Weaving Between Worlds

It is all part of the larger continuous conversation. If your partner steals the covers, if your mate squeezes the last remnants of toothpaste from the tube, if your wife leaves her keys in her unlocked parked car in the driveway, or if after a long run your husband hangs his sweaty hat on the tub’s faucet, this is part of the conversation and the context of the relationship. Revere these tendencies or at least be curious about them. If you are the cover stealer, tube squeezer, key leaver, or hat hanger, honor your way in the world. These human compulsions, neurotic tendencies, and amusing imperfections are part of the conversation we are having in this life on this side of the veil. Make it count. There are things to be angry about and become irritated by, and there are things to notice and allow. It is the start of the weaving that, if you make it intentional, might be a little easier when one of you crosses over, transitions, dies.

The relationship and communication deepen when we see between the words. When we have more between us and there is less to say, the conversation is deepening, becoming a poem and image. In the last years of our time here together, there was not nearly as much explaining to do because of our awareness that the bigger foundation beneath us was love. It became easier to rely on the love as well as to brush away the static of what did not belong or matter to the golden thread of love connecting us. That is still true. 

The conversation is slower now, more subtle and potent, more meaningful perhaps. What transmits is more pure than poetry. Messages come through an opening in the imagination, the portal to the sacred.

There is sacredness all around, or at least the potential for it. That which is profane is disconnected from spirit, only littered, meaningless habits. Profane actions are without the binding relationship between ritual and myth. These profanities are of the world, temporal, secular, unsanctified, and unconsecrated because the action or thing is not invited into the luminosity of the sacred spirit of all that is.

When we invoke spirit within an otherwise profane act, creating ritual or ceremony, we step into the mythic nature of soulfulness. I observe with reverence as my daughter, who acts in echo of her father, rolls the tube of toothpaste back and forth over the counter’s edge. In this sacred way, because we both know the source of her actions, she claims the last drops of paste for her toothbrush as we simultaneously bring her father into the moment with us. This act is no less elevated than the priest who consecrates the wine and bread at Mass.  

One person’s conditioning may seem like a nuisance, but it might also be their gift and offering. Perfectionism is a problem, a rigidity. However, flipped on its head, in its sanctification, it is a a form of reverence. Edmond, who could have been written off as a perfectionist, had a strong desire to be exact. In his exactness, he obsessed that the deck outside the shop be perfectly level, the screw be tightened and aligned to the last thread, and the tires rotated/oil changed on time. His care for exactness was part of his reverence and pleasure for creating order and function in our world. It was the same sacred nature and attention to details with which he drafted a brief, crafted an opening argument, or deposed a defendant. History, truth, and facts mattered to him deeply. His exactness was part of who he was, how he was, and it was part of the conversation between us. He was so content to focus in great detail on one thing at a time. Even the right word, exactly, was a way to the sacred.

Our differences in the way we flow through the world were distinct. In contrast to his exactness, focus, and attention to detail has been my tendency to engage in an orchestra of activities that at times brought Edmond bewilderment. Admittedly and particularly in early adulthood, my juggle of projects that are deeply connected to one another (even though those connections are not always obvious to others) may have been not only profane but insane. However, we can develop, moving our behaviors from the profane and neurotic toward the sacred and purposeful. My juggle has become smoother, more attuned, and is part of a sacred flow of intentional acts. My projects pull on me at strange hours and with great force resulting in my key/shoe/coffee/phone losing—silly and amusing byproducts.

This difference in our way in the world is a conversation between us as much as it is a conversation with God. Edmond’s exactness, clarity, and focus of the task before him took him into the timelessness of the in-between. When he called to tell me he was working on a brief and would be home in thirty minutes, I thanked him for calling and silently offered him an hour or more. We gave each other the space to commune in the sacred space of our work in the world. It wasn’t always that way, and was even a place of conflict in the beginning. However, we came to understand these commitments to sacred time and task were not a disconnection between us but a language of love and part of our purpose both in the world and within our partnership. This underneath language does not use words. It is part of how we find each other between the worlds now.  

With a lack of attention to some details over others, I can easily become willingly lost in the liminal conversation with the divine in the midst of creating, painting, writing, or listening to messages come through. There are lists that go untended because I have this urge or calling that something else is suddenly more important even when the outcome of a particular action is not entirely clear to me. Some days, I abandon my non-critical obligations to follow a calling, and it always turns out to be the right thing to do. I meet the person I need to know, or who needs to know me. There is a connection made that changes everything. This call guides me still. It keeps me open to the language of love that supersedes death. It is what brings me to Edmond. 

I thought it was me who suggested the red feather be our little sign a few days ago. You never let me down. You always show up, and I am always looking for you throughout my days and nights. But that day we picked the red feather, it was so full. I was really focused on the important obligations of the day: our children and my clients. So, assuming I had missed it, I looked for the red feather the next day. When it was time to head out to accomplish several time sensitive errands, I walked by the cardboard tube that held the last gift you gave me. It was another print from one of our favorite artists/photographers, Frank Relle. It was the one you gave me for my 50th birthday last November, on Thanksgiving Day. When I opened it, you asked me what I saw. As I looked at the photo of the moss covered cypress trees in the Louisiana swamp water in the middle of night, I said I saw our family. You said you had seen the same thing, and it was why you chose it. With my hand on the photo tube remembering this day, this last birthday gift from you, I knew I had a new task on my list. It was the only task I knew I had to accomplish, and the most important one. I grabbed the tube to take to the framer. In the car, heading out of town, I suddenly realized it was you who messaged me about the red feather, not the other way around. I laughed out loud as I headed to Cardinal Framing. You were communicating with me giving me the exact instructions. I heard you, and our tree-family photo is being framed in the place of red feathers.   

If you don’t like the conversation you and your partner are having, change it or change the way you are perceiving it. See through what feels annoying to how their imperfections or habits are part of their offering and essence. Find what is sacred in the unspoken and spoken language between the two of you. If you don’t like the conversation because it hurts or is harmful, stop the conversation, find a healthy boundary, or end the conversation entirely. Staying in a terrible, unsustainable, or dangerous conversation is not why we are here. It all counts. It all has the possibility to become sacred and mythic, even in ending it. Wasted words of pure profanity are an expense we cannot spare. 

There were times and communications between Edmond and I that were less than lovely, hateful even. But we returned to each other. We tried again and again. We found another way around so we could speak from our heart. We surrendered the notion of being right more often to clear the way for listening. We started a beautiful conversation, and we never wanted it to end. We said we would just keep talking, seeing what happens. We used to have to sleep, even though we were not finished talking with each other. Sometimes Edmond would fall asleep when I was still chatting away. We used to call our whole time here together one long conversation. We are still having that same exchange now, learning the next layer of this language between us. Even when I must sleep, I invite him to come into dreams with me so we can keep sharing. 

Weaving between the worlds, it is how E and I speak to each other now. Sometimes, it is a feeling or a feather or song. Sometimes it is just an instant knowing. The conversation used to be me tugging on the covers in the middle of the night, a cup of coffee he brought to my bedside each morning, a spoon he lifted to my lips from the pot he was stirring, a note I left inside his briefcase or backpack. Now, we must find another layer to our language. We must live through the mythology we helped define, the spirit that connects us through time and space. We must remember to make the profane a sacred language between us. It is how the single engine plane flying overhead becomes a love note. Our conversation continues when I place the two shotgun shells found on the floor of his truck, one empty and one full, on my altar.

If I light a candle and call your name from my heart, do you see the needle and golden thread peek through on your side of the veil, the thin cloth between us? I see the tiny feather you left outside of the shower door, pushing the thread back over to me. This exchange, this conversation is larger, made of bigger whispers that are somehow more intimate. I still miss you like crazy. I love you constantly and more every day.

I don’t really know how this works every time, but I must try, experiment over and over. I know I cannot live without connection to Edmond. I know that sometimes the memories are gentle streams that carry me, and other times they flood me with overwhelm, more love and loss than I knew to be possible. These moments that have passed still sit vividly on my heart and mind and in my body.

Grieving is the long shadow of love that we must also live inside. And, because my love for and relationship with Edmond continues, so must our conversation. I will continue to weave our long, continuous conversation with him, passing the thread between our worlds. We will continue to find our sacred language that is not of this world. Our language is a soul language, so I must let go of the constructs that are letters, words, and sentences. I must take in the messages he sends me from this other place and carry these new threads in my heart. 

Found feathers, flickering lights, shed antlers, hooting owls, crying hawks, and single engine planes are his weaving materials, his alphabet that brings texture, color, and image to me. I receive them, sacralize them as I notice them in reverence, place them on an altar, or send them back into nature. Our poem deepens. I speak my prayers from my heart, and invite him into precious moments. Our mythology lives between us; we are in it.

Walking the back trails where I regularly hike, I looked up to a low flying purple bellied single engine airplane above me. On the way back, at my feet, I found a single gold and black butterfly wing. As above, so below. Coming off the trail, I tell Edmond how much it hurts my heart when the memories grab ahold of me.

I wish it were you grabbing me, holding me tight. 

My feet hit the pavement of the parking lot, and through the blur of teary eyes I see two of my Dear Ones, Soul-Sisters who finished their walk ahead of me. They see me and my tears. They come to me. They hold me. 

I know you hear me. I know you receive the golden threads of our love language that I pass to you, and thank you for sending it back each time. I cannot wait to see what we are weaving now. I cannot wait to see what happens. I love you. I miss you.