extended out towards me and she said, “Come to
me and put your hands on my hand”.
Not knowing what she had in mind, I put my hand on top of hers.
Very slowly she removed her hand and she said to me, “Your hand is
on his face, and all I could say was “Shawn, I love you.” I said that
several times. I desperately
wanted to say I miss you. But
I didn’t say that because I didn’t want him to feel bad.
I knew that wherever he was, he would be involved in work of some
sort that was positive, so I didn’t say the most desperate thought,
“Shawn, I miss you”. But he
probably read my heart. He
always knew that I loved him and he probably read my heart and knew how
much that I missed him.
Carol said to me, “Do you feel a tingle in your hand, like pins and
needles?”. Yes, I did.
I felt it. I did feel
the energy going through my hands.
I felt the pins and needles of my son’s energy and for a few
precious moments, we were in communion with each other.
I knew he was there and I was passing the thought of love to him
and he was passing that love and concern of his to me. It was the same
feeling I had on the back porch when I thought Shawn was surrounding me
with comfort - only more intense.
He gave Carol a message, but part of it was lost in the
communication. All she could
hear was “Spirit of Life”. I wish we could have gotten the rest of the message, because
there was something that was important that Shawn was trying to relay to
me. As I contemplated Shawn,
I knew that he was full of Life’s Spirit, but I wasn’t sure he was
communicating something about my life or his.
Carol said he is gone.
I did not feel at that moment that he had left.
I was involved in what I was feeling, so I sat down, and I was just
repeating in my mind what Carol had said, He is gone, and I said No he is
not...he is calling me...I could feel this pull, he was calling...I got up
following the pull back to where he had been and I said he is here...I can
feel him...and Carol said No he is gone.
You are just feeling the energy pulling at you.
I sat down just stunned, trying to compose my feelings, and
examining what I did feel.
Shawn had given me a gift, a simple gift.
He just spent some time with me to tell me that he loved me and to
share a few precious moments with me.
My faith had told me that Shawn wasn’t lost, but simply changed
dimensions. In my heart I had
hoped that he had lived and I wanted to believe that he was still happy,
that he wasn’t destroyed, that he was still going on with life, and even
though he wasn’t able to share his everyday events with me, I wanted to
believe that his existence continued in this new dimension in which he
found himself.
Carol said she had seen something that she had never seen before.
She said that she had seen a big blue ball.
It appeared to her that Shawn came from the center of a blue ball
and that there were other people with him.
That sounded right for him also.
Shawn was always a people person.
Wherever he was, I could be certain that he would be involved with
other individuals if that was possible.
This ball she saw was interesting.
As I thought about it and there could be several answers.
Either there was a method of
travel that looked liked a blue ball, or else there was energy needed to
allow movement in this dimension that looked like a blue ball.
Carol has felt that it takes some form of energy or concentration
for those in other dimensions to make themselves known to us. It wouldn’t
surprise me if this energy form took its form in color. She said the blue
ball went with them, or it appeared that they were in the middle of it as
they left. They, meaning Shawn and his entourage.
This indeed was a lot to contemplate. My son gave me a gift that I
was not expecting. Now I knew
he survived, and that is what I wanted to know.
He had answered my question.
I could be satisfied with his one encounter if this was all there
was to be. I didn’t know at
that time that the future was holding more experiences for me....
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