I'll be looking at the stars
This weekend marks the third anniversary of my husband's death from colon cancer. I honestly cannot say what that means. I can only observe that I am changing or possibly that he is changing or perhaps both.
At any rate, my experience of life is not what it was. Nor is my experience of grief. It tastes different—as if my tears have lost some of their salty bite. Grief also feels different. Somehow it is more spacious these days and, oddly, more full. I cry less from the absence of my husband and more from the poignant presence of my authentic Self that has filled in so much of the Stephen-sized crater his death left in my heart.
For the past year I have been aware of a lot of movement going on between us as we work out our separate (and yet profoundly connected) lives on opposite sides of the veil between this world and the next. I am astonished at how much I have accomplished and I sense that Stephen has also been busy.
In recent months I have had the impression that he was frequently away and not quite so present with me as when I was writing my book. I knew I could call on him if necessary, but it seemed selfish and indulgent to do so. If I thought about it, I knew that I was healing—becoming more self-actualized and stronger at all levels of being.
That doesn't mean I have not grieved over the rather stark feeling that a cycle has ended. It is as if I'm being eased out of a cosmic nest. Unbeknownst to me, I've been growing a new set of wings—stronger, more resilient, more receptive, and more self-reliant. Funny. I thought I was trying to become a better writer and get Google to notice how hard I've been working.
But this week it has become clear. Stephen and I have different obligations right now. I feel certain we will always remain joined at the heart and that, should I really need him, he will come to my aid. But I don't need him that way at the moment, and he doesn't need me. We have come to another fork in the road. Oh, how hard it is to write those words. But it's true.
I'm letting go again—but not by consciously releasing anything. Simply by observing that Stephen is letting go of me, naturally slipping away into other realms of being.
My feeling has long been that he was able to reach very high spiritually because he was so grounded in the earth. I have described him as walking on four legs, he was so anchored in reality and practicality. He was working on a heavy equipment crew when I fell in love with him, and I think it may have been his favorite job ever. He was crazy about moving dirt!
One of my great worries in losing Stephen's physical presence was that I would literally come unglued without him. He was like the third pin in my electrical outlet. All I had to do was plug into him and then I would be grounded again.
But I do remember that feeling of being settled, and it seems that I have internalized enough earthy energy that he feels safe in leaving me and going on with other work. Or, perhaps, it is simply what must be in the universal scheme of things. I no longer have the image of Stephen being about a block away, waving back that he's still around. As I allow myself to sit with the changes that are happening, he now appears as a glimmer in a distant solar system, a unique star in the firmament of my awareness.
I've moved my photos of him to places of less prominence, replacing them with images that support the creative direction that's calling me. The snapshots of us hiking, hugging, laughing, and joking are still meaningful, but I cannot cling to what is now so obviously in the past. It's another level of my human brain saying, "Oh, he's really gone, isn't he?" The great cosmic "duh!" that seems so hard to admit, even after three years.
Last night I recalled singing "I'll Be Seeing You" for him a couple of nights before he died and changing the last line to "I'll be looking at the stars, but I'll be seeing you." He had never heard the song and was delighted that I would make such a promise. And so I did, and so it is.
