Going Through the Portal

I sit upon the the threshold looking through the portal. This is the portal that I have named grief and loss. I did not enter into this portal willingly. I did not ever want to be here. I have however found myself here and it is here that I needed to stay for as long as I needed. I want to be done, yet grieving is never quite done. Instead, I decided I would be in the portal of grieving and mourning for as long as necessary. It was the only safe place, and the only right place.

The farther I go from January 2017, the farther I am from the last time I saw my youngest child on this side of the portal.

It is now January 2020. I now see through the portal.

I sat upon the threshold long enough, but am I ready to stand up and walk through? Is it time yet? As I sat, I wondered if it would all fall down upon me. Would I be crushed or swept away? Would I be battered and bruised by falling debris? This threshold seems so very precarious. I had come so far and yet here I sat. I couldn't move. It wasn't time yet. If I move through the portal and off the threshold, what awaits me? How will I know how to live through the portal of grief? What is on the other side? Will I forget him? How could I forget him? Will he seem farther and farther away or will he greet me on the other side of this portal? Will the pain finally be less? Will he still be there with me?

I already was crushed. My heart shattered into a million pieces. I already was battered and bruised, my body and mind unleashed pain that was indescribable. I had been through the worse and I was still here.

I healed in the portal. I healed as I insisted on staying with myself as the death of my son ravaged my life, my body, my mind and my spirit. With myself means that I did not abandon myself. The ravaging was intense in its insistence that I not abandon myself and that I find ways to apply the healing balm of Love. Each time I did apply Love, I was calmed and given grace. Each time I tended to myself and fought for what I needed during the time of great sorrow and grief, the grace gathered the broken shards of my heart and started the mending process.

The Love I applied was the Love I have for my son. The Love I applied was the knowing that his Essence is with me always. The Love I applied was the care I received from my own inner resilience and persistence that I would survive the unthinkable. The Love I applied was the kindness from others. The Love I applied was only discovered as I sat in the portal and moaned and broke and cried and screamed and asked for him back. The Love flooded out in those moments.

The Love is the truth that I made it. I made it this long and I have come this far.

He comes with me. I know he does. He lives in my heart. I want him to live right here next to me, but he does not. He has already moved through the portal.

I move through the portal. He urges me. I can feel him in the wind, and see him with the red-tail hawks, soaring in the blue Colorado sky. I stand up, and walk forward. I am glad to not look back. That portal was the hardest 1,111 days I have lived through thus far.

The most difficult and also the most rewarding and satisfying and fulfilling days, because no matter what, I did not abandon myself and I did not ever fall victim to lessening my pain by denying what I experienced. I was in the portal of grief and mourning for a good long while. I still am in it. It is now a part of me. I am forever changed because of the loss of my child. Changed in a way that will support me forever.

I walked through the portal and found out that it comes with me. I now carry within me a portal of grace and light and deep and penetrating healing and this portal opened up to another portal. This new portal is the present, with glimmering hope for a future.

I am hopeful. I am grateful. I am here.

This is a difficult read and may be upsetting, yet it is my hope in writing, that my experience stirs within you something that will lift you, inspire you, or simply help you see yourself and others through the eyes of compassion. When we face the unthinkable, as we all do in some form or another, what do we do? How do we survive?

I feel like a survivor of the greatest battle. My how may not be your how. I will continue to be a beacon of hope and light. I will continue to share my story. I will continue to know that there is a great beyond and that we are beings of pure consciousness and our energy and consciousness never dies, instead it exists in the great beyond and right here in our hearts, soaring above and right next to me as I sit.

The back story~

I went on a hike with some friends, and found myself in what I felt was a physical representation of what I had been feeling, hearing and seeing for many a month. My grief portal would open and I would know when it was time to step through and into some new light and new healing love.

We hiked a place here in Loveland Colorado called Devil's Backbone. A gorgeous winter day. No wind. Being the rock lovers and nature goddesses that we are, I knew that this was the time and place to go through the portal. The pictures were not planned, the day was not planned, yet all happened in perfect flow and synchronicity.

I was guided to sit under the massive boulders in the archway and look up. Fear greeted me, and I wondered if these thousands of years old boulders might just fall on me since they have been standing this way for so long. Maybe today all might fall down and that would be it! That was my cue. Stand up, move through the "keyhole" portal. I did. I walked a bit, and then made a cairn that felt like I have for most of the last three years. Teetering rocks, barely holding on, and yet sturdy and grounded. Grief does that to you by the way. It brings on unfounded fears and reminders of how fragile life is. How it is all put together so precariously really, it's a wonder any of us are alive. Then grief makes you feel strong because there is nothing that can push you when you have already experienced the very worst of the worse. Invincible and fearful all in the same moment. Grief.

Then I sat again and looked at a landscape that was pristine, until people started building their homes in a place that felt like sacred land...

Life goes on. I can still see so far and wide and my heart feels like this vista- mountains and snow and sky. Sure there are houses and people and signs warning us to not walk on the mother earth, but life goes on.

That may be a story for another day.

For now, I am complete. Except for one more detail. I went home and realized that this day of great movement and healing was indeed 1111 days since Brandon left. This is significant because it is our sign. His sign to me. And that is a story for another day also.