12- Staying Connected

12- Staying Connected

Unexpectedly widowed at fifty-six, a series of beautifully guided, synchronistic events, had me living at my daughter’s home just prior to, and following, my sweet husband’s untimely passing.  A few weeks before his transition, knowing it was close, Phil and I made an agreement to stay connected.  Our beliefs supported this idea though neither of us knew just how we would pull this off.  Therefore we decided he would be the one to let me know just how that was going to happen once he ‘settled in’ beyond the physical.  

Several weeks after Phil’s passing I was writing one of my evening letters to him in my journal.  This was a practice I had started after his transition to ease my grief and move into a new way of being with him.  It really seemed to help me find ‘us time’ to share my day with him.  But it wasn’t a two-way street and I really wanted that.  Since we had agreed before his passing to keep in touch,  it dawned on me to give him a symbol to use to let me know he was around.  Dragonflies had always been a personal totem for me and was even the logo I used for business in the form of my initials.  This seemed the perfect symbol.  As I wrote the letter telling him to send me dragonflies if he was around, I also wrote how difficult this might be since I was most always inside.  Not long after I put my letter away the phone rang.  Lo and behold, my three year old grandson was put on the phone to tell me about his new temporary “dwagon-fwy”  tattoo.  I laughed and cried and excitedly shared the news with everyone.  Phil was in touch!

Lighter and happier, the next day I shared the news with a girlfriend as I accompanied her to an appointment.  As we sat together across from the man she was seeing, he began questioning me rather than my friend.  I explained that I was just accompanying her, but still he asked me a bit about myself and my work.  As I explained my work, a look of excitement came over his face and he reached beneath the table he was sitting behind, pulled out a rather large book and said,  “Oh, you have to read this!”  A huge dragonfly illustration adorned the cover of the book he held up, and my friend and I could hardly contain our amazement.  The book, as it turned out, addressed many of the esoteric based questions I had been asking my late husband about in the letters I wrote each evening.  This was not only his way of answering the questions, but of saying hello once again.  I know this, because as I went to purchase the book that evening, the edition now available had a new cover….without the dragonfly!  Had I not gone with my girlfriend, I’d have never seen that edition let alone been directed to it for some of the answers I sought.  I have since learned how our loved ones can inspire our thoughts in order to align us with such synchronistic events.  This is exactly what Phil had done!  And he wasn’t through yet.

All of a sudden I began hearing from my family about their own unusual dragonfly experiences.  My mother, who had become widowed only a day before me, had a dragonfly visit her patio daily that she had never encountered before. This went on for a good week or more.  My sweet niece, for the first time she could recall, not only had a dragonfly appear at her home, but it perched itself on her shoulder, which she couldn’t wait to tell me about.  Dragonflies randomly appeared to my daughter and my grandson’s mother around this time as well.  But no dragonfly dance was as profound as the one I experienced a year following Phil’s passing.

Prior to his transition, Phil had never expressed one bit of concern about my life without him.  When I would say how much I was going to miss him, he would simply reply “You’ll be fine.”   For twenty-two years we had done absolutely everything together and loved the introverted cocoon we had built around our life.  Imagining life without him was impossible.  But now, as I look back, I wonder if he intuitively knew something I didn’t.

About a year after Phil’s passing, I went to dinner with a man I had met through yet another series of profound synchronistic events.  Such alignments had become almost a way of life and I needed only to follow the clues scattered like breadcrumbs before me.  Seated at a window overlooking a lake, my mind turned to Phil.  He had loved the water and whenever I am near it he always comes to mind.   I suppose it’s natural, after a long marriage, to wonder if your late spouse approves of your life moving along with someone new.  Having had no doubt, that Phil had a hand in arranging our meeting, as I sat there I wondered what he thought.  At that very moment a huge swarm of tiny dragonflies arose from the lake right in front of the window where we sat.  Hundreds of tiny dragonflies circled and danced outside the window the whole time we were there.  For me it was Phil not only acknowledging his approval, but taking credit for the matchmaking itself, saying….  “See, I told you you’d be fine.”  

Dragonflies were not the only way Phil communicated.  One day, not long after the phone call from my grandson about his timely tattoo, I was in my bedroom at my daughters house tidying up.  I was talking out-loud to Phil as I always did, telling him we needed a better system.  Dragonflies were great for saying hello but I needed something more.  As I continued to talk to Phil about ways we could connect, I reached for the remote and turned on the TV.  Again, perfect timing!   Just as I turned on the TV a woman on the screen was demonstrating how one could use a pendulum to connect with their deceased loved one.  The series, which I had watched countless times, had never even remotely shown anything metaphysical….let alone a clip about connecting with a deceased loved one.  Phil had done it again, and so I reached for a chain that held beautiful handmade glass bead Phil had once bought me.

In the years since his passing I have learned how easy it is for our transitioned loved ones to inspire us with guiding thoughts toward things they want us to know or experience.  The pendulum proved to be a great tool for ongoing communication and greatly reconnected me to Phil on an emotional level in that first year following his transition.  I rarely use it to connect with him today as we are quite literally on a different wavelength and communicate differently.  However, I do use it, and have taught others to use a pendulum, to regain a physical connection to those who have transitioned.  I can’t tell you how many times I have held it and simply asked Phil to use it to ‘hold my hand’.  For us that means the pendulum will spin in a circle with quite an energetic pull as I hold it.  This worked like magic to lift my spirits in the first year following his passing, because the physical absence was so profound.  

Since Phil’s transition I have encountered three separate mediums who have connected with Phil and given me confirmation of messages I intuitively received from him, without me sharing the tiniest bit of such information with them, including his existence!  This initially helped me to trust what I was picking up.  The two mediums I spoke with after I met my new partner even stressed that Phil was taking full credit for having put us together.  I had also intuited this because of the synchronistic alignments that happened to arrange our meeting.  This made me smile and appreciate how he was even taking care of me from the non-physical.  Mediums are great for tapping the lower planes if you can find one with a good track record.  There are lots of charlatans however using something called ‘cold reading’ to appear to have a connection, so, if you are inclined to use one, do your homework.  But, trust me, there is nothing like having your own ongoing connection. Six years into his transition I experience Phil very differently these days.  A couple of years ago my new life partner became my husband, and while he fully embraces the connection I have to Phil, it has become much more subtle. It is my sincere feeling that this subtlety is how Phil honors the life I live today.