When Spirit Calls.

I thought that I might just die from this pain that was slowly crushing the life out of me. He is dead. Oh my god! He is gone from this world. It just can't be.
The sharp loud ringing was disturbing the report I was writing at the addictions centre I was working at.

Waking up that morning, everything was familiar, as was the Bonaparte Creek gurgling its way past my window. The car purred along as I drove the winding highway to work. Oh Creator, thank you for filling me with this beauty everyday. The majesty of the interior of British Columbia is still one of the most beautiful places that I have lived in. Gentle hills rolling into the Thompson River, an eagle swooping down to pull a trout that dangles from mighty talons. Dark green pines with a short shadow, as the morning light sent beams of silver into the water tumbling from mountains high. I loved to see the hills lying like full breasts on the Mother Earth who was now getting ready to wear her winter coat. A view from the hilltops let a glimpse of the valleys below beckon me to enter to the silence within.

That persistent ringing not only interrupted my writing, it changed how I was to understand and live my life. "Who is this?," I asked. "its me, Russell," sobbed my eldest son. "What has happened?" I shouted. "Oh god mom, I don't think I can make it. It's awful. There's been an accident and uncle Randy is dead and Billy is in the Campbell River hospital in intensive care."

Dead? this totally foreign thought brought white shocking pain like someone was crushing my head. "Oh God mom, please come. I can't make it. Please come here. I just can't make it," pleaded Russell.

As I left my body, I could hear the anguish and moaning of us both, that carried me into a grey misty place. Someone's screaming slammed me back into the room that was now void of any warmth. Shaking and numb, I could hear him trying to tell me what had happened. "They were on their way to Vancouver Island; Uncle Randy picked up Billy and took him with him. They were going around a series of S curves and the semi-trailer flipped over the guard rail and down a 70 foot cliff into Buttle Lake. He was carrying 39,000 litres of propane."

Randy, my brother, dead and my youngest son was clinging to life in the hospital on the Island? There was more, but I didn't hear, except the part that he was leaving for the Island and would see me as soon as I got there.

I was in a NO Place. There were muffled sounds of my co-workers making plane arrangements. Someone driving me home on the highway that hours earlier, was magic. The world held no colors, no more magic or beauty--just the wind screaming over the tops of trees that seemed to have suddenly dropped all their leaves. They too felt a life stripped and barren.

Oh my God, Randy is dead, echoed in my being like an endless loop of sad, sad song.
"I'll see you in 3 days," he said. "I'll be back for supper on Wednesday, I won't be long."

The sudden wrenching away of a loved one steals what you know to be normal. How you see the world and how you react to seemingly everyday situations changes in that moment of time. There is no beginning or end, just that loop calling you to leave and go away from the pain.

How can anyone just be gone in the blink of an eye? One moment here talking, laughing, seeing their smile, holding them, hearing them tell you they'll see you soon. I suspected that there are times in this continuum, (that we know as time)that is your portal to go to the great beyond. Like we came with a map and when we get to that portal, something reminds us this is where we leave and we have no control over this. It takes you as you are, finished or not. So was this it? Oh Randy, did the elders who have gone before us, meet you here? No, this was the doing of the Great One and I screamed to him, "I know you who makes all things and knows all things did this. I have walked and always knew you lead the way, but this has got to be a mistake. This can't be right. We had no warning. No time to say good-by. He had every reason to live. Why did you take my brother? Why??? became the endless loop. Another verse of the sad song.