We Do Not Die

There was no doubt about it. I had been my husband’s greatest love and he, mine.

My ego was confused though. I didn’t know if I’d ever gain wisdom in this life, for even though we seemed made for each other, as true as any soul mates could be, we’d thrown each other away so easily it wasn’t even funny.

What is love? I wondered, but a couple of mirrors reflecting self to self in their oneness?

For his ability to just walk away was a reflection of my ability to walk away just as fast. The conditions were insurmountable I’d told myself. Polarities that had stopped polarizing, the thrill of having found each other in a sea of faces, knowing we were right for each other, all of that gone, lost in the dharma, in the vasanas, in the 3rd dimensional struggle to find peace of mind.

Even his dying early seemed to be my fault. Shouldn’t I have put more effort into causing love to save him from himself? Shouldn't I have had more vision?

All the world was having a good, stiff drink, my soul mate was not different from these others. Booze became his mistress; I simply could not compete even though I’d finally gotten around to admitting to myself, I wanted his company, even with the booze molecules assaulting my nose in the same air that we breathed. Yes, booze stinks; so much for romance.

Is this the price we pay for love? I wondered, to always be the patient one? And where did he expect love to take him when the only times he could reach for me was when he was intoxicated?

I eventually got around to telling him he was killing himself but the doctor had beat me to it. He tuned out my channel, quite dead to me already. He wanted to watch TV. It seems we women have a job to do here; to bring a dead man back to life with our body.

I even tried that, with several dead in spirit men actually. It doesn’t work, I gained a bit of wisdom in that respect after all in this life. I did gain his gratitude however. I would have to remember the moment that happened, that I gave him something to take with him into the afterlife where he was headed.

He was tied to me in spirit after his death. Geez, how sweet he was after he was dead, coming to me and lending a hand or a word of cheer, or a direction to go. In this way he told me he loved me, by making me stop crying. He had told me it ripped him up inside to see me grieve so. Please stop he’d said. My goodness I’d thought, he’s not much of a philosopher at all. Yet I didn’t want to be his impediment so I stopped my blubbering for his sake. It must have been love.

Just because you learn not to cry doesn’t mean a whole lot. It doesn’t mean you’re not angry about the way things turned out. The sadness never goes away, you just intellectualize it away when you can.

One day you may discover some bit of philosophy, such as the measure of your capacity for grief is the same measure of capacity you have for joy. You got both extremes operating in your system and they even put a label on it, making it into a disease.

You’re bipolar they say. One day you’re up, next day you’re down. Here, take a pill that will fix it.

Who are they trying to kid? If my body couldn’t fix our love, if my mind couldn’t figure out how to save him, how in the world is a pill going to fix everything? Was it a case of; if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em?

I recalled that one day, after our divorce, I had visited Mike. He had offered me his favorite drink. This one he sipped throughout the day; his suicide cocktail. I had taken up smoking again. He was surprised about that and turned to me and said “it’s not right for you. I don’t see you as a smoker, you’re somehow too good, too pure to indulge so.” Then in the same breath he offers me his favorite drink and requests my assessment of the concoction; did I like it? So it was OK I could drink, but not smoke? While he both smoked and drank. I answered that I did like the flavor. It was sweet, milk and chocolate added, the bourbon was too much; I hadn’t acclimated to the drink. I never would. I thought he had turned into a zombie. This man was stubborn. Yet you couldn’t nag a stubborn man.

Clearly he saw booze as a remedy for all problems. Nothing mattered when he drank. It shut up the think tank. That’s what he said in so many words.

So I didn’t try to fix him, as I figured to fix anybody was like an insult to them. They had to fix themselves, that is, if the alcoholic ever admits there’s something wrong with the life style.

I remember that day, as the day of the true divorce. I wouldn’t be back, I knew. Not only was the booze his true mistress, he preferred watching TV instead of conversation. I’d somehow become uninteresting. My self esteem took a nosedive in his presence. I gazed at my soul mate, the one whose eyes had lit up so when I’d first seen him; the one whereby the entire room had disappeared as our eyes met, so that there was only he and I and this wonderful moment of discovery and thundering silent revelation; I looked at him now 10 yrs later and suddenly knew he wanted to die and was conscious of the decision.

And it didn’t have a whole lot to do with me at all. He was using his free will and our society allowed the booze to flow unendingly in every social circumstance; it was an accepted way of life. Society didn’t care or know that there were people, like Mike, who were basically responsible enough to hold a job, have a career and still be an alcoholic in secret. Mike had even moved across the street from his place of employment, so that he could run home and have a drink during his lunch break, and so he wouldn’t have far to go after work, for his next drink.

He arranged his life around the bottle, and he would go willingly into his death. “You know this is going to kill you, right?” I’d had the gumption to confront him from his intoxicated state that time.

He’d turned his face from the dam TV and said yes, he knew. I got angry. It’s not my nature to get angry but I’d considered he wasn’t showing his usual responsible nature by killing himself when he had the kids he’d produced to think about. Not me exactly, but I’d thought he could consider that he had something to give to the kids, just his time, I suppose. I suppose in his mind, I’d failed him, but the kids needed a dad.

Well, I ‘d retorted, get us some insurance then. He thought about it briefly, then said ok, I will.

And he did that for us. He got some insurance, then he died a year later.

Whoop de doo. The money allowed us to gain a home, but I’d live the rest of my life knowing I could have done better, I could have tried harder, maybe I could have kept him on earth longer if I’d have been a different person, more loving, more patient, more domestic, more something.

I wondered if this was just the way it was in 3rd dimension human habitat. We both had been so much in love, we’d even run red lights on the same day, when thinking about each other and how grand it was to find the beloved. We’d reported to each other our near misses at accidents laughing our heads off.

Maybe it was that we were born into this place, born to experience regrets, so we could learn what love was by learning what it was not.

Maybe this place was just a school of hard knocks after all. At any rate we had karma, whether fresh or old, I couldn’t say. The divorce didn’t make the love go away, neither did his death.

I’m one of those talks to the dead and the dead answer back. Mike and I would talk perhaps every decade of my life. Some communication would come and then I knew he could see me still, even if I couldn’t see his life, I was obliged to learn he was progressing into new areas of learning at least once, I learned this about 20 yrs after he died. So time is different there, addictions need to be mastered either here or there.

There he was, yea, strange as it sounds, I saw he had mentally manufactured a cocktail in the afterlife. Geez…I couldn’t believe it. When he seen me standing there, looking at the drink, wondering what it was, I was hoping it was just iced tea! He had respectfully placed the drink on the equally manufactured coffee table and sauntered casually towards a manufactured kitchen area, sneaking a quick kiss on my neck making me jump from my skin, which by the way, I wan't in my normal skin; I was in my astral body. I laughed. He was in his way telling me he fought his addiction there, even if he hadn’t tried very hard here to do so.

I’d been so surprised, you could still drink in the afterlife? If so, we were still fucked! Ha. But no, it was just that in the afterlife, your mind continued to think the way it had habitually thought while it was on earth. Your habits followed you. It didn’t mean the future was set in stone over there. It meant our work continued to better ourselves.

Bless his heart, he’d even tried to be a father to one of the girls once after he died. Giving me a message to deliver to her when she was having a really hard time. It was always a revelation to me, this gift of being between two worlds; I never took it for granted.

I’d expected to sit on a porch with Mike, We would be older and quite wise by then. We would be so contented with the life we’d made, so happy that we were so lucky to share our lives together.

It didn’t work out that way, yet I do have a little wisdom despite the sense of sadness I carry about us. He kept his promise to return to me after he died, and if he couldn’t let me share his intimate thoughts in life, to let me know he lived on in the afterlife; we had made a vow, to inform the other, what is awaiting for the human on the other side of life. He kept his promise, and this I can be happy about. So I try to pass it on. We live. We don’t die. Whatever problems we have on this side, we take with us to solve on the other.

I might mention I do believe it wasn’t luck that we met at all. It was an agreement we’d made, before we were born, in-between lives, that he would give me my children. I don’t think he made any other promises beyond that single act, none that I can remember and as well, I cannot remember promising him a rose garden just from being in love with me. He may have even told me he would die early on. I would have him only 11 yrs total, and it’s true, you don’t miss your water until the well runs dry. For sure.

He met some friends over there in the blue yonder. I was happy about that. He didn’t have lots of friends here; only 3 that I knew about, which included one of his brothers. If he’d stayed beyond his 42nd year, I’m sure he would have made more friendships. He was a very kind man, although a stubborn one.

Yet I pass it on. We make new friends on the other side. We continue to live. You have to keep positive, so I think about the good parts. The little wisdoms gained and I think of my mother too, on the other side as we had tons of karma, she and I, now wiped out thankfully. She had given me something when she said “you take the bad with the good.” As silly as it sounds, I wondered about taking the good with the bad, how to do that.

Oh mother! You simple angel you! Mother was stubborn too. People being stubborn and set in their ways, this fault never erases the good, the love that went between.

Thanks you two, for showing up in my life and playing your roles. See ya soon! Well I don’t know the hour, but life goes by very fast and it’s good to do life reviews on this side, so you don’t have to do it on the other side; you can just get on with new interests if you do your work here and now. We live on, no question about that really!

Recently I contacted Mike. He showed his love for me. Perhaps for the last time, I have no way of knowing. He simply said he wished he could be there with me in the flesh during these last years of mine. I was surprised he would say such a thing. He had always been so sure of himself, that checking out was his fervent desired course, despite we’d had a few opportunities to get back together and blown it. No fault to point out on either side except maybe we both had shortsighted visions. When I heard him say that, I got sad again. My eyes watered up. It meant he was still doing the life review even after 32 yrs had elapsed here on the earth plane. The life review is where you consider what could have happened if you’d done it differently. Maybe he was seeing the possibilities from this other perspective and I could only be glad about that. In the meantime, I'd learned a few things about what love was.

Just to keep it simple, so everyone understands, love is when you get this happy feeling when you meet up with someone you haven't seen for awhile. It doesn't get any bigger or better. Love is making happy. And if you love someone, I think it's important especially in a marriage, to tell them so frequently; love is something you should never take for granted, and express often in little ways, if you don't fan it a bit, the fire goes out.

We all have our individual struggles here or there, now and again, I give thanks for what has come my way, be it ever so difficult to live through. We got to remember that it's about love. I think about and try to imagine seeing him again, what that is going to feel like. I think I will get that old familiar feeling that this is someone I've known for eternity, someone that loves me, someone that is easy to love back.

We won't have regrets because by then we will be incapable of regrets. We may shake hands and go our separate ways, promising to visit soon. We may even decide to hang out together for awhile. After all, in eternity we'll have all the time in the world to do whatever we please. There must be possibilities not dreamt of in our philosophies, because our individual lives are such a small part of our totality when lined up next to all the lives we've undergone already. Perhaps the dead are caught in the ascension energies just as much as the living? I think so, as the ride continues.