Two Years
~ August 25, 2016 ~The following is a post written by Craig and Lorna’s daughter, Calli. It first appeared on her personal blog CalliLewis.me.
Today marks two years.…I have thought a lot about how to describe the last two years. First off I decided to make a pros and a cons list.
Cons: I don’t get to interact with her physically.
Pros: My mom isn’t in the proverbial pit with me, its not the blind leading the blind, she can see much more than I can.
Immediately following my moms death I remember feeling an urgency from her, an urgency for myself and my siblings to not begin the journey of forgetting her and learning how to live life without her. We had a family group text and I felt like she was using that as an example. “Keep me in the loop as if I was still a part of and responding to the family group text.” Shortly after this experience I was talking to one of my friends who does a lot of meditating. She mentioned that my mom had shown up during her meditation the Saturday night preceding my moms passing. My mom wanted to make sure that in case I wouldn’t be able to hear her after she passed she would have a way to communicate with me.
If I could wave a magic wand and have my mom come back to life I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t do it because I believe that this was the plan for my family from the beginning. I want what I think everyone wants—I want to feel happy, I want to love and be loved. I know that having my mom on the other side of this crazy earth experience increases my ability to experience both joy and love ten fold.
When it comes to my relationship with my mom, I do not focus on how long it is going to be before I see her again. I keep her alive. Keeping her alive in my world is an act of presence, faith, and courage. There were moments soon after my moms passing where I thought it might be easier if I would just start focusing on forgetting her rather than keeping her alive. Meaning believing that I will see her when I die but until then I need to get on with my life as if she were gone. I could honestly just be a certifiable crazy person who has an imaginary friend in the form of my mom, they say death can do crazy things to people.
I don’t believe I am crazy, perhaps the crazy idea is that we are supposed to shut ourselves off to the people who have preceded us in death.
My journey of figuring out what Gods role is in my life, is exactly that—a journey. Growing up I believed that if I followed a certain list of instructions God would then grant me my desires. I don’t believe that anymore. I believe that I sat down with Heavenly parents before I came to this earth and mapped out my life. I chose what I wanted to experience here. It is how I explain the idea “why do bad things happen to good people” “If there was really a God who loved us he wouldn’t let such horrible things happen.” Because God loves us he lets “horrible” things happen. He didn’t send us down here alone. He sent us down here together. I believe we’re all going back, regardless of what we did and didn’t do. We came here for experience, not to prove ourselves worthy of something we already are and have. Gods love for me cannot increase OR decrease so why would I spend all of my time trying to become worthy of a love that cannot change. I believe that God allows me the opportunity to experience the things I desired to experience. That looks like not saving my mom from cancer, not preventing me from being hurt and feeling alone or afraid or any of the other things we pray for deliverance from. We set our lives in motion by coming here. God is not withholding anything from us. He provides us with his Grace. His unending, unearned, unchanging love. Which in turn allows us the opportunity to experience things without being totally crippled by them. I love the children’s book The Little Soul & The Sun by Neale Donald Walsch. Again we are all in this together including those of us on this side of the veil and those of us on the other.
My mom is still here with me, she will always be here with me helping me learn and grow and experience more joy and more love everyday. It’s like having a cheat sheet for a test. I am constantly asking her questions. The answers come in all sorts of ways—through music, through thoughts in my head as soon as I wake up, through dreams, through pictures in my mind, through words in my mind. It is a language we all speak, we just have to remember how to speak it. We can only put our energy in so many places. What we water grows. My thoughts are the water. I have spent a lot of time watering my relationship with Heaven. Consequently my relationship with my mom has grown, it is strong and it is thriving.
God is so good. Life really is so very beautiful.
Calli’s journal; August 24, 2017
It has been three years since my mom passed away. This year has been full of all the “feels” when it comes to her death.
Following my mom’s passing if I felt like the reality of her being gone was too much, I would often chant over and over again to myself “I am okay, I am okay, I am okay”. Following one of these chants I heard her in my mind say; “I am not okay with just okay, I want you to be happy and I will help you”.
My mom was a problem solver, I am very much like her in that regard. About a month ago I was thinking about my mom and I realized that when she died something very deep inside of me broke in a way I had never experienced before. It was almost like the for the past three years a part of me has been on a constant adrenaline rush trying to find a solution for what had happened to my heart. If I kept going and looking then the adrenaline rush would continue and I wouldn’t feel the complete impact of her loss.
Like I said earlier, this like has been full of ALL the feels. When myself and my family have expressed to people on many occasions that her passing has been one of the most beautiful gifts, it is true. It genuinely has been a time of so much learning, loving, continued grace and beautiful experiences.
For me there has never been an experience like death that has shown me that I am not just human. My soul knows there is no separation, my mom has told me three different times that she is not going anywhere, she is NEVER leaving me. It doesn’t matter how many years go by, or if my life is going so beautifully that it would seem like I didn’t need her, she’s never leaving. This knowing and me trusting is what has made the last three years so beautiful.
I do believe in a God that is loving. I also believe that love is all things. It is not just nice, kind, comfortable, it is all the feels. I have heard many times that our lives are like a big tapestry, each color representing different experiences. Losing someone so close to us in my opinion adds a lot of colors really fast. It changes you permanently almost like an accident that would cause someone to walk with a limp for the rest of their life.
I think that most of us from the time we are young are often told to not dirty, to try not to break things, and often is something does get dirty or broken it can be fixed or replaced. Losing my mom can’t be fixed or replaced for my human self. So I have been forced to feel all the feels, to experience things I never had to before. It has created a permanent change in me. It has made me more compassionate, tender, and mature, given me a depth that I didn’t have before.
One night I was surrounded by some women that I love. I was expressing at that moment how much I missed my mom. As I was talking with them I realized that in some ways I wanted to keep myself separate from all of the other people who had lost their moms, and they did not appear to be okay. I did not think that I could do it like they appeared to be doing it. I was not going to belong to the lost moms club. As I was expressing this to them, one of them said; well I am in the lost moms club, do you not want to be connected to me? It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be, I was scared to be. I think one of the most difficult things to do in this life is to just BE with each other in pain. Not having a solution for it, not being able to fix it, just sitting and being with each other in moments of intense heartache. I fortunately or unfortunately have learned how to just BE with intense heartache. For me simultaneously there is also soooooo much love.
I am part of the dead mothers club. This was the scariest club that ever existed to me. I did not believe that I would survive. I have survived, and way more often than not I am so much better that OKAY. I love my mom, I feel her everyday, I have created a new relationship with her that is so precious to me. All of this kind of happened by default. I didn’t have a choice but to figure out how to reconnect with her. Today as I reflect on her being gone for three years I am grateful for all the feels that happen on this beautiful earth.
Love you Mom
Calli’s Journal; September 16, 2019
Happy birthday mom. Life seemed so predictable before you died, turns out predictability really is for the birds. Most days when I let myself really think about you being gone it feels like a really long dream that I can’t seem to wake up from. It is not necessarily a sad dream, it is just so far from what I ever imagined.
When you first died I felt like I was thrown onto the front lines of a war I never ever wanted to fight. Every year that goes by it does get easier, I get more and more used to life without you in it the way you used to be. I no longer feel that I am fighting in any war. I know that you are and will always be with me. I miss the ways in which we used to interact, but I love and am so grateful for the ways that we now interact. I love you forever and consider myself the luckiest girl in the world to get to be your daughter.
Calli’s Journal; August 24, 2020
6 years…I’m so thankful that I can still see her in my mind. I’m thankful that the image I see is of her laughing. My dad, siblings and I believe that her ability to love, watch over, help and protect us is much greater now than it ever could have been if she were still here. One of the most amazing gifts is watching my dad continue to parent us kids WITH her. It is a beautiful thing to behold. I am thankful everyday for my mom, for the ways she is still a part of my life, my kids lives, my friends and families lives, it is truly remarkable.
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