Standing at the Threshold of Heaven...Part 4...Life and Death

It was the late sixties and early 1970's so in my little town we had a coffeehouse where kids could hang out. The tables made from giant cable spools, poster of rock stars on the walls,  and peanut shell on the floor.  I enjoyed going there to escape having to be with my family after the ordeal we had been through. I was 19 and was suppressing my grief.  I was 19, that is the beginning of life, and in some ways I started my grief process in the anger stage.  So one night an older friend sat and talked about how she wanted to move East to attend a school that was renown for Opera training.  Without much thought I said I will go with you.  She laughed and said," Ok so when do we go?"  I said I need to work more and raise funds and  how about we check back in three months with each other.  I did not know it then but I wanted to escape all the pain by running as far as I could.

 

We left about six monts later on a Greyhouse Bus.  I remember boarding the bus and over hearing my father saying, "She is really going."  to my mother.  I have thier faces engrained in my mind as I waved good-bye from the bus window.  So much pain.  They had just lost their only son a year earller and here was their youngest leaving them.  Being a mother now, I can look back on it, and realize how much pain it brought them.  We never spoke of it.  I needed to leave to save my own life.  Little did I know how much trouble and pain I brought on myself in those years in Philadelphia.  When grief is suppressed is will arrive in twisted and miserable ways.  We are unaware of how much we are feeling and we behave in ways that are not our true selves. 

I soon did not get along with my friend and started to act out.  I , who always preached to friends about the evils of drugs and alcohol, started experimenting with both. I said I had moved to do theater and I was involved in a local theater but that was not the total truth.  I went through the motions but was not attached to what once was my passion.  There were lots of men and found myself in situations a young woman from the Midwest should not have been involved in.

During these years I did make a good friend.  From our friendship I was able to begin to speak of my sorrows.  She lead me to books by the legendary Mediums, Edgar Cayce and Ruth Montgomery.   I had never even heard of mediums.  I shared with her my experience of seeing my brother after death and I wanted to know how this could happen. I ate these books up.  For the first time I had some peace and understanding of what this might have been.  They opened my eyes to the fact that we do live on after we die AND that there are those of us who can communicate with them.  Why had I been able to see and feel him?  Was it real?  What did this mean for me? This would be the beginning of my journey to understanding the possibilities and communications with the dearly departed.

I found myself in trouble with the law and deeply in despair.  I was not myself.  I could not ignore my grief any longer and after 3 years I returned home to deal with it all. Who was I now? Death of a loved one, and at an early age, does change your character.  How was I to know who and what I was to do from this moment on.  Theater would once again be my passion.