A Higher State of Being

At the stroke of death, most of those left behind become different, changed. We see everything different, think different, feel different, react different. I don't know if it is a permanent change or only lasts through the deepest of the grief. I don't know if it is a tool that occurs to protect us, teach us, make us more aware, all of these things. We do become more aware though. Almost too much so. We have become more even as we think we have lost ourselves as well as those we love.

There is that moment when you realize that even the tiniest of noises startle you. Our sense of hearing has heightened. It scares us and causes anxiety because it is an unknown, in our world, unknown can be scary. We gaze out our door and the colors of the have dimmed. As we travel this path, the colors slowly come back, but they come back changed. They become brighter, more defined, more interesting. Our sense of smell. Yeah, that's a rough one because the bad smells can be just as strong as the good ones. I think that is a good time to light incense.

Then, above all of this there is that sense of .. knowing. It is the only word I can think of to call it. We know what people are feeling. We know if they are being sincere or giving lip service. We know if they are angry, upset, happy, sad. We just know. Because we are human, we tell ourselves that we are imaging what we are feeling. That the grief is talking and making us this way. Others think we are effected by grief and once it passes we will get over these emotions. Yes, we are effected by the grief, but not in the way others would try to convince you or you convince yourself.

Of course, I can only speak to this when it comes to my own experiences and have no idea if others are effected in the same way. In the first six weeks after Tim passed, I could not be around too many people at once for it seemed that too many emotions from others were crowding in on me. The grief, sorrow, anger, sadness, worry etc seemed to come out of everyone's pores. I told myself that it was only my grief talking. But, I don't exactly believe that anymore.

Over these long months of loss, I have been put in many situations when my senses told me what was going on and my brain denied it only to be proven later that my senses were spot on. Still, I told myself that it was not happening. I would be talking to someone and feel the lie in their words. Nothing solid, just that it was a lie. I would feel serenity or sadness. I would understand, suddenly, why someone was treating me the way they were. I had always heard and said myself to trust what your inner self is telling you, it rarely steers you wrong. As strong as these senses are now, I listen to them more than I ever did before. So far, they have not been wrong.

The sadness of this is that I had to lose Tim to reach this state. I would rather have him then this, but it was not to be so. Is it compensation for loss? No, I don't think so. I think that our senses come in to play to protect us as we navigate through the many layers of loss. If we listen to them. If we don't allow them to scare us but use them to help us. Will it always be this way now? I don't know.