I am so grateful for the huge outpouring of support from blog members, friends (both in-person and Internet) coworkers and neighbours. It is incredible how completely surrounded by love we may be, and it just takes a thunderstorm to notice the sunlight (or make a rainbow or some other flowery, overdone but very earnest metaphor!)
I’m experiencing this near-constant state of mind in which I both observe and feel the roller coaster/ bucking bronco/ run-away elephant that is my mothers illness, my own grief and the reactions of friends and family. A part of my is feeling sorrow, and another part of me is just observing that sorrowful experience.
That second, observational part of me is weirdly okay with everything that’s happening.
And an even higher, third part of me observes the contrast between these two seemingly conflicting states of being.
It’s interesting. It reminds me of Plink Plunk saying fascinating.
Another constant in my state of mind is gratitude. I’m so grateful that I’m *not* prostrate with grief. I’m so grateful that yoga and meditation provide respite and relief from everything. I’m so grateful for everything I’ve learned and everyone I’ve met.
The day of my mother’s surgery, I was riding my bike to work when my mother’s spirit popped into my consciousness. When I slip into medium mode, I’m not thinking “gee this must mean she’s passed.” I didn’t make that erroneous assumption until the conversation ended, 30 minutes later.
She popped in to show me this time when I was 14 and weeping my heart out over some bullying I’d experienced at school. She showed me this memory and said, “that time you needed a hug; I’m sorry I didn’t give you one.”
Well I stopped my bike, leaned against a chain-link fence overlooking the harbour and just cried my eyes out all over again, feeling the overwhelming love of a “spirit hug” from my mother.
“Call in to work,” she said next. “Then go down to the water.”
I called the hospital to explain I was too upset to come in (I hated to bail on them last minute) and then went down to the public dock in the harbour.
Just as I arrived, a great blue heron took flight off the beach and flew overhead, circled back and flew over again.
“Oh Mom!” And I started crying again.
The great blue heron is a special animal for me and my mother; it was the first animal my mother pointed out to me that meant “everything’s going to be okay.” The first time a blue heron showed himself to me in this way was after my driver’s license road test. I passed… Barely.
I stayed down by the dock talking to my mother. Outside of her body, her spirit is high and light with joy. This is not a frequency I’m used to feeling from my mother, and she showed me her body, and said it makes her feel small.
It does help me to understand why she loves children so much – kids resonate with this frequency of high, bright joy.
As we “talked,” my mother said, “watch this!” And another great blue heron flew out of the mist on the other side if the inlet, crossed over to the dock and landed in a tree twenty feet away.
My mother was giggling. This is the sort if giggle she has when she’s cracking a bad pun or a dark joke. “This is SO EASY!” She said, delighted.
At this point, the sunrise over the harbour began to turn the sky pink. It was very beautiful.
“All this mist, it looks like a ghost town!” My mother cracked.
At this point I the “Kate” part of my brain was pretty sure my mother had crossed over. While in medium mode, I feel only peace – so this was all okay.
I looked at the pink sky, the swirling mist and the two herons and thought, “lets make this moment as magical as possible-”
Just as I finished that thought one of the herons took an enormous and extremely LOUD poop! My mother’s uninhibited, raucous laugh echoed through my head.
This is my mother’s humour – nothing higher and more sacred than toilet humour!
I laughed out loud. I practiced my state of “beingness” which can attract wildlife, and two cormorants flew up to perch on the old dock supports, ten feet from me. Cormorants are some of the funniest birds, and they looked at me tensely, then curiously, finally companionably as one opened his wings in the “warming to the sun” posture that make cormorants iconic.
After a while, my mother said, “I’ve gotta go!” I said goodbye and she left with my grandmother’s spirit – I presumed she was going to the other side.
I rode my bike home fully expecting to receive the call that my mother had died in surgery.
Instead, just minutes after I got home, my sister called to say it was the worst sort of brain tumour.
I reacted like a detached sociopath.
“Okay.” My sister talked on, detail after terrible detail. I was totally cool with everything she said. It was weird.
Of course later, I had and continue to experience a more human reaction.
Some people might be wondering how a psychic could be blindsided with such a major family event. I would like to respond with,
“I knew you were going to say that.”
Ha ha! Get it???
Okay, seriously though. Do you think this skill is something we’re allowed to develop for our own benefit? NO! No one is allowed the “cheat codes” for their life. Mediums are supposed to help people, to participate in and to expedite the healing process.
Remember when I talked about the “faithware upgrade”? Well this is why I needed it – because somehow, I have to just trust that everything is all okay. I may not understand it – it might not see the complete algorithm that demonstrates the balance and beauty in the ugliness of mortality, but I have to trust that it’s there. I just *know* that its there. I feel it with a certainty that permeates every cell in my body and every heartthrob of my soul.
That somehow, in this fucked up tragedy, it’s all beautiful and perfect.
Kate Sitka 
Fabulous! You are amazing. Your best post yet! It takes an individual that is clearly connected to their Higher self to do what you just did. Everything is perfect, it will all work out as it is meant to be. You have an army of angels (earth and heavenly) on your side. Much love Kate! And thank you for sharing.
love you.
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Thank you Nikki
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What a COOL story! The last couple of days I prayed for you. And your mom. And your family. I don’t know them, or you, but I understand what it’s like to have someone close to you who is very ill. I’ve experienced this a few times, although not with a parent. When others ask for prayers, I don’t say anything, I just focus briefly on the request and let its own energy pass through me and move to wherever its needed. I enjoy your blog, and while the circumstances are most unfortunate, I’ve somehow enjoyed your posts each day this week because you seem to be handling it with a healthy sense of emotional balance and humor, especially today. It’s certainly a major growing point for you and it’s interesting to take part of it in a small way as a reader. Thanks for sharing it with us.
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Ha, thank you. We’ll see if I just lose it one day and go running naked through the streets of Tofino. I won’t blog about that but I’m sure Sweetie will post the newspaper article. “Local Nut Cracks”
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Thank you phoggy. Cute nickname 🙂
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this is so beautiful. you are exactly where you need to be. thank you for sharing. sending you all my love.
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Thank you Andrea
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I love the visit that you had with your mom. (She sounds a lot like mine, except mine had/has a fondness for very black, dark humour instead of toilet humour. I can picture mine doing exactly the same things with the same glee.)
When I went home in October to look after my Dad for a couple of weeks until he died, I think I weirded people out because I was very okay with what was happening, very matter-of-fact. (It was so clear to me that it was playing out exactly as it should.) Five, six years ago, I would have been anything but okay. But I’ve changed a lot in the years since my mother died. This physical incarnation is such a small part of who we are and the relationships we have as physical beings such a small piece of the connections we have as spirits that I find it difficult now to find it tragic that they’ve moved on a little bit ahead of me. I miss their physical presences, but it’s more like they’ve moved to some remote place with no phone or mail service.
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Remote outpost metaphor is good, like you have a one-way telegram service.
It’s weird eh? People want your response to fall in line with their expectation. A coworker said to me, “you don’t have to be cheerful all the time, you know.”
I could feel the judgement. Another coworker made a point of asking how I was sleeping and reminding me we have a corporate-sponsored therapist available. All well-intentioned for sure, I’m not offended at all. It’s just that so much of the in-person feedback I’ve gotten is all about what *that person* needs to say to me.
It’s about *their* shock in hearing the news, and none of them seemed at all open or receptive if me intuitively.
Everyone handles grief differently, and every grief process is different. A year ago – shit, this is going to sound terrible – a year ago the death of my cat had a massive, negative impact upon me. I fuckin’ HUNG ON to that grief pain. Maybe Leo taught me how to survive severe grieving. Between the loss of Mocha, Leo and both grandparents in the past two years, I’ve learned a heck of a lot of coping skills.
And I am SO grateful for them. I don’t know what sort of shape I’d be in right now if I hadn’t gone through those other losses.
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Ha, I hear you about Leo. Maci died a few months after my mother did. I was pretty okay with my mother passing. I was absolutely devastated and heartbroken by Maci’s death — breathless with grief, like someone kept punching me in the stomach. It’s kind of funny. My dad and I used to talk about our grief — his for my mother and mine for Maci — and how much they mirrored each other. My mother would have understood that. Even now, if I cry from sadness, it usually has more to do with Maci than with either of my parents, and I adore my folks.
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I wonder if losing your pets has more weight to it because your own daily life was altered by the ordeal. Your pets are an immediate comfort and like your children. Your mother lives far away and it’s a little bit different in that case. It doesn’t mean you don’t love her, or love her less, but that your immediate life isn’t going to be much different. There’s nothing wrong with that and I can relate to it myself. My uncle, who I loved and was my favorite uncle who I was named after (not Phoggy lol) died recently of pancreatic cancer and I miss him but my life at home is no different than it was before because he lived a few hours away. Now my grandmother when she died that rocked me to the core and even somehow still hurts 24 years later because I saw her every weekend and I looked forward to it all week as a kid so it was a drastic change to my personal life. I have lost best friend to a car accident and that one hurt too. I didn’t get to say goodbye to either of them. I have also lost pets and I was just as sad. It was a very personal change in my life, you see.
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Yes I think you’re right
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Okay I have to modify a superlative: that *none* of my coworkers are empathetic or tuned into me. That was a stupid thing to say – a bunch if them are. These people I categorize as “friends” not “coworkers” and of course friends are empathetic.
Hence, my overstatement.
I was just a little overwhelmed yesterday with these energy-dominating responses, and it was tough to constantly psychically protect myself from the overwhelming message: YOU SHOULD BE DEVASTATED.
Ticked me off a bit. I am no Buddha, me.
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You are one of the fortunate ones with the gift of insight accompanying you on your path as an ’emotional being’. Although that doesn’t always diminish the trauma of our human experience, it is a perspective that goes a long way to help with healing and resignation. Most people are awkward in these situations and find it difficult to say the right thing, to let you know that they feel compassion for you during this trying time and want to offer you their support. As our good friend Erik says, it’s the intentions behind that the words that count. I’m no expert on energetic matters, but maybe there was too much sadness and heaviness that came with the responses you were receiving and they did not translate well into the positive and comforting vibes you need just now. You may not be Buddha, but you’re still pretty amazing to be able to have the experience you just shared with us in your post. It takes a long time to learn to trust in the process. May that knowledge and your insight sustain you well and may you get to see your mom soon as you planned to let her in person that it’s all going to be good. Blessings of light and love, dear Kate.
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Yes, I realized this weekend that I feel fine when I can be by myself. It reminds me of a rescue dog who has to deal with the “AWWWW poor thing!” Energy all the time.
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What you’re experiencing sounds similar to what I went through just over a year ago when my mom had cancer. Part of me felt really calm and peaceful (the spiritual side I’m guessing) and part of me was grieving, angry and feeling really helpless (that would be the human side!). I have some intuitive/medium-like abilities but I remember not hearing much of a peep from my guide team, and I still haven’t heard much from my mother at all from the other side. Trying to piece it together, I realized that there is the human experience (which feels all the grief, confusion and frustration, and all the ups and downs of the relationship with the loved one – and which must experience all of it for deeper learning) and then there is the spiritual side which knows that there is love and so much more to this experience that the human part of us can’t remember. Does that make any sense? Like the participant/observer thing you’re talking about.
But the long and short of it is that it’s your experience, not anyone else’s. Even those who might understand more than others can’t fully understand because they’re not in your body, your mind, or your energy. I’m glad, though, that you have lots of support and love around you.
In my (awesome!) report card, you said that my higher self advised, “There is love in every situation, even the ones that seem tragic and unfair. There is love present, no matter what the outward appearance may be.” I wonder if this might also be a message for you or anyone who is struggling, especially during a crisis.
Sending lots of love your way!
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Yes, it’s hard sometimes for people to know what to say. As I typed up an email to you I mentioned the full moon…and I’d started typing that the full moon was in Cancer that day, which was totally true and completely ironic to me. I thought, should I leave it? Should I delete it? Especially when you are not face to face and sending out a response, you never know in the array of emotions just how a person will be feeling at any given moment. I wound up just mentioning that the full moon was an emotional one, which, being in Cancer, it was.
Everyone’s reactions to grief are different, and fluctuate depending on the day, year, etc. A connection to the spiritual realm helps a LOT, the awareness that we are all energy. And with each grief we experience we do learn, but some affect us more than others.
I thought of this poem today. It’s sort of followed me around and “haunted” me for years. I actually have it hanging on my fridge at home. When I started experiencing the death of people close to me, it started changing in my head. Different phrases and words would stand out. But the last two lines always linger the most, and your comment about people saying what THEY need to hear reminded me of them.
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
Spring and Fall:
to a Young Child
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
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Awwww.
That’s crazy about the full moon.
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I’d just read Aleya Dao’s post on the full moon when I read your posts here about your Mom on the 15th:
Had the same thoughts Sara did about mentioning it, but since she’s gone and broken the ice… 😉
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This is really interesting.
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I loved to read this Kate. I loved that you communicated with your Mom and saw the birds etc. That was amazing. It gives me confirment to my mom and my brother’s deaths. I communicated with both of them as well and I did have amazing dreams with my mom before she died. She was giving me messages when she was so ill in the hospital as she lay there. I love this. Grief was very hard on me for both deaths and that is when I started writing the poems when my mom died. Then the animals have come and now I can see locations and dead people too. At times. I dont know maybe I always have been able to but now it is coming out since they left. I guess I received something when I lost something. Not a fair trade though but I will take it anyway without complaint.Grief is hard no matter what. But you can write and you can talk to them with and thru your gifts. It is still excruciating. I wish you alot of love and peace. Have a blessed day!! xo
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