Illusions

When my partner of 32 years, Kieth Kiehl, died at the end of 2012, everything I had known about the world seemed to change.  Up to that point, I had not spent much time considering what reality existed outside the story of my life.  I believed that there was more to the world than I had experienced…I just had not given it much time.  That all changed with Kieth’s passing.

I felt strongly that he continued to exist, but that feeling would only be natural as a reaction to the sudden separation.  We don’t want what has been good in our lives to end.  When I had heard of other peoples’ experiences that are labeled “supernatural” (a term I don’t perticularly like),  I did not discount them, but neither did I give them much thought.  I would continue to talk to Kieth as though he were there.  When I would consider what I was doing, I felt a bit foolish, but I felt compelled.  And as I delved deeper, my perceptions about the “supernatural” began to shift.

After Kieth died, I had to move from where we were living.  I made a new friend during that transition. This friend told me that he received messages from those who had passed on.  I wasn’t sure what to make of this, but I did hear some corroboration from a friend of his who had experienced this first hand.  While I don’t dismiss things I haven’t experienced, I also tend not to give them particular credence.

During my move, this new friend helped me to get my new yard into better shape.  It is important to point out that this friend had never known Kieth.   After a day of helping me witht he yard, he stopped on his way out and asked for a pen and paper.  I gave those to him.  He started to talk to himself and to write.  As he wrote I heard him say, “Eddie” and start to write that, but then he stopped abruptly.  “T?”  he said questioningly to the air.  Then he wrote down “Ettie,” looked to me and said, “did you know anybody named Ettie.”  I felt myself get angry and scared.  I did not expect what I was witnessing.  I asked where he had seen or heard that name.  I’m sure that I had mentioned Kieth’s parents to my friend.  But I would have mentioned Homer and Bell.  What I would never have mentioned to anyone  was that Bell was Kieth’s mom’s middle name.  Her first name, which she never used, was Ettie.  My friend then said, “Kieth is with Ettie.”  Kieth’s mom had died in 2008.

Around this same time, as I was moving, my car broke down, and the cost of fixing it did not make sense for its age.  So I traded it for a Toyota RAV 4.  By this time it was May and it was quite warm out.  One Saturday I was changing the sheets on my bed.  I had been out earlier and parked the RAV 4 in the garage with the windows down.  The garage was closed and locked, so there was no need to lock the car.  I had placed to car keys on my dresser.  As I was putting the bottom sheet onto the mattress, I was talking to Kieth as I had mentioned.  I stopped for a moment and said, “You know, it’s really annoying that I have to do all of the talking and never get a response.”  In less than a second, the car alarm went off in the RAV.  Let me point out that I hadn’t even learned how to set it, the keys were across the room from me, the garage was on the opposite end of the house, and the RAV wasn’t even locked.  To me, the timing left no question.  There are many, may more examples I could give having to do with lighbulbs and rabbits, but I think I’ve made my point about this change in my life.

The logical side of my mind couldn’t deny what had occurred, and so it began to try to evaluate the meaning.  What were the ramifications of receiving communication from across that great divide?  First of all, was there a divide at all?  Is the separation a matter of space or of the limitations of our senses?  There are countless frequencies of light our eyes do not register…countless frequencies of sound our ears cannot pick up.  Are the dead among us?  If so, are they who we remember?  Obviously not completely as their bodies are gone.  If the chemical reactions of the brain are gone and they no longer have the chemically driven fears and desires (in addition to no body), are they who they were?  If not, who are they?  Do they sense us?  Do they remain separate beings, or are they part of a collective consciousness that is able to communicate somehow into our realm?

What I feel strongly about is this:  if we try to reduce experiencing loved ones who’ve gone through physical death using the terms of our world of five senses, it will never make sense.  We have to try to bring our imaginations up to the level of their existence. 

We also have to know that we too will one day make that transition.  And if we leave the physical body after death into another state of being, who is to say we weren’t in another state of being prior to birth?  To me, at that point, this interim thing we call life becomes a kind of story.  We take on a physical nature in a physical universe and become a new being…a combination of what we have been and the attributes of our temporary physical existence.  When this physical existence is over, we lose those physical attribute, but we do not return to who we were…rather we return to who we were, but altered by our time in that physical existence.

For me, this was a bittersweet realization.  Kieth’s “story” had come to an end, but not his existence.  We’ll never return to what was, but there is the possibility, after my story ends, that we’ll have something new.  In the meantime, my story continues.  There are new people in my life as part of my story.  Perhaps, like a prism, we are all part of the white light and occasionally splinter off into this physical universe for more education…more experience.  I can’t say that I know.  What I do know is that this temporary story can be sad from within but, fortunately, it is only the story that is temporary.

This is what my song Illusions is about.  Please take a listen!