1st Anniversary

Jane E. Noyes       10/29/1952  to  09/16/2010

I witnessed the death of your physical body that day 9/16/2010.  I’ve spent most of the past year mourning the loss of your physical presence only to see the birth of your spiritual presence rise like a phoenix inside me.  Now I bear witness to an incredible spiritual awakening within myself.

You changed my life forever the day you entered it  and you changed my life in ways I could never have even guessed when you left it.  My journey through grief has become a spiritual wonder.  Your spiritual presence in my life was at first a startling surprise and now when I feel it I just mentally say “Hi Jane”.  That first time, when I started to realize you’ll always be with me spiritually.  One night I awoke startled, snapped right up in bed, frantically looking around - she was here!  Your smiling, glowing face hovering over me and gently kissing my lips I FELT IT. . . . . I remember thinking it was odd I couldn’t feel your body but I distinctly felt you kiss me on the lips I saw your face smiling, glowing and hovering above me.   I looked around some more, thinking “am I crazy?”  It’s still such a vivid memory!  When I discussed this with my Hospice counselor and again in group sessions I hear similar stories in return, my view of reality begins to shift.  The Peace Lillie’s that I’ve managed to keep alive from your funeral two blooms on Father’s Day and another just weeks ago on the day Alex and Seth started their new jobs.  Erin’s orchid that hasn’t bloomed in 6 years has 7 blooms and 3 more on the way.  The last tree you planted in the front yard I gave it up for dead all the leaves were gone, and the buds were dead.  I’m discussing how to replace it with the kids and Erin calls me the next day on the golf course it’s alive!  Seth saw new leaves on it way down low.   Now it’s twice the size it was and growing. 

Thank you GOD for everything this past year, good and bad, you speak through me as a lot of this was written at 4 am on 8/24 and 8/26 when I just woke up and grabbed a pen and started writing.  A wonderful fellow Bill hands me a book that challenges my sensibilities and opens me to perspectives I would have considered crazy just a year ago, a book I wouldn’t have even chose to read.  I remember the fellow spending over an 1 1/2 hours talking to me about Jane and the wife he lost and me thinking: “he’s pretty far out there!”  When he returns to pay for his business cards he hands me this book, as he turns to leave he looks back and just says “ you know she may have sent me in here”.  I’m dumbfounded at that one but I say what the heck I’ll start it and if I don’t like it I’ll just put it up.  That one book changed my whole perspective on crossing over and the other side.  You have blessed me in ways I struggle to comprehend and for that, I am thankful.

I spend my days reading philosophy texts and discussing these events with others as they continue to unfold.  Only to be amazed by their depth and magnitude.  Others tell me to write these down and so I do.  At first I was in denial.  At first I said:  Why me?  Why now? I don’t truly deserve this.  I’m not worthy.  I forsook you when our 3rd child was stillborn those many years ago.  But the choice wasn’t mine it was yours!  I’ve received such a wondrous gift from you.  It’s mine to embrace and share God’s love with everyone I meet. Now I just willingly choose to fully embrace this wonderful gift you’ve bestowed on me with gratitude for your presence in my life and a willingness to share it with others no matter what they think of me or these events.  From the depths of despair your presence has transformed my life.  I now choose to live my life as a prayer of love for all life in all it’s expressions.  You’ve shown me how selfish I was in just sharing a deep love and devotion with my wife and children and now I choose to share it with everyone.  Love is so boundless in it’s power, the more you give the more you get in return. 

You’ve put so many teachers and events before me these last few months.  Duane calls me up to talk about the repair he made on the air conditioner and asks how Jane died an hour and a half later we’ve talked about Jesus, Bhudda, Krishna, the Tao Te Ching he tells me about a spiritual group he’s in.  That I willingly joined when I was asked, I need to embrace this.  I go to the book store to buy a book he’s recommended and one my Hospice counselor recommended and as I drive away listening to a song Jane and I played hundreds of times over the years, I stop the car dead in the street, after I hear “and there comes a time when you cross a line and you’ve just got to believe”.  I play the song through and find it again, it’s only stated once in that song.  I remember one of the things I read in that book from the guy I thought was ‘out there’ and she states emphatically there are no coincidences, you’ve got to watch for signs and keep an open mind.  I do keep an open mind as my view of reality just continues to be transformed.  I am so much more aware that the nice tightly packaged ego’s view of reality I had just one year ago was just folly.  My ego based reality package has been blown to pieces and this new reality I see it’s ever expanding.  The more I read and learn, the more aware I have become, the more I realize I know so very little of what reality truly is.  I have a completely new comprehension that reality is so vast and wondrous that I’ve barely scratched the surface of it. 

The gal who comes in and asks me to copy something for her.  I usually just run the copies and that’s it, hand them back but “Read It” pops loudly into my mind.  It’s a poem about losing a loved one called I’m Free that I’ve shared with some of you but it deeply touched me. It brought me to tears it was like Jane was telling me she was OK and I could move on.  On Mother’s Day that kindly old lady has me set her piece about being a mother.  I asked her if I could send it to people, it was wonderful.  I get home and Alex is beside himself wanting his mom he just graduated from his Medical and Billing and Coding class.  I hand him the mother’s day piece and tell him she knows, mom sent you this, he’s in tears before he finishes it.  (I’m attaching both the I’m Free piece and the Mother’s Day piece).  The guy who comes in for business cards, he’s lost everything in the tornadoes.  His family home he grew up in, neighbors killed and such destruction, and tragedy he tells me about.  He tells me I did business cards for him 3 years ago and he’s prayed for me since then!  He looks at me and says people ask him how he can be so happy after having lost everything he points to his chest and just says God is in here that’s all I need and looks me deep in the eye and says I know you know!  I gave him those cards for free, he gave me far more than they were worth.  He’s just one of the people who saw something in me before I even recognized it in myself.  I told my Hospice counselor that in February when all sorts of things started happening I had this glimpse, finally after a number of sessions and hearing the details of what’s been going on with me she just looked at me and said “you had more than a glimpse” another person who saw something in me before I even recognized it in myself.  

That piece you had me find on the Internet the other day on Spiritual Awakening.  I look through the 7 pages of symptoms of Spiritual Awakening I was so touched by reading it I printed it off and just kept highlighting the few pieces that were witnessed in my awakening so far.  There are pages where 1/2 of it is highlighted, things I’ve directly experienced.  Obviously is wasn’t just a few things as I thought when I did it.  Can this be me?   The fellow who stopped in hoping to see my beautiful wife and was totally embarrassed when I told him she had passed away very suddenly almost a year ago.  How he apologized profusely as he left and then he turns to say he’ll pray for me.  I feel it, how many have prayed for me and my family I do not know but I pray for them in return.  Their prayers have continued to guide us.  I’m still in awe of the depth and magnitude of this event and transformation.  Whatever label my humble mind puts on it seems so lacking in describing it.  Gratitude to understand what little of it I do fills me.

The more I witness the more that’s revealed.  I wish to write, I wish to share.  But how?  It’s so hard to explain that which I can barely grasp.  Thank you God for everything that’s happened in my life.  If only one person is moved by this it was worth putting it out there for everyone to read. I struggle to comprehend what has occurred, how does one explain something that they can barely understand themselves and may never fully understand but yet I feel a great need to share.

I find myself meditating to 7000 year old Sutras and rising early to do the ancient healing art of Qigong.  Who is this person I have become?  At my spiritual group a couple told us they were leaving the group and I mentioned I wanted to give them a CD I made of My Journey through Grief in songs that were special to Jane and I and new ones that have become special to me but didn’t have it ready.  I wanted to give it out at the next meeting after the anniversary of Jane’s death and Jim mentioned they lost a 46 year old son and told me how hard that was.  I told him Jane and I lost Philip in the late 80’s still born and blurted out that was the day I backed away from God.  I said that without even thinking it.  But it brought back memories of that day and initially I didn’t even want our minister to come up to the room, my faith was really shaken that day.  Both Jane and I never really dealt with his death, we just buried it deep inside ourselves and then Alex came along and we were forced to move on.  I’m sitting here with tears in my eyes and they aren’t from grief, it’s from gratitude for the gift I’ve been given.  I feel I’ve buried Jane and Philip now and it’s time to move on and get on with his work.

Jane E. you changed my life forever by entering it

and again changed my life forever when you left it.

What higher praise can one give to another on this earth

than to be changed forever by them not once but twice.  

Jane E. So many wonderful memories

that warm my heart with endless love

and bring smiles that wash over my face through out my days.

YOU AND ME FOREVER JANE E.  I LOVE YOU  Keith P.

Friends I send you a loving smile and embrace you with a long, warm, gentle cyber space hug,

today remember your loved ones with a big hug, a truly warm smile,

and that knowing look and twinkle in your eye.

Rejoice in the fact that their physical presence still graces your life.