A survivor herself, author Lucy Hone, wisely notes, “A massive challenge of the bereaved involves letting go of that old life while getting on with embracing the new one” (2017: 132).

After twenty months communicating with and feeling consoled, reassured, comforted, supported, and guided by Karl, why would I cut off contact?

Well, I didn’t intend to.

But then, I didn’t expect to engage in that lengthy communication with him, either.

 

A great blessing in the early parts of my mourning is finding John Bevelander. I find John on the Web after reading about his family’s crash on the Kyogle Road. (Fortunately, he has a distinctive last name, or I might not have found him!)

Soon, we are sharing stories, and he is supporting my activism.

I was meant to meet him. 

Now we are family.

A healing and releasing process

John’s experience of loss and grief catapulted him into a dramatic spiritual transformation. All he could see were blessings nested in his so-called “tragedy”. The synchronicity of meeting John is a tonic for me because his grief is healing so well, and he is moving on. He’d had a year’s head start on me.

In late September 2017, in Brisbane, with John and his friend, Adele (a clairvoyant healer), I experience a healing and releasing process that frees me from my need to stay connected to Karl (via our daily communications). It allows me to reclaim myself and my power to give myself love.

After my experience with John and Adele, I feel like Anaïs Nin (widely credited with this remark): “the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

Hours of powerful psychic readings and shamanic rituals facilitated by Adele and John help me to shift my energies and release the cords that bound me to Karl. I release all commitments and contracts I have made with him. I feel a powerful sense of grief and abandonment leaving my body, especially in my lungs (where Adele discovers I hold my grief).

I guess that Karl also needs to move on without our strong attachment.

A severe case of bronchitis accompanies that great release.

I weep for several days.

For a while, I feel empty.

This season of my grieving comeS to its natural conclusion

During that intensive experience, I realize that this season of my grieving is coming to its natural conclusion. Karl lives forever in my heart, and there is no risk of losing him. Our morning journaling sessions help me immeasurably, partly because I am spending so much time alone and risk falling into depression.

Some friends pull back a bit, hoping, I guess, that I will heal from my loss and get on with my life. Now I am moving on — literally. By the time I surrender to John and Adele’s healing ministrations, I am living a new life in Canada. Having demonstrated my independence to myself, I can now free myself of my dependence on Karl, with whom I continue to have a strong, loving and energetic connection.

As I prepare to pass through this new Gateway of Wisdom, I acknowledge that letting go of my attachment to Karl is necessary for my heart to heal fully and for me to take another courageous step on my new path. I need to set myself free.

I will never forget Karl.

I write in September 2017: 

“Now, we have a different form of acceptance as we move forward. What remains is the pure love flowing between us: what Karl calls our ‘Big Love’.”

Update: how accurate were my perceptions then?

Writing in March 2020, well over two years after my powerful healing experience with John and Adele, I can report that my perceptions at the time did not turn out to be accurate in real life. Today, I feel Karl more strongly and palpably than at any time since his death.

I have only to think about Karl for a split-second, and he enters me. Perhaps I had metaphorically to “cut the cords” back in 2017 to “move on” in other ways.

But our connection remains — and it’s much stronger than it was then.