When Is It Time To Let The Grief Go?

Last updated on: May 9, 2016 at 10:00 am by Nancy Raines

When Is It Time To Let The Grief Go? 2016-05-05T19:15:17-04:00 Nancy Raines

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A cloud of love pushed against me, making me bend forward slightly in my chair. The firm yet gentle pressure was familiar. Searching with my inner eye I glimpsed my sister’s beaming face flickering briefly into view. My heart jumped. “Cathy, it’s you!”

It had been more than two years since her death. Over the course of the first year her spirit had visited me frequently in vivid color, swooping down and pulling me out of my body into flight behind her. So many things she had shown me and taught me over the course of that first year, as we had traveled together in the landscape of the afterlife!

But after that her spirit had become gradually more ethereal. It was as if she had graduated to another level and was now further away from me. Contact was elusive and had the ephemeral quality of a dream rather than the immediacy of a waking vision. Still her faint communications were occasionally available to me when I was quiet and calm enough to pick up their web-like delicacy. Every now and then I would think of her and call out to her just to see if she was still reachable. Usually she was, so it was not really a surprise this time to feel her presence as I sat to meditate.

Her spirit infused mine with a sensation of power and strength, filling in all the spaces between my cells with heat and light. I stayed slightly bent forward taking it in. But then after a few moments the pressure began to lighten. My back straightened in the chair. I realized that she was leaving and a stab of grief hit my belly. I began to cry. Instantly she was back, hovering around and over me. But now I sensed she wanted to communicate with me so, opening my eyes, I reached for my computer and rested my hands lightly on the keyboard. A wave of tingling sensation flowed from my head to my hands and I began to type.

“Nancy I am happy in my new life here, and you are happy in yours. Let me go and get on with your own goals. Release the old feelings. I promise we can still be in touch when you want to. But let me go, if you can. Release me. I love you.”

A curtain seemed to open in front of me revealing a new idea. Perhaps my grief pulled on her like an anchor tying her to this realm at a time when she wanted to be fully focused in her new life. In the two years since her death I had cried plenty and long. Could those tears now be a drain on her? Was it time to let the grief go? And if the pain of missing her re-surfaced, as I knew it probably would, should I resist the urge to break down and rather focus on sending her thoughts of love and happiness?

With a deep sigh I turned my attention to my sister’s spirit still pressing upon me. “Okay Cathy. Goodbye. Go on your way. I release you. I love you.”

And as the tide floods the plains and then retreats back to the sea, so her spirit having doused me with its essence, now trickled away and receded from my sphere until all that was left was a fine sheen in the room, a glinting polish on the atmosphere. Goodbye my dear sister. Godspeed.

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