For Now I Grieve…

Death is a part of life, something we all must face.

Death is a part of nature, in the dying of each season to the next.

Death is we exit one doorway and we enter another.

So death contains life and the new.

Death isn’t final or being stuck in a rut.

Death is the end point of one particular part of our journey and the beginning of yet another.

Death transforms.

Death renews.

Death frees.

Death opens us.

When we lose those we have loved they depart through one door and re-enter another door.

We grieve the vacant space that they have left behind in our hearts and in our lives.

We don’t grieve them, but we grieve the empty space that remains in the physical world.

We grieve into the void.

The chasm.

We grieve our own void. Our own emptiness. Inside both our being and our physical space.

My Personal Journey

I grieve this empty space right now and a part of me is grappling to fill the space because the emptiness feels dark, dense and yet full of uncertainty and change that I am yet to embody and become part of.

The emptiness is both empty and yet full.

My heart longs for my beloved friend Michael who was such a huge part of my life for 21 years. His heart was so big and all encompassing. His physical and spiritual presence was a safe womblike space I could be held in. When I returned home to our home, he was always there, he was my home.

Michael and I began like many men and women seeing if we were meant to bond as a couple, he was much older than me, but we both resonated with one another deeply. Michael made me feel safe and he cared for me so much. As a friend said to me after he passed, ‘Michael needed someone to care for and you needed someone to care for you’ as I met Michael not long after my Father had passed away.

I became Michael’s purpose.

I didn’t know at the time that was what I was. I always wondered ‘Why was I living with such a wise man who had so much ancient understanding of life and yet mainly I got to receive his deep wisdom?’, but to Michael his job was build me up, to make me strong, to help me become the woman I am. He wanted to get me into a place inside myself where I had healthy boundaries, where I treat myself with respect and God help anyone who would disrespect me.

When I joined the local freedom resistance I came into my own locally, I became this ass-kicking woman who would take no bullshit.

I’m so grateful on every level for Michael.

This is why I write this post today. To honour him and to honour us and who we were to each other.

We weren’t just friends, we were family, we were soul friends and at times we were lovers and so much more. He built me up after knock backs in life, he held me after mistreatment from friends and lovers. He showed me how to be a woman and what I deserve. He showed me my own body and what it could do. He shared his insights into life and did so in a way that I would have what he would call a ‘5ft 10 5 year old having a temper tantrum’ and yet his wisdom would sink into me beneath the surface, always.

He nurtured my talents and encouraged me on.

He quietly accepted and embraced me when I was on my path and it was painful.

He was there for me when my friend I loved dearly passed away rapidly to cancer in 2022. He nursed me through the grief and pain of that loss from my life and all the changes that took place as a result of Paul passing. He was my support when my Mother had cancer a few years ago and I had to take care of her for a few months also.

And then a few months later, we both had to face his own cancer diagnosis and what that could mean for us both, especially me.

And he held off getting help and emergency help, because his conscious and human personality self feared how I would cope after already being deep into grieving Paul, if he were to leave and so he held on.

I’m sure he had symptoms and issues he would not tell me, because even up until the last minute, when sepsis got a hold of him, he was not wanting to go to hospital, for he knew that would be the end and that would be when he would be leaving.

And so 7 days later he left this world on May the 1^st and I held his hand while he took his last breath.

I watched the closest person I have known leave this earth.

We had felt like two peas in a pod for so long.

Where his aura ended mine began.

He was my best friend, but so much more.

He has left through his door and entered a new one.

He stands by me as I type this with tears streaming down my face and he massages my heart with his energy hands.

He will be, once again, my spirit guide guiding me forward.

But for now, I face the empty space.

For now I feel into the void.

And for now, I do not fill that void with another, but with the light that wants to fill my heart-space.

I know that in time, I will be grateful for this moment.

BUT for now I grieve.