Death does not end us

                                                                                                     Death does not end us

The darkness outside created a luminous mirror in the glass of my bedroom window. In its reflection, I watched as a body of energy moved with me in a ghostly silhouette.

     "You know I can see you right?" I said as I turned toward the figure.       

     But in seconds, it was gone. I went to bed and woke before dawn unable to sleep. My cell phone displayed a missed call and message from a friend in Maine. Instead of listening, I touched the lighted screen that would return her call.   

         "Hello, Wendy?" I said. And suddenly I felt hesitant and slightly queasy.

       "You don't know yet do you?" she choked.

        And even though I asked, "know what?" I knew.     

       Hours later as I entered my office, sitting at a small round table was my friend, Kate who'd died suddenly, shockingly, and without explanation, that morning. I heard her voice strong and clear in my mind.

       "Nita," she said, "It's gone in a blink."  

       Looking at my pad and pen on the tabletop she went on.

         "I want to pick up this pen and write letters to my kids and Scott," she said, "but I cant. Will you do it for me?" She asked.   

       Though I'd written notes, information, and letters in the past for some I'd known, and some I hadn't, Kate's request broke my heart a little. Not for her, or death, but for her children. "They were as attached to each other as starfish on a rock."  Her husband later said. The loss of their mother would be deep and vulnerable. I knew her family’s sadness and grief would be unspeakable, and for a while, her children would be adrift, each alone in their pain and loss.  But I said,” Of course I'll do it Kate."    

       We linked together then and she showed me what had happened before her body died. My little sister reconciles the process of linking like this:

        "So, it's like in the movie Avatar when they plug their tail into each other and become one, experiencing what the other one feels, right?"

           "Yes." I reply, "It’s like that." 

       I knew that she’d been sick to her stomach, back ache and congestion in her chest that made it hard to breathe. I knew too that it was her heart that had failed her despite suspicions of a killer flu. In the moment of her death, she panicked because death had taken her by surprise. Confused and afraid her consciousness had brought her to me and I hadn't known it was her in the windows reflection.  

          I wrote the letters for her listening carefully to her words, taking dictation, but my stomach had the quivers because it was such an important task and I dreaded making a mistake. Kate was and is an extraordinary mother. Though it appears that death ends us it doesn't, rather it begins us in a new discovery of so much more. Though we no longer have bodies that keep us grounded in the experience we call life, our soul life continues.  

        I will miss my friend Kate and the friendship we shared but I support her soul’s new journey where our bond will continue to grow and blossom. If you think you feel, hear, or smell, someone you loved that is gone from this life, you have. Trust that and know that they are with you, they love you, and you are still connected.                 

                                                      Nita Lapinski