I have a guardian angel. We all do. I became keenly aware of mine the day Jordon called me to tell me to meet him at the cancer center because he had just found out he had advanced metastatic cancer. I have written about my guardian angel’s presence in the car with me on the drive over in my book. I had an hour drive by myself and I needed some support to get me there safely with this news heavy on my heart, mind, and body. Today I want to tell you about the pain jar he holds for me.

My guardian angel is more like a guide. He is Native American and he speaks quietly to me with light pokes with his arrows and gentle pats when something is happening that I need to take notice of. I don’t hear direction from him; he is just a large force I can feel that is keeping me moving forward, steadily. He is silent, but his love and compassion is great. Slow steady positive pressure is his way. But I know one thing for sure that he has shown me. He holds for me my deepest, saddest, most awful pain in a jar. Twice before Jordon died he opened the jar, just a touch, for me to experience what pure, raw, unforgiving grief feels like. The experience had me both times curl up in a ball and wanting to die. That pain, for just those two short times, drives me for the rest of my life to try to reach out and help others who live day to day with that gut-wrenching emotion of loss and despair. I know without a doubt that I would not be able to write, share, understand, or cope if I was living out that pain day to day. I know its there. I have felt it. And my heart breaks every time I meet someone who’s in the clutches of it.

The key to healing is to not get stuck in that pain and to move forward. That pain is the pure pain of physical separation from someone you love. It is the act of breaking a physical love-bond and it is excruciating. That person is no longer here to hold, to kiss, to hug, and to share with. The physical void has no relief or resolution to it.  This, my friends, is a life experience that we will all go through at some point.  No one escapes losing someone they love, unless you are the first to go.  The key to passing over this pain is to live, breathe, love, and accept the connection and continuum of spirit and oneness that you have with that person and to oneness with all.  Know we really never die, but just cross over. The only death is a physical death. When we really accept this as truth and live and bathe in belief, and notice the signs all around us, healing comes in and takes over and love and light fills the heart, mind, and spirit with joy and gladness and forward understanding of another time when we will be connected again. These statements have become cliché sentiments over time and are often over looked with simple comments from well-wishers to the point that people often see it as a glossy term of endearment or a generalized safe statement to the bereaved…..But truth often lies in the clichés. The truth really is~ till we meet again.