When Mike died I became Homeless. I didn’t actually know what to call it then. I only remember how bereft I felt hearing the last beat of his heart, how it changed everything. The world at 3 pm on September 23, 2012, was vastly different from the world one heartbeat later. It even looked different. The light, the sounds, the people roaming around. It was as if it all fractured. Mike was gone. How could the world go on?

It does, of course, no doubt about that. It goes on and on and on, endlessly it too often seems. At a weekend retreat with some of my dear ones a couple of months ago, I became aware of what Mike really was for me. He was more than a husband, more than the love of my life, more than my best friend. He was a very special place of absolute safety and love. When I lost him, I lost that. I was adrift, even after I started coming back into myself, as the most crushing grief was wearing itself out.

The longing to leave this existence was persistent the first few years after his departure. Oh, there was happiness in there. The worst of the agony of loss abated. But lord have mercy, I wanted to go. I wanted Home back and he wasn’t in this world.

In the fall of 2016, my spiritual teacher, Suzanne Giesemann, released a meditation CD called “Journey of Remembrance.” The whole thing is a wonder, but the first time I listened to the first cut, the actual Journey, I heard the voices of Home. In the resonant tones of Sanaya, Suzanne’s guides who inform all of her work and who provided the input for JofR, I heard the promise of getting to go Home again. “You’ve gone off on a journey… for just a little while.”

“For just a little while.” I know this life isn’t forever, but to hear that in spirit time “for just a little while” is like the blink of an eye was a healing promise that made my heart sing. I can’t properly express what that meditation did for me except to say that it cured my Homesickness. Took it away. A four year plague vanished in 30 minutes. Any time I was beginning to feel that ache, that longing to get out of here, I could listen and be transported.

The cure was solid and left me with a sense of joyful anticipation about what was going to come next in this life. Who’d have thought that after too many years spent slogging along, just going through the motions, crossing off the days of my sentence here like the most hopeless prisoner, I’d again find excitement in being in this world? Cured by a 30 minute meditation? I was. I found myself again happy to be alive.

And then, an unexpected relapse. After my sweet friends, Brenda and Grace, died in May, I was once more fed up. Too many of the people I love are in the misty state and while they’re constantly shouting at me (“Enjoy your life! You have no idea how short it is! We’ll be together again soon enough! You have a purpose, live it while you’re there!”) they were really pissing me off for much of the summer.

Hearing of Brenda’s great bliss in being suddenly transported from “here to Here,” her description of what it’s like to die, was maddening. Grace was last seen strolling down our favorite beach, saying “you were right, Lynette. It’s gorgeous here, and the love! OMG!” And Mike. Always with me, but NOT HERE WITH ME!!! Really? Why am I being punished by being left behind? Even my parents weighed in with happy news from the place I’m not. This life again felt like a hell and I don’t even believe in that worn out old lie. It was Homesickness in full force. Misery.

And then something changed. Doesn’t it always? Thank you, Universe! It started with a Divine experience with a shaman, my beloved Raven, in New Mexico in June and it continued at a gathering with my precious ones in Pennsylvania in August. All of the pieces came back together. There’s a wholeness on the inside I haven’t felt since before Brenda and Grace, but it’s even better. I’m back to Not Homesick, but this new and improved version is an exquisite state of being in which I am so at one with gratitude I feel as if I’m overflowing at times.

There’s a sense of being filled up, bursting with the Love of the Universe, perfectly okay with being here ~ excited about it, in fact. These are feelings I’ve missed desperately. I’m glad to be aware again of the magical possibilities in being human “for just a little while” and fully awake to the fact that I’m more than that.

Home now is a state of being and it’s entirely my own. It is knowing Who I Am while wearing this costume of Lynette. It’s being fully engaged in the play while knowing I’m just an actor. It’s knowing that the Light of Consciousness exists as fully in me as it does in all things. I can lose my awareness of Home but Home never leaves me. It’s impossible. I am That. (FYI: you are too.)

I’m Home again. I’m surrounded by the most beloved friends of many lifetimes, gifts of my husband’s death (and there are always gifts in tragedy if we are willing to see them, as hard as that is to stomach when the loss is fresh). It’s heavenly to share this journey with others who also know the truth. I am so grateful. Mike’s leaving six years ago brought me here. Brenda and Grace added to the journey. Each loss can make us greater if we allow it. I’m thankful. I miss him, I miss them all, but I know the truth now.*

*And this is how it works. As I’m wrapping up this little missive, I click a song on Spotify only to hear instead the music that will always remind me of my Brenda and her last 48 hours. These little bits of magic, like breadcrumbs through the forest, remind us we’re not alone. That makes for a real heaven on earth.