where are MY signs? remembering Brenda…

Since Brenda died five years ago this May 9, my friend Raven and I have regularly said to one another (a little resentfully, to be honest), “that Brenda, she’s out there helping baby mediums, tickling our other friends on the head, coming through to people who never knew her in life. Where are OUR signs?”

Raven and Valerie and I were with Brenda as she shed her human suit and took her last breath. We still grieve the loss of this astonishing whirlwind of a woman who swept into our lives for three years (me) and two years (Raven and Val). How is it possible to connect so intensely with someone you’ve known for such a short time?

I could say that you’d have to have known Brenda, but that’s not the whole truth. We, as humans, have free will to create in this life. Things aren’t set in stone when we give it another go here, but perhaps we do come with a template, some suggestions, maybe a bit of planning for Certain Big Things to happen here. Big Thing in place, everything else unfolds freely around it, but that primary event (or series of Big Thing events, see below re “long game”) is solid.

Brenda was a Big Thing. Everything and everyone that came together as a result of Brenda was a Big Thing. But even before, from the oddly never-forgotten day in 1992 that my husband (Big Thing) said, out of the blue, “I’ve got your back, honey. Always,” to the way he arranged for me to watch my friend Suzanne’s (Big Thing) Messages of Hope precisely one year after his death, spirit’s been playing that long game. (Which is to say that I have been playing that long game, because despite the intricacies and magical happenings in each of our seemingly separate lives, I AM and the myth of you, as something separate, AM too.)

So Brenda was a Big Thing for myriad reasons, and since she’s been gone, Raven and I have felt left out of the sign game she so eagerly plays with others, a game which commenced within hours of her death.

I remember sitting on her patio waiting for the funeral home folks to come, so very sad, and thinking c’mon, my friend, my heart’s broken. Send me something. And … zilch.

In the next days and weeks, I’d ask again and again. Grief was intense. Why so much so with a friend of three years? We’ve asked ourselves that repeatedly, and the thing I’ve come to, the thing I somehow really knew when we first met, is that she was soul family and, seemingly by chance (but assuredly not so), we found each other again for a too short reunion.

So a while back, sitting in Raven’s haven of a home in Las Cruces, we started talking about Brenda. We’d just come back from Redondo Beach, where we’d met up with Valerie and Rosemary. In this group of four, we were missing one: Brenda. It was Brenda who had organized the original group gathering at her house in 2016, a get together of all-day pajamas, talk of spirit, art, coffee, chocolate, tears, and so much laughter and love that it’s been repeated ever since. And Raven and I were again discussing why we weren’t getting anything from Brenda, who so happily plays with everyone else.

But here’s the reason I’m writing this on the 5th anniversary of her departure. Sitting in Raven’s kitchen, she and I recognized, in looking through old photos and listening again to channeled messages the week of Brenda’s death, that she was sending signs from the beginning. Even to us.

As I sat on Brenda’s patio waiting for the funeral home to come (asking for signs!!!) a rainbow. There’s a photo of it. An hour later in her great room, very meaningful images appearing on the silent big screen above the fireplace. Again, photos! She actually turned on a computer when I was alone in her house, flashing on the screen an encouraging bit of art Suzanne made for us early on (I’ve got your back, girls). (And yep, there’s a photo.) And I intensely felt her presence in helping me choose songs for her celebration of life in the week after lift-off, and on one particular day, she was with me for that work, while Raven was feeling her strongly in Las Cruces. As we were discussing that, Suzanne texted from Flagstaff with a message that Brenda was telling her “listen to the Barbra Streisand song from the album Lynette’s working with, “At The Same Time.” What better way to make it clear she could be with all of us at once?

The very evening of her death, she came through to Suzanne Giesemann and a bunch of developing mediums in a group setting with Susanne Wilson. She had a message for one of the students, now a stellar medium herself, Colleen Smith. Brenda had had a reading with Colleen earlier that year in which Archangel Michael and Mary (the mother one) came through. Once she’d accepted her terminal diagnosis, Brenda told Colleen that they’d be coming to get her at the end and that she ~ Brenda ~ would come back and let Colleen know it was true. She also said she’d be finding Colleen’s son in spirit, Austin, and would bring him forward, after which Colleen “would no longer be allowed to doubt.” And she did just that, sharing it with Wilson ~ who knew nothing of these prior events ~ as a message for Colleen, and for all of us. And for the record, she shared through Suzanne Giesemann that yes, Archangel Michael and Mother Mary lifted her up and out of her chair. “Lynette told everyone I was gone, but I was still right there! I kissed them all on their heads before they took me away.”

Oh, the intricacy of these things! Sometimes it’s almost impossible to follow the threads of these seemingly unrelated events, but when you’re the one who’s made the connection, the end result of heart-quickening truth shivers and certainty of presence are indisputable.

In truth, I’ve had rainbows, lions, and pelicans, Wizard of Oz references, and huge Archangel Michael synchronicities (all of which I asked for before she died). I’ve had little Mitsubishi convertibles just like hers zip by me at the beginning of almost every road trip I’ve taken in the last five years. I had a stunning Brenda sighting at an airport in Tampa, and Raven and I both were stunned to see what looked to be Brenda herself in a gas station in Quartzite. About six weeks after she left, a stranger in a restaurant at Ojo Caliente in northern New Mexico turned to me and, perfectly mimicking Brenda’s tone of voice and the words she’d use after dinner on her end-of-life cruise, held up her arms and said “carry me to my room?” (I actually wrote a blog post about that, and still this insistence there have been no signs.)

This morning on Facebook memories, there’s a post from 2019 where I announced that she’d tickled my hair for the first time. Was it? I’m truly stunned at how many signs I’ve been getting all along, while insisting that everyone else was getting all of her attention, even people who never met her in life.

But that’s the thing, I think. When what we really want is our people back, back in human form, we may miss the obvious indicators of their ongoing presence. This week, Raven’s bedroom was showered in tiny rainbows with no discernible source. Sandy Soulsister brought Brenda through Sunday afternoon with one of the most meaningful messages I’ve received from her since her death. Just yesterday, in Suzanne’s pre-reading “sign game,” Brenda’s message related to the connection with Sandy, about which Suzanne knew nothing.

No signs? It’s grief, no doubt, that blocks the memory of them, just as deep grief can block the receipt of our loved ones’ efforts to assure us they’re still with us. A sign is heavenly, especially when I’m recovering from sadness. When in the thick of it, nothing is good enough to make up for the loss of that love, even when we know what we know about the continuity of life.

She’s five years gone, that Brenda. Since her last breath, she’s become Suzanne’s mediumship guide, she’s lassoed in new friends for her original tribe. She hangs out with my brother-in-law, Gene, who she fell madly in love with in 2017 (my sister would have had reason to worry had Brenda not been gay). She’s learned how to fly birds and shared with all of us her own ongoing evolution in awareness. With the soul name Teacher, it’s no surprise she’d continue sharing with us her discoveries and insights in the All Of It.

Want to meet her? Just ask. Like the divine being known as Wolf Pasakarnis, she comes when called. If you think you’re not getting signs from loved ones, question that. And be at peace knowing that given the true nature of Reality, a sign for one of us is a sign for all of us. In 12 step programs, there’s a saying: “If you find you simply can’t believe, believe that I believe until you can. One day you’ll come to know the truth too.”

Even now, as I’m writing this, I’m covered with chills and my eyes are welling up. She’s right here with me, probably checking my grammar (she the English teacher, me the failed-English-three-times forever-student). She’s hanging out with her best buddy Mike, and laughing as she’s holding my beloved Boo and her little Teddi. That’s the unbreakable connection with Love that’s who we really are and it shows itself in the chills, the welling up. It’s resonance, harmony, knowing, and certainty. And it’s as close as we can come to heaven on earth.