Grief Graffiti

“Hope is like a golden ring. If I took the ring from your finger & tossed it into a lake, you would not have it, & it would be gone forever. If I took the ring from your finger, and held it in the palm of my hand forever, you would also not have it, but it would never be lost. This is hope; that we hold precious is held in the hand of the Infinite Light–forever.”

-St Anthony via George Anderson (considered world’s greatest living Medium)

The gift of consolation is a commodity that is not confined only to the hereafter. We also have the ability to bring the gift of consolation to others who may be just experiencing the first black moments of their grief. The souls have been adamant about not having their messages of hope fall into only few ears and hearts just because they happen to have been directed to their loved ones still on the earth. They want us to take the message of their wisdom and peace to wherever it might be needed. That is our part of the gift we must share.

Bereaved parents make up the greatest percentage of people coming to me for a session. It is easy to understand why— the souls have told me that without question, choosing the path of bereaved parent in the journey of our life on earth is the hardest decision we will ever have made for ourselves, and the loss of a child eventually affects every aspect of life. There are no other people so conspicuous in their bereavement. Parents who have lost a child will be identified by their loss with friends, family, and associates for the rest of their lives. There is a second wave to the tragedy of having lost a child, which takes the form of guilt, shame, and standing apart from the rest of the world because the most unnatural of losses has befallen them. It is a terribly cruel circumstance in the life of any bereaved parent, but it is the one circumstance on the earth that the Infinite Light considers truly heroic. The souls have told me that great blessings and indescribable joy await bereaved parents at the time of their own passing. The problem is, that will be then, and this is now.

What I have found after working with so many bereaved parents over the years is that although they have been hit the hardest by loss, their capacity to give hope and consolation to another is the most generous. It is also a fact that has not gone unnoticed by their children and the Infinite Light. In our grief support programs, we thought hard about how no help these parents to help each other, and came up with the idea of having a special group program where bereaved parents can hear the communication with their children, and also be in the company of other parents to understand that they are not alone, and that the loss of a child is a life lesson for both the parent and the child–not a punishment by some perverse God. These parent-only groups have had a by-product we hadn’t even counted on; these parents at the group would introduce themselves and make friends with other parents who know, understand, and care about what they are going through. It is probably the best illustration I have seen in sharing the gifts of hope we receive from our loved ones in the hereafter.

Our only true gift on this earth is having shared our life with another for even a short time. During times when we can only look at our loss in terms of what we have lost, the real gift comes in knowing that another soul has chosen us to spend its short time with, and the reward is the time we had. If we look at the loss as a tragedy, we will never understand what a gift we received. The soul of a loved one is so much more than the physical presence it took up on the earth. To curse the passing of our loved one is to not understand that our loved one is a complete and total being, on a separate journey from our own, no matter how many times the roads intertwine, and no matter when they separate. We have to look at each other as souls on a course and not physical bodies that are faulted and frail; our souls are invincible and they go on. Our gift is having spent any time at all with another soul that we love. Something given to us even for a second gives us a lifetime of memories, and although I hate clichés, the souls indeed have agreed that it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved. Imagine never having been touched by the soul of your loved one on the earth—it is an empty experience, and that is real death. Our potential to love, to hurt, to recover, and to eventually learn shields us from true death. At a time when we feel so much has been taken from us, it is the one true gift the souls can give us—a gift of peace. (excerpt from “Walking in the Garden of Souls” by George Anderson)