My dad’s shade visited me today.
I felt a swoosh and began to spin while standing at the bathroom counter. I braced myself on said counter to stop spinning as the familiar feeling of Vertigo filled my brain. This is how the disembodied announce their presence, although the swoosh was a new sensation. “Who is visiting?” I asked. The Vertigo receded, and there was dad.
“Your anniversary was last week,” I noted. August 3rd, to be exact. He had passed away on that date in 1990.
I know, I sensed his reply. I wanted to let you know that I’m going to talk to your mother.
Oh Gods. Any civility that had been a part of their post-divorce relationship had dissipated long before dad had died. I don’t think mom’s Alzheimers would have changed that equation. “Um, why?”
She has an Exit Portal coming up soon, dad said. I’m going to try and persuade her to take it.
I snorted in amusement. “And you think she’s going to listen to you? I don’t think she’s listening to her own parents (my grandparents) right now. I think she’s waiting for me to become more financially stable. She’s going to wait a long time if that’s the case.” I paused a moment. Why not ask? “Is that what she’s waiting for?”
He didn’t answer me directly, but suddenly I knew I was spot on. I also sensed he’s still going to try. “She is an Aries, you know,” I reminded him, “and very stubborn.”
I know, he said. I feel him sigh with a resigned acknowledgement.
“So you came by to give me the heads-up. Anything else?”
I would like your blessing, he told me. If she exits, she won’t be ‘here’ anymore. Are you going to be okay with that?
I smiled and nodded a little. “Yeah, I’ll be okay.” By this time I had entered the main bedroom and was sitting on the bed. “Good luck - you’re going to need it.”
Thank you, he said as his energy began to pull back. I felt his love wash over me.
“Love you, dad,” I whispered as the tears began to fill my eyes…
Welcome to my world.
Granted, I don’t chat with the Dearly Departed every day of the week, but I’m an open and receptive mind in a world full of closed and rejecting minds, and there are times when one of the disembodied wants to take advantage of that. Family and close friends are fine, because they respect my boundaries. “Random” spirit folks, on the other hand: I can try to deliver a message, but the (living) recipient needs to be willing to hear the message. I have banished the occasional ghost from my space when they weren’t willing to take “no” for an answer. It’s actually easier than you might think; self-confidence goes a long way in keeping strong boundaries.
I can feel and commune with the dead because of my heightened sensitivity to the energies swirling around you and me and we. I have gone through periods of greater and lesser sensitivity since I committed to the Path of the Craft almost 24 years ago. The current combination of perimenopause and Long Covid are swinging the pendulum to the Greater side of the scale once more. Some recent examples:
When I was on the coast a few months ago, I walked to the beach. En route to the beach is a bridge that crosses over the I-5 freeway. When I walked on that bridge, I felt the surrounding energies speed up. I even felt a touch of vertigo just before I completed my crossing. The moment I was off the bridge, everything slowed down again, and I recentered myself with some deep breaths. On my return trip, rush hour had begun on the Northbound side of the freeway, and the energy felt heavy and sluggish in comparison to the lighter, flowing energy of the Southbound side, where traffic had not yet begun to back up. I note this because this was the first time I had consciously felt this subtle energetic shift.
More recently, I found that I was engaging in an old habit of Carrying Around the World’s Shit to Try and Transmute It All. It doesn’t serve the shit, and it definitely doesn’t serve me, to engage in this demented alchemy until I’m choking on the toxic sludge. I thought I rewrote this agreement anyway. Back to the Records Vault with Thoth, I guess. In the meantime, I am revising the ways I take in Information from the world to shore up my boundaries and maintain what I
sanity I have left.
I didn’t lose my sense of smell with Covid, although Himself’s favorite cologne now smells like burning plastic. Some things, like roses, smell much better now. Other things, like strong perfumes, recent paint jobs, or other chemical-based smells, will find me reaching for the mask I still carry in my purse so I can still breathe reasonably well, and/or not get a wicked headache. Chlorine especially is my nemesis; if someone gets bleach happy with their cleaning, I will leave the chat!
If you had told me any of this would come to pass while I was in college, where I was pursuing a dual degree in Marine Biology and English, I would have been generous in merely looking at you cross-eyed. In the years since, I have come to appreciate this line from Shakespeare: There is more to heaven and earth…than is dreamt of in your philosophy. With that, I will take my bow and exit, Stage Left.