BORN IN 1940 - Written with Assistance from Beyond?

Back in November, 2024, a friend with whom I'd just shared some extraordinary family anecdotes said to me: "You really should write these down so that they are recorded for posterity!"

Her words set me thinking and her advice suddenly seemed to suggest that immediate action was needed. So that same afternoon I went to my computer and these words came straight through  me: 'I was born in October, 1940, just as a bomb dropped yards from the maternity ward of Farnborough Hospital. That's Farnborough, Kent, not Hampshire and thankfully the bomb failed to detonate. So I lived to tell my story, such as it is.'

Well, from then on there was no stopping the flow of words. Not just words, but memories long forgotten that returned so vividly it was as if I were re-living the years from birth to the age of twenty-one.

Names and faces from the past filled my days and many of my nights. I couldn't have escaped their impact even had I wanted to do that. I had an absolute certainty that relatives and friends, long dead, had assembled to assist me in my quest.

Perhaps the oddest thing is that I couldn't do it again. Once the last full stop had been put in its place those who had peopled my pages withdrew, leaving me with a manuscript that would bear my name but which I couldn't honestly claim to have written.

That I'd been the scribe rather than the source was, and still is, a very comforting thought. I know now, more even than I knew it before, that death doesn't separate our loved ones from us. They are not lost. Far from it. The love we once shared, we still share and will for eternity. It's our earth-bound sight that limits our vision along with our blinkered perception of 'heaven'. 

We simply aren't meant to know all there is to know until we're equipped to understand things currently beyond our understanding.   

END OF THE ROAD

I hope you might find these beautiful words by Christina Rossetti as comforting and reassuring as I do:

 

 

 "Miss Me But Let Me Go" 

 

'When I come to the end of the road

And the sun has set for me

I want no rites in a gloom-filled room.

Why cry for a soul set free?

 

Miss me a little, but not for long

And not with your head bowed low.

Remember the love that once we shared;

Miss me, but let me go.

 

For this is a journey we all must take

And each must go alone.

It's all part of the master plan -

A step on the road to home.

 

When you are lonely and sick at heart

Go to the friends we know.

Laugh at all the things we used to do.

Miss me, but let me go.'

 

GRIEF - A STORMY SEA

Hard to believe, when we first 'lose' a loved one, that they are not lost and that at the right time we'll be reunited. But the grief we feel protects us in a sense, until we can remember without the gnawing pain and can begin to live again.

While living we can be comforted by the knowledge that death will reunite us and that meanwhile there's pleasure to be had - not just in new scenes and old memories but also in our certainty that love doesn't die. It exists for all time. 

WAS IT A DREAM?

 I had a similar experience to this, back when I was 25 soon after my beloved grandmother died.

I vividly remember her asking me reproachfully "Why didn't you recognise me when I came to you this afternoon, while your friend was talking to a clairvoyant?" 

As documented elsewhere on my Facebook page some time ago, I'd accompanied my friend Yvonne when she visited a clairvoyant to clarify some issues she had. After the visit, Yvonne said the visit had helped her but there was one thing that didn't make sense.

She had no recollection of a white-haired woman such as had been described to her - whereas I, listening in as invited, had related 100% to the description but felt it couldn't be meant for me.

It was that same night, as if in a dream, that my 'Nama' came to me with her reproach. She left me in no doubt about her visit - which has reassured me during all the years since.

Have you ever experienced anything like this? 

LOVE THAT TRANSCENDS DEATH

 These are just two of the Amazon reviews given to The Portrait. They might help you decide that this is your kind of story - or not, as the case may be! You can find other - much longer - reviews on Amazon's website.

GONE BEYOND, BUT NEVER FORGOTTEN

The fact that most of us can't see our loved ones after they die gives rise to the belief that they have gone beyond reach. But this is an illusion brought on by the limits of our earthly vision.

Just imagine if our sight were unlimited! Then we'd have proof, instead of just promises that life doesn't end with death.

Do we really need proof, though, to know deep within our souls that death - far from being an end - is in a very real sense a new awakening?

As for the love we felt and still feel - that hasn't died. It lives on, preparing for the day we're reunited. 

END OF THE WORLD?

 Our perception of things is interesting, isn't it? These wise words from Richard Bach caused me to pause and think. Maybe they'll do the same for you.

The caterpillar has to experience a kind of death before experiencing a new life as a butterfly. Can you relate to that in respect of dying and finding a new kind of life on the 'other side'?

LOVE AFTER DEATH

What is meant by love after death? Surely that love does not – and cannot – die.

We are ostensibly born as the product of love between a man and a woman.  That ‘explains’ our flesh - but where does our spirit originate? 

Those of us unable to dismiss spirit as non-existent tend to acknowledge it as of Divine origin.  Few could claim it to be the result of human union.  So, coming from a non-human source, it is not ‘ours’ in the sense that our bodies are.

We house spirit within us during our life span, but upon death it returns whence it came prior to our birth. Do I have proof of this?

Yes, in that I have witnessed the essence of loved ones leaving as their bodies died – and hovering near me at their graveside!

No, in scientific terms because to the best of my knowledge science is not yet equipped to evaluate spirit!

I just mentioned ‘essence’.  My dictionary defines this as ‘the quality or qualities of a thing that give it its identity; the intrinsic or indispensable properties of a thing; the most important ingredient, the crucial element; the inherent, unchanging nature of a thing or class of things, as distinguished from its attributes or its existence; a spiritual or incorporeal entity’.

While alive we are not necessarily conscious of our spiritual selves.  We feed our bodies and often forget our souls.  Maybe we don’t even believe that we have a soul.  But most of us believe in the power of love.

If we’re fortunate, we feel this love from the moment our mother first holds us in her arms.  It is a tangible thing, giving us warmth and a secure feeling.  We are loved and so we learn how to love – first our mother, father and family.

Then, as we grow up, other loves come to us.  Ultimately, we fall in love.  How mind-blowing those feelings can be!  They take us over, body and soul, so that we experience oneness with another.

We also, at such a time, tend to experience oneness with the whole universe.  Our life is suddenly sublime.  We are whole, where before a crucial part of us was missing.  We have opened our heart to the infinite.

It is perhaps when we’re in love that we come closest to our Source.  Those feelings of bliss and of completion are akin, I think, to remembering our divinity.  We are mortal – yes, of course – but we are also immortal thanks to the divine spark within each of us.

It is said that God is love.

Rudyard Kipling wrote:

 ‘Once upon a time, or rather at the birth of Time, when the gods were so new that they had no names, and Man was still damp from the clay of the pit whence he had been digged, Man claimed that he, too, was in some sort a god.

The gods weighed his evidence and decided that Man’s claim was good.

Having conceded Man’s claim, the legend goes that they came by stealth and stole away this godhead, with intent to hide it where Man should never find it again.  But this was not so easy.  If they hid it anywhere on Earth the gods foresaw that Man would leave no stone unturned till he had recovered it.  If they concealed it among themselves they feared Man might batter his way up even to the skies.

And while they were all thus at a stand, the wisest of the gods said “I know.  Give it to me!”  He closed his hand upon the tiny, unstable light of Man’s stolen godhead, and when that great hand opened again the light was gone.

“All is well,” said Brahm.  “I have hidden it where Man will never dream of looking for it.  I have hidden it inside Man himself.”’

Where better to hide our spirit than within us?  As for the love we have experienced in our lifetime – and which we still feel when we die – isn’t this integral to our essence?

So our love for others doesn’t perish with our bodies.  It lives on in spirit and will echo through eternity.  Love after death?  You bet!