"learning to accept Death is learning to embrace life"

    I take the time to write this for some of you may have missed something recently..... you were actually meant to learn from. Its just something different to consider and I wouldn't bother but for the fact a number of you are healers.....plus spirit suggested this to me.


   The greatest of obstacles a healer must face is the inherent, ingrained fear.....of death. We speculate, we argue, we attest, but.....mostly......we fear it. Our cultural roots drill us from before the time we are born with religious imagery about death and all its implied loss........primarily our own......but far more inclusive through implications and supplication. The structure of our DNA also provides us with an even stronger measure against death. Its chemistry creates the pattern which makes us reach for survival to a much greater degree than many may be aware of.
   As a channel I have told personal stories of my own regarding conversations with the spirit of someone who had passed. None of these were made up or copied. It would seem then that I am able to accept death to an easier degree than many others. This may be the case, for I've experienced a powerful classic near-death situation and many close calls in my time, but I can't be sure since I'm not dead.  I've dealt with many who have lost loved ones during the course of my life and some of these interactions were.....simply put....astounding.....leaving the bereaved, as well as myself,  impressed beyond simple doubt that something "guarantees" our spirit lives on. So I want to say that the fear is created by the inability  to control death. The stronger our fear of living is....the stronger our fear of death and dead things will be.
   I find references to death often support its social dogma even among healers. Television shows concerning the supernatural ( a rather ridiculous oxymoron) abound in popularity. Pandering to the issue is rife in all western style thinking. So I thought I'd tell a few stories of my own regarding death and how I've come to being a bit more accepting of all its attachments.
   Many years ago, as a surfer, I watched a man drown off the end of a jetty in Galveston, Texas. There was no way to reach him safely since the surf was unusually big and trying would have likely placed myself and my friend in the same space. It was not pleasant and within fifteen minutes the beach patrol was fishing for his body with long poles. Obviously, I've never forgotten this. One of my high-school icons, a fellow older than I, died standing up in his kitchen from an overdose of heroin. His father found him leaning against the counter stone-dead when he arose for work in the morning. A neighbor of mine, years ago in Vancouver, died in her apartment and nobody knew until she began decomposing. The smell is unforgettable. Ten years ago a distraught neighbor of mine hung himself over his separation. He hung for three days during Halloween in a shed behind the fence between our yards. My dog Jake howled every night but I could not figure out why because I was too preoccupied with my own life. Charley had approached me about depression a couple of weeks before this and I'd invited him to come and talk but he never did. I could go on and on recounting the losses of friends and neighbors.
    I've lived in Prince George for almost thirty years and know many of its people. In small towns death becomes a community issue because everyone is easily connected. Some of the funerals are huge and one begins to realize the scope of connectedness through attendance because there are people who come just because it was a member of their community. The support for the bereaved can be enormous.
    As I stated above there are many instances where I've found myself going beyond the normal support into  paranormal support. I don't care what you think regarding how this works or why because all reason gets suspended at this point. It is from this position I exercise the lesson I intended.
    In 1974, while living and working on a ranch owned by a local pioneer family, Suzanne spent a portion of summer working to find and retrieve 6 bodies of classmates from a local high school. These local teens had decided to canoe the Willow River from  the Highway 16 East bridge to the community of Willow River, not knowing anything about the impassable, treacherous canyon below the bridge area. It is remarkable that none of the parents of these young men were aware of the danger, considering the area involved, with all the outdoor lifestyles. It would seem plausible that someone would have heard of their plan and thought to warn but that never happened. The result was a tradgedy which affected the entire community of Prince George. The funeral was massive with a memoriam in their High School Auditorium.  The young men would have realized their mistake within moments of departure from the park below the bridge but, even without the high spring level of the river, their fate was sealed. Recovery of the bodies was impossible though searchers combed the river for weeks after. The canyon itself was completely off limits to the searchers because of its steep walls, rocks, and channel. It was the foreman of the ranch where Suzanne was living and working who located the first two bodies but this happened a month for one.....and a few weeks later for the second, as the river level dropped with a lessening of spring runoff. Four  months later in late August Suzanne and Miles Perry, her boss, began smelling the others while haying in the back fields along the river. This initiated searching for them and retrieving bones and pieces of clothing etc. until all but one lad had been found. They never found the last one and his brother kept searching and helping out long after the main search was suspended.  Suzanne told me the impact of this on her personally was a staggering eye-opener to death. Her words were, "there is nothing as awful as packing dead bodies, in pieces, out of the bush in backpacks". The marks of bears feeding on them were on a number of the bones and skulls. She was fortunate to have this old pioneer clan to help her handle herself throughout the journey. She knew every single young man, personally, but the boy from the Queen Charlottes. Suz has kept a pictorial record from this event for all these years. I would bet my life there will be hearty thanks passed on to her from their spirits when she greets them on the other side. She is a very special woman with the heart of a lion, balls of steel, and the ability to teach an army how to understand love.
    So..............think about it from my perspective. There are those of us who inadvertently 'stumble' across bodies or scenes of death and never recognize what is happening because we've too many blocking mechanisms in place which avoid the issue every way we can. It is such mechanisms which hold KEYS to our enjoying richer and fuller lives. I read about one such incident in blog world recently and would advise this person to 'look again' at the incident and ask herself whether the 'protection' she thought was given.......may have actually been an offer from the so identified "angels" for her to learn something positive........from finding something so traumatizing to her. Maybe.....just maybe....this was an incident she was guided into to help her with other incidents of loss.....both past and future...........which are forthcoming in her life.......a way of becoming truly familiar with the reality that true healing is found in our abilities to articulate death for others in a properly supported manner.....than a manner full of classical distortions.

    Relations...and relationships never die.....but they do suspend in time....and will be addressed at some other time and space for certain.

Bless us all my Grandothers.......dead and alive.