The following are excerpts from my journal, some with current annotations, from the first 6 months following the death of Keith. I share them for all who have traversed the journey of grief, and for all those who have not.  There are treasures to be found for either.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        9/9/06 - 3 days
I saw Keith in the moon.  I spoke with Joni last night on the phone and she said she looked up and saw him in the moon.  So, how much to my surprise was it when Lue pulled me aside today to say that Keith was in the moon last night, crouching there and looking down at her!  I told her about Joni, and about Byrd also telling me that he was at his winery and looking up at the moon surrounded by Keith energy.  She gleefully laughed and said: "Then he is in the perfect place, with his Moon Goddess." 

*When Keith and I dressed for costumed events, I often portrayed a Moon Goddess, as the Moon played a very large part in my personal metaphor of feminine identity and wisdom.  Keith responded very powerfully to the Moon metaphor himself, and we often spoke of it. I invite you to contemplate what it is when, in all of our consciousnesses,  four distinct  yet connected people, on the exact same night, observed the same neutral object thousands of miles apart from each other,  and perceived the same energetic expression?  Of the four individuals, Lue was the only one who knew of Keith's and my connection to the Moon as metaphor.


9/21/06 - 15 days

Keith appeared for the first time in my dreams last night (as far as I know.) The first one was in a van.  He and I were together, and he was driving.  I was SO happy to be with him!  We were in a very dark cave, and we had to turn around.  He pulled forward, close to the edge of what we knew to be a precipice to a dark unknown.  He kept pulling forward, easing the front wheels over the edge ever so slowly, until they went all the way over, and we were resting on the axle.  I said "Why do you always do it that way?" as he started to rock the van back and forth.

The second dream, immediately after that, also had us in a vehicle, this time, his truck.  Again I was joyous to the depths of my soul to be with him.  We were going to New York, but in order to get there, we had to stop and wait for a LONG stream of pedestrians to pass before us through a very long and narrow tunnel. We could see the end of it, which, of course, had a bright light. We waited our turn and popped out the other end.  It was a quaint street with old houses, and I took out my cell phone to excitedly call my friend Susan to tell her "See?! Keith is alive! And we're coming to see you in New York!"  Then I thought it would be better for him to call her himself, and I woke up alone, and no longer joyfully in his presence.


*I have noticed over many years of observation that in my personal dream language, any motorized vehicle, like a car, or bus, or truck or van, connotes the sense of being on the life journey; carried on the journey by this vehicle, and not able to stop the ride or get off.

Start noticing your personal recurring symbols and how they are communicating with you.



9/26/06 - 20 days

I made it through another day. This was a rough one - so, so lonely.  Such sorrow.  I love you, my Keith.  Went to my first therapy session today with Barbara.   One of the things she said that really made sense for me, was the sorrow that rises is a precious thing, a thing to be honored, as it is a tribute to how much I love Keith.  I responded that it makes me think it is a being, an entity of its own that needs expression.  She said "an energy body". . . That made a lot of sense to me. . . and it needs to move through me.  I need to let it express itself.

She also suggested I work on grounding myself more in my body, that we are on the planet NOW. And to acknowledge my fear that I have reached my peak, and that the rest of my life will be disappointment.

  

*Reading this now from the vantage point of the Intuition Medicine® model, both Barbara and I were completely on target in our acknowledgment of  there being an "energy body" of sorrow.  This applies to any emotional response.   For optimized health and presence to living, honor all of your emotional responses, and allow them their expression in your body. Take note of where they dwell,  how they look, feel, or sound.  Come into relationship with them in full awareness, as once they are acknowledged,  they lose their power over you, and you regain your regency over them.



9/28/06 - 22 days 

It has been a strange two days.  I've been so busy that I spent the entire two days in rational, linear mode, not even really thinking about or feeling what the reality of my life is. Here, at last, I have a moment, and the deep sadness is rising up.  Amy is on her way over so that I am not totally alone. I was feeling weird and guilty about not being connected to the grief, and now I am dreading its arrival again.  I DO NOT WANT THIS TO BE MY LIFE!  I AM SO TIRED OF IT ALL READY.  I DON'T FEEL LIKE MISSING MY GREATEST FRIEND AND LOVER.



10/1/06 - 25 days

I am in New Orleans. At last on Friday at 6 PM, I finally had the bandwidth to express my sorrow, and spent the next three hours crying and raging and shuddering and weeping - another great purge.

Saturday morning on my way here, I was on the verge again, and then I listened to Leah's reading on the ride to the airport. It filled me with love and peace and connection to Keith. I broke out EJ Gold's American Book of the Dead and voraciously read it for the entire three and a half hour flight to Houston.  On the New Orleans leg, I read the passage: "Cosmic Love is absolutely ruthless and highly indifferent: it teaches its lessons whether you like / dislike them or not."

I realized and finally understood what was going on.  The change in my understanding shuffled through my body like a deck of cards, as my emotional body rearranged itself:  Just as a good voice teacher assigns more demanding and difficult repertoire to her students who are worthy, so does the Cosmic Teacher. I had a sense of being honored and called out of the classroom to stand up.  It is the lesson of nonattachment, letting go. A high and also fundamental spiritual lesson, so simple in concept, so difficult in execution.

So, true to my pattern so far, I am shuttling between abject despair on the physical plane, and awe-inspired reverence and understanding on the soul level.



10/8/06 - 32 days

I can't take this pain anymore.  And I wonder how and why they can stand to witness me suffer like this. If we were to be separated like this, I believe that Keith would fare better than me being left behind here.  I wish I could've left first, but just not this soon.

This agony is wearing me and my spirit out. I just don't know how much more I can take.  I fear for my belief structure being severely damaged by this - that my trust in the Universe will be undermined by cynicism.   That my inner beauty will be scarred, like a burn victim, beyond recognition, horrifying to behold.  And now I feel victimized by our love.  How horrendous is that?  To feel victimized by the most beautiful thing I have ever beheld?



11/18/09 - 2 months and 12 days

I dreamt of Keith again this morning.  Again, it was about trying to communicate, with the phone as the metaphoric vehicle.  The first call was on his cell phone.  He called from the pink house, and it was as if he had been away and was back.  I was SO happy that he had returned.  I said: "Oh my god, I haven't had a chance to tell you what happened.  When I read that horoscope about the solar eclipse on September 7th. . ."  - Click - We lost connection.  I figured his cell phone battery had run out, so I called his land line, and was DELIGHTED when he picked up.  I felt as I always did whenever he answered my calls:  THRILLED to the core. Our connection was terrible; you could barely hear him.  I was looking up through a skylight window, and realized that I was in a house boat, as my skylight looked out on kelp and fish swimming by.  I was living underwater.


*The symbology that water holds, from its archetypal role as one of the Four Elements, to its position as a suit in the Tarot decks, to the modern Jungian attributions used in psychology, is that of the emotional and/or unconscious realms.  It can be seen as the terrifying murky depths into which hidden vastness we may get lost, or as the fluidity of our unconscious minds and our emotional states, ever changing, and rich with life.



11/26/06 - 2 months and 20 days

I have been having a very difficult time of it.  I have been asking Keith and the Universe to give me some sort of sign as to what is going on; what I am supposed to be doing.

In my dream, I was in the back seat of a car; a little, dark car, looking out of the triangular window.  I didn't know who was driving.  I seemed to be in the car myself.

As I looked out the window, a giant, red vehicle, like a fire truck, or a sleigh, came racing by, with Keith all the way in the back.  He looked at me and smiled and winked, and raced off.



11/28/06- 2 months and 22 days

OK, I have been beyond misery - deep existential pain that renders me completely despondent.  I was back to wishing for death - what is the point, really?  My beautiful man and source of joy on this planet was gone.

My session with Barbara today was the high point of my day.  How protracted my world has become.

She told me this was it - I am face to face with IT - the terrain of the world that I am now in. I told her I felt that I was existing rather than living, and so we defined what living was, in my terminology.  Words like "moving forward, expanding, growing, exploring, laughing, loving."  And we applied all those words to my current situation to find that, yes, I was actually doing all those things, but not on my own terms. . .

Instead, here I am alone in the desert. Barbara reminded me that this is what this landscape is, and this is part of the Universe, too. It isn't all just beauty and light.  And there is something here for me.  I need to examine this place:  What is here for me?  Why am I here?  There is a reason now that on my hero's journey, my path is here, now.  Discover that.

She also encouraged me to journal from the gut.  Not so much from my lofty ideals place.  And, so I am writing this.

                                                                                                                                                                                                        



11/30/06 - 2 months and 24 days

OK, so I am supposed to write from the gut.  I have had multiple indications to just write.  Well, just typing in the product code to my laptop to install Office 2003 gave my heart an ache - I saw Keith's large fingers doing it instead of my hands.  I used to love to just watch his hands on the keyboard when he used the computer. I've been sitting in "his" chair in my house for 3 months now - I can't bear to be in my office anymore.  And it is beautiful here.  I can feel how much he loved sitting here, in his kingly robes.  He would wait until I stirred in the morning, and then gleefully jump up and crawl into bed with me for a snuggle as I woke up.  And then he would get up and make me my chai latte and bring it to me.  Writing this just makes me feel worse.  So, here I am, laying in the sand in the desert, the granules sticking to my tear streaked face.  And now I am supposed to look around.  I can't really see anything.  I just feel pure sorrow - my sweet and sensitive Alpha male, my mentor, and my best friend, my Divine lover, my spiritual comrade, my strategic advisor, is gone forever.

So he filled my world - the world that I expanded to make room for all his vast glory, and his faults.  And now that that expansion is mostly empty, the isolation I feel on this planet is enormous.  I used to always feel that his life was so much more interesting than mine, and so I got enormous pleasure from being able to be the honored guest at his feast.  His Queen of Woohooia.

I simply wish for him to return for his Queen.  I know he will have to take another form. I miss his Keith form in the center of my body.  A constant ache - it is an illness.  When the illness is really bad, I want it to kill me.

12/02/06 - 4 days short of 3 months

Today I am feeling better than I have in awhile, so I am trying to just take advantage of that.  I am starting to accept the words and encouragement from everyone that I am supposed to heal and move past this. It still feels like betrayal to me on some level, but I am getting an inkling that I have no choice, since I am still in a body.



12/19/06 - 3 months and 13 days

So, 17 days with little to no pain.  I thought maybe I was a sociopath.  I deconstructed that with Barbara.  I guess I'm not.  And here it is, again.  Writhing, agonizing pain.  Hatred for my existence, my very physical, cellular architecture that writhes in desperation. My pain animates me so that I simply whimper and scream and gnash and yank my hair.  I HATE.  I HATE my physical prison.  I'm fucking stuck here, the stranger in a strange land.  I  can't believe I have been imprisoned.  Fallen from my grace and slathering in the mud.  I can't even breathe down here.  I can't even love.



2/12/07 - 5 months and 6 days

In my wisdom place three days ago, in meditation, there was a quiet and steady sense of "You need to change your identity in order to get through this.  You need to let go and move into your new self."

Yesterday, in my deep despair, I tried to meditate with not much success.  I fell asleep, and I dreamed that I was in a pool of water in the rain. (It was raining as I slept.) In my dream,  I felt my feet electrify - as if my two feet chakras exploded open; it was painful.  I realized that I was getting electrocuted, and that it was the time for my death.  I released into it entirely, although scared, happy to have found a way to join Keith.  I started falling down in the water, but was completely dismayed when I awoke, still alive, a little shocked, and with sore feet.


*The symbology of death in the intuitive space, which dreams inhabit, most often does not refer to the literal physical death, but to the death of your ego, your persona, or some aspect of yourself that you are ready to shed.  Here, one day following my deep awareness of the need to release my old identity, my dreamstate manifested a scenario in metaphor and energy to begin the process for that death to occur.


Copyright 2009 Intuitive Perspectives






"Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes".
Carl Jung (1875 - 1961)