Grief Graffiti

One of my good friends gave me a book called Signs written by Laura Jackson, a renowned psychic medium. In it she talks about how to ask for and recognize signs from the other side–messages of comfort from loved ones who have passed that impart a greater understanding of our interconnectedness. I found this book inspiring & practical, deeply comforting & wonderfully motivational. On days where I felt especially sad or missing my son I would ask him to send a sign & he always did. One day I was sitting in my yard meditating with my eyes closed and asking for a sign that he was ok. I suddenly heard a buzzing sound and quickly opened my eyes thinking it was a wasp or something, and there right in front of my face was a brightly colored hummingbird. It hovered & stayed there for at least a full minute bringing me to joyful tears. It was beautiful.

For some reason in the early days of my grief I felt like Tristan was mad at me, angry that I didn’t save him. I couldn’t shake the feeling & one day it was especially heavy. I decided to “talk” to him about it & asked him to please show me a sign that he wasn’t mad, that he still loved me “to the moon & back”, as was our saying. I waited awhile & no sign, so I went about my day. That afternoon a girlfriend of mine invited me to lunch and said she had a gift for me. We met and she gave me a book called Yoga 365, a book with quotes for each day of the year. When I got home I immediately went to April 11th & read the quote for the day. Then I went to work and left it on my desk.

One of Tristan’s close friends had asked me for his “graffiti jacket’, a jacket he was famous for wearing when writing his tags around the city, as his friend wanted to wear it while writing graffiti in honor of my son. So I gave it to him. Later in the day he called to tell me he found a polaroid picture (see top of this page) in the pocket & wanted to make sure I got it right away. It’s a photo of a canvas I made from a picture of a graffiti piece my son did in Portland for me on my birthday. He obviously kept it with him in his lucky jacket to keep me close to him. I was so touched.

I picked up the polaroid, but it being summer in Phoenix I was worried it would melt or fade in the heat, so I stopped by my house & was going to leave it on my desk. My office has a large skylight, and again I didn’t want the sunlight to fade the picture, so I quickly opened the front cover of the little yoga book I’d left on my desk and put the picture in it. The next day I bought a little frame for it. When I opened the front cover of the book to take the polaroid out I noticed a sticker in the binding of the book that I hadn’t noticed before:

I assumed my friend had put it there knowing it was our saying, so I called her and apologized for not thanking her sooner for being so thoughtful. She said she did not put it there! She said she had purchased one of the same books for herself and there was no sticker in the binding of hers. I got goosebumps all over. I knew it was Tristan giving me the sign I had asked for, telling me he still loved me “to the moon & back”!

“I deeply believe in science, but I also believe in things we cannot prove. In fact, as a physician caring for patients who are near death, I feel I have a unique perspective on our passage from this life. Separate from our physical bodies, I believe, we are all energetic beings. There are people here who are sensitive to this energy, & to our collective energy. Maybe we all have that ability, but we get caught up in the physical here and now–you know, our car is making a funny noise, or the mortgage is due, or whatever–and we focus on that & turn away from the energy of others, and from our collective energy. If instead, we stay open to this energy–to the way our lives and our energy interconnect with those of others–we can identify less with our physical bodies and more with our spiritual selves. I have received so much visual confirmation that we are more than our physical bodies, and knowing that has brought me such peace.” This is how Doctor Neil Spector, a Duke University oncologist & cancer researcher explained the story of his sign in his book, “Gone in a Heartbeat: a Physician’s Search for True Healing”.

Laura Lynne Jackson, “Signs”