Eric C. Bow

Everyone says that in the grief journey, holidays are the worst. Well I had a lovely Easter. Good Friday, James and I enjoyed Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis performed magnificently by the Grand Philharmonic Choir. Saturday was a good day too – breakfast with James and Nora, then over to their house to join Erin and Vivi and watch the granddaughter open Pat’s and my Easter presents and eat lots of chocolate. In the afternoon I walked one of Pat’s favourite walks through the neighbourhood seeing lots of flowers in bloom. Quiet evening watching TV and reading. Sunday the big day – Acts 2:32 This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses – started by James and I attending the 11 am service at Holy Saviour. Fr. Carver’s sermon was very moving; all about how Love is stronger than Death a topic you all know I’ve been thinking about a lot. The Communion was also very movingly done by The Venerable Cy Ladds who was obviously moved by it too. After Mass, I drove out to visit Pat and put flowers on Pat’s grave for Easter. Prayed: May Patricia evermore dwell in me and I in her through Jesus Christ. Amen. On way back home had coffee and a lovely chat with the owner of Angie’s Waterloo about Pat and picked up a fresh loaf of bread for Easter Dinner. Brought over to James and Erin’s my contributions to our Easter Dinner – sirloin tip pot roast, the bread, French rhubarb custard pie and a bottle of wine. Rosemarie and Michael contributed very good mashed potatoes and lots of candies and presents for the girls. We didn’t talk about Pat so as not to disturb the granddaughters. It was a very pleasant weekend all in all and not at all hard for me.
It is only when you have great expectations that it gets hard. Well I did have great expectations. Easter is about Love conquering Death and about the Resurrection. I was expecting a break-through in my communications with Pat and a strengthening of our communion with each other. That was my deepest silent prayer. By bed time nothing had happened but I still had hopes. Even went to bed early in hopes of a dream revelation.
Did I ever have a bad night! Those were not dreams or revelations I had. My night was filled with nightmares and not a bit of the Love I was expecting. The nightmares brought back everything I felt during the first few days after she died; grief had come full circle. There was the fear but, this time I was truly afraid. I thought Pat’s Real Presence was leaving me. A couple of the bad dreams were about Pat breaking up with me, abandoning me, changing her phone number so I couldn’t find her. Changing her appearance so I wouldn’t recognize her. (She had painted a third eye in the middle of her forehead in one dream; just like you sometimes see in fortune teller posters.) Yes, I felt great anger at this abandoment. And I felt the great loss again. I was very much alone in my dreams. I felt abandoned by everybody and everything – where was that great comforter whose resurrection we had celebrated Easter Day. Here I was for most of the night in HELL. Was Christ showing me what He experienced when He descended into hell?
All this because I got greedy in my wants and expectations. I don’t want the sense of Pat’s presence to disappear in a second death; I want it to last forever. I just wanted it to be stronger. I wanted to hear her words again and feel her kisses. My love for her has not died, it shall continue forever. I must learn patience; the real presence and our love is growing and I just have to wait. Time has no relevance to her (or God) in eternity. She is still in my heart and her presence IS still getting stronger. O Lord, I most humbly beseech thee of thy great goodness to comfort and succour me in this transitory life and give me the grace to rejoice in Pat’s fellowship in Heaven and in my heart. Amen.

It seems I am not getting through to many what I mean when I say I believe the death of a spouse is truly different from the loss of any other family member. I found that those who understood were either High Anglicans or Catholics. So, I looked up what the Catholic Church had to say about marriage.
In the Catechism of the Catholic Church it is explained that “the intimate community of life and love which constitutes the married state has been established by the Creator and endowed by him with its own proper laws. God himself is the author of marriage.” The vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator. ” By reason of their state in life and of their order, Christian spouses have their own special gifts in the People of God. “This grace proper to the sacrament of Matrimony is intended to perfect the couple’s love and to strengthen their indissoluble unity. By this grace, they “help one another to attain holiness in their married life and in welcoming and educating their children.” Christ is the source of this grace. “Just as of old God encountered his people with a covenant of love and fidelity, so our Savior, the spouse of the Church, now encounters Christian spouses through the sacrament of Matrimony. “Christ dwells with them, gives them the strength to take up their crosses and so follow him, to rise again after they have fallen, to forgive one another, to bear one another’s burdens” “and to love one another with supernatural, tender, and fruitful love”
Wow that is right on. It is what I’ve been trying to say. In the sacrament of marriage God joins two entities into one. The term “one flesh” means that just as our bodies are one whole entity and cannot be divided into pieces and still be a whole, so God intended it to be with the marriage relationship. There are no longer two entities (two individuals), but now there is one entity (a married couple). There are a number of aspects to this union. First and foremost, our identity is bound with one another, the identity of each is united in the identity of the marriage. The death of a spouse is truly different from the loss of any other family member; the spiritual entity made by God remains united; half in my heart the other half in heaven. I believe this with all my being; I really haven’t lost Patricia I have gained Christ; I am one with her in the arms of Christ in Heaven and she is still one with me in my heart.
God has a higher calling for marriage. Even as we were serving Christ with our lives before marriage, in marriage we served Christ together as a unit. I was joyful when Pat was confirmed and able to take communion beside me. As a couple pursues serving Christ together, the joy which the Spirit gives filled our marriage. In the Garden of Eden, there were three present (Adam, Eve, and God), and there was joy. So, if God is central in a marriage today, there also will be joy. Without God, a true and full oneness is not possible. C. S. Lewis understood this when he wrote to Sheldon Vanauken that Sheldon should work toward the perfect marriage, “GOD and US”. I add, marriage is an earthly trinity – Pat, I and the third person, our Love. God created marriage in the image of the Trinity.
True Love in marriage forces us with all our being, to acknowledge in each other that same absolute central significance which, because of the power of our egos, we are conscious of only in our own selves – our very egos unite! Our identity, the very center of our personal being shifts to our marriage, this leads to the indissoluble union of two lives into one: only of it does the Bible say: “They shall be one flesh”. And after  the death of both shall become united in one real eternal being. I repeat what I’ve said before: when, death separates the physical entities into two halves – half in my heart, the other half in heaven, it upsets the equilibrium of wholeness and causes the pain of grief as both halves chase after each other as they seek a new balance with each other. We will not be fully whole again until we both are fully one in Heaven.

Why do people worry when you speak, fantasise. or write about wanting to die. Easter, of all times of the year, is a time surely when it is permissible to want to die. Christ’s resurrection gave us all something to look forward to, our own resurrection. The very thought should make you “feel good” and may also give an “atmosphere of growth” to your life, a way out of grief, because the future seems bright. The ad for ‘The Kennedys: After Camelot’ (an American television drama) has Jackie asking a priest if it is wrong to pray for death. I would answer that no it isn’t wrong; Simeon did it and even Christ asked for this cup to be taken from him. Speaking, fantasising or writing about wanting to die DOES NOT mean you are about to commit suicide. I have a 95 year old friend who lost her special love a few years ago, who wants to join him in heaven and finds talking about this very comforting. I am sure she will not commit suicide. She has medical problems and has signed a ‘No Heroic Measures’ document but that is as far as she will go. She is happy but, like me sometimes melancholy.  She has great grand children and would never do anything to hurt them. I too would never do anything to hurt my grandchildren. Pat would not allow me to hurt them. Please let us have our dreams of reunion with our loved ones; we need them to handle our grief.

Patricia and I were two halves that together complete wholeness. Pat and I were the starting point in the sacrament of marriage where God joins two entities into one. When something is whole, it is unchanging and complete. So, when, death separates the physical entities into two halves – half in my heart, the other half in heaven, it upsets the equilibrium of wholeness and causes the pain of grief as both halves chase after each other as they seek a new balance with each other. We will not be fully whole again until we both are fully one in Heaven. In the meantime, I repeat, I really haven’t lost Patricia I have gained Christ and am with Pat in the arms of Christ in Heaven and she is still one with me in my heart.
The Bible says “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. (Genesis 1:27). It is not the physical body God “made” in His image but the soul and love. Men and women were created in the image of God the Father and the Son by the Holy Ghost, a human body is not essential to image bearing. It is the identity we feel in our loved one’s presence that is created in God’s image. Marriage was also created in His Image. When we marry, we become a three in one united soul – Pat, I and our Love, three persons, the image of the divine Trinity. I rejoice in her PEACE and in the prospect of once again being fully one with her in Heaven.
When Pat was alive we worked for the good of each other. We never shut each other out. In Pat’s words, we were “communicating bubbles”. She thought our marriage type, two intersecting circles, was the best type of marriage. She wrote, “I think we have learned to be kind to each other. A little wary of each other’s privacy, but still touching.” Our quiet love was a communion, a sharing of the wonders of the three persons (Pat, I and Love). We were most usually together and always aware of each other. We held hands not only when she was 64 but right to the end. We rested with our heads on each other’s shoulders. Our souls were united even then; yes, we had true love – it conformed to and revealed each other’s soul. It flowed from our decision to become One, as per our marriage vows. Love was the very center of our personal lives.
This type of love extends beyond the grave especially as Christ defeated Death. Okay the one left behind is incomplete, hurting and no longer whole. But there is still communion. Communion flows from the loved one in Heaven to the grieving one still in the physical world. It is the third entity, Love, continuing to love and to restore the balance between Pat and I. We are still growing in Love and becoming that eternal united One, a union that will endure beyond the grave. A union of intellect, identity, attention and souls – a union with God.
I believe when I join Pat in Heaven we will be born again as a united eternal soul, a new unit of wholeness but still a trinity – Pat I and Love. Already I feel Pat becoming stronger in me.

Eventually C. S. Lewis accepted the presence of Joy, his departed wife, though he believed it was not the soul but her intellect. He speaks of the experience, “It was incredibly unemotional. Just the impression of her mind momentarily facing my own.”  He calls it more like intelligence and attention. To me that is what the soul is – intelligence and attention. It is that which watches us, that unites two in love into one. When I feel Pat’s presence it is what I feel but I also feel the essence of Pat, her feelings, pleasure, love and peace.

I had such a feeling this morning as I was waking but still dreaming. I am sure it was Pat – it had her personal identity and true love. Pat was creating (drawing) an animated heart (beating) covered in rose wreaths and growing until it covered the entire field of vision. I felt her love and knew instantly that she was telling me she still loved me, that love is forever and our love is still growing. Yes, more than just intellect and attention but just as real as Lewis’ Joy presence.

Such after death appearances refute the claims by some that the dead have “gone to their rest”, that “their work is done”, and that they “sleep in peace”. While they are at peace and in the arms of Christ, their work is not done, they are not resting, and they are growing and preparing for the birth of two entities into that one resurrection body in heaven. There is soul work still to be done. As Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault (LOVE is stronger than DEATH) writes, “the very purpose of true love is to form a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts and, through the strength of that union, imperious to death.”

Rev Cynthia also explains why often somehow these after death appearances feel sexual. She writes, “And there is also sexuality that, clarified of the craving and attachment, is truly Eucharistic – “This is my body, given for you” – A drawing near to the other with all that one has and is: in conscious love; to give the innermost gift of oneself, in the most intimate foretaste of divine union that can be known in human flesh.”

The writings on grief are filled with survivors blaming God for their loss and as a result abandoning their faith. Some religions try to comfort the bereaved by saying it was God’s will and there are some that say the deceased did something to deserve to die. All in the belief that because God knows what is going to happen He wills it to happen. Nothing could be further from the reality of God; God is outside time and sees what is in time all at once. Yes, he is all powerful and could spare the deceased death but, that would be to deny us our free will. God created the universe, probably in a big bang but, the universe follows logical laws not Gods will. We are as subject to the laws of nature as any physical object. We die because that is how our bodies work or nature takes us in a perfect storm not because of the will of God. We should not be blaming either the deceased or God for the death. God didn’t cause Pat’s death, cancer did. What God did was take her up in His arms to the place in Heaven promised by Christ. Rather than ending, our love continues beyond the grave. This is the meaning of Easter. Patricia is in the arms of Christ and we shall love each other forever. Hallelujah!

C. S. Lewis’ fear that the real image of his wife, Joy, would be replaced by his memories of her changed by what he wanted her to have been or remembered her to have been without the parts that he didn’t want – she’d become an idealized image. The real Joy was no longer there as a reference point to ensure accuracy. He feared instead of loving the real her he would be loving his image of her and it would be more him than her. When you think about it, it probably explains why Christ gave His followers the Mass. “Do this in remembrance of me” and further instructed them to do this as oft as they gathered together in his memory. The Mass ensures both a collective more accurate memory and evokes the real presence of Christ as a reference point. You can’t go far wrong if you have the presence of Christ correcting you.
I think that Lewis has raised a real danger for many people on the grief journey. The pain makes them remember only the good and the image of their loved one gradually becomes idealized and no longer accurate. It could happen to me as well. Already I find it difficult to visualize her in my mind (without the aid of photos) or remember ALL of her as she was in the last few months. It is why I appreciated her dairies when I put together Quiet Love. In the early part of the journey, grief seems to throw a blanket over you that clouds out everything.
In some of my posts I occasionally have let my image of Pat speak. But when I go too far from who she really was/is her presence corrects me. She gets crotchety on that screen she types to me on and the words flow very fast. Pat snaps at me about what I wrote and she corrects me or tells me not to dare to write about that. I am reminded that she is much more than the she who lives in my memory. She is not dead, she is risen and in the loving arms of Christ and partly in me. C. S. Lewis wrote “The most precious gift that marriage gave me was this constant impact of something very close and intimate yet all the time other, resistant – in a word, real.” Lewis rejects that the two made one of the marriage sacrament, continues for all eternity.
The problem of not confusing the memory Pat with the Real presence Pat could also be in me; but, isn’t because I believe Love is stronger than Death. Thank God for her corrections, scolding, reassurances and declarations of love and for her very real presence. I can feel her approval when I get something right and her anger when I get something wrong because of that presence. I am in love with the Real her and unlike Lewis I don’t have to worry about falling in love with my created image of Pat. I don’t need an graven image of Pat, in the Real presence of her in me I have the real thing.
She IS at peace now. At her death, she was taken directly into the arms of Christ and into that peace that passeth all understanding. Every time she communicates with me I can feel that peace in her. Unfortunately, I don’t seem to share that peace yet, even though I feel her presence in me. I still feel lonely and still cry for proof and comfort with mad endearments and entreaties spoken to her and God. Lord I believe help me in my unbelief. Amen

Pat wrote, “Perhaps it is enough simply to believe the spirit does not died.”  We all have some doubts about life after death. I can’t imagine that there isn’t life after death but there is still that little nagging occasional doubt that Pat had when she wrote that sentence. The little essence that was in Pat and is in me can’t just snuff out at death. It is far too real. Yet there are some who believe this.

All Christians and Jews I talk to believe in life after death and look forward to rejoining their loved ones in heaven. Mind you many have not thought it though and have no idea what heaven or life is going to be like after death. I suspect but don’t know that all world religions believe in life after death. A god and life after death are after all what “religion” is all about. Life after death is a compulsion of the human mind; it is very difficult for a human being not to believe in it even if it is just a belief that something lives on after we die.

Christians believe Christ’s promise that there is a place for each of us believers prepared by Christ himself. Yes, Pat and I believe that completely. We also believe the New Testament passages promising we will recognize our loved ones even in their new eternal Christ-like body and that our loved ones will be waiting for us when we get to heaven to help our rebirth into the eternal resurrection body.

Pat and I also believed very strongly in the sacrament of marriage.  We believe that in marriage two entities are made one by God never to be separated. Even by death itself. In fact, we are made whole again by death. We also both believe that love continues after death and continues to grow every stronger. As described by Pat, though we are two individuals we are still united as one when we depart this life here on earth. We are a trinity – Pat, I and the person that our love is. The third person, Love, is the binding force just like the Holy Ghost in the divine Trinity. Christians have always believed that God is Love and that LOVE is what unites us all in the communion of Saints.

“For you must realize,” says Jacob Boehme, (Confessions) “that earth unfolds its properties and powers in union with Heaven aloft above us, and there is one Heart, one Being, one Will, one God, all in all.” On the Grief Journey, you eventually stop running and simply look in your own heart and are swallowed by the embrace of your loved one in her eternal resurrection body (explains that kiss the day after she died) – you are united again in the love of Christ. You realize nothing has changed, you are whole again and nothing, no part of your love is taken away. As physically lonely as you are, you continue to grow in love forever.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Enduring is part of Christian love, the love which brought Pat and I together in marriage. The end of the great journey is when you discover God has been calling you to become true man and wife united in one eternal resurrection body in Heaven. C. S. Lewis’ GOD and US at last. Christianity has always held that the difference is, in fact, soul deep, that the souls and resurrected bodies of men and women are masculine and feminine through all eternity. Men and women are equal but different. They complement each other. They are the Chinese Yin and Yang the founding principal of the universe

Pat is at peace, that same love and peace of God also surrounds and uphold all of us, her family, and all who mourn. Neither death nor any created thing is able to separate us from the divine love we share in a Holy Communion that continues beyond death. Now we see through a glass dimly, but then we shall see clearly face to face. I compare the mystery of death to the mystery and wonder of life itself. Once, we were within the security of the womb and faced the trauma of birth not knowing the awesome wonders nor the love that awaited us in dimensions yet to be experienced. So shall it be in death. ‘Death is not the extinguishing of the light. It is but the putting out of the lamp, for the dawn has come.’ ― Rabindranath Tagore
The relationship between a husband and wife is different from all other family relationships. In no other case does God join two into one. When you lose a spouse you really do lose half of yourself and a big hole is left inside you. Now Pat died soon after reaching three score and 10; I am strong so am expected to reach four score. That thought fills me with horror; I really don’t want to live 6 more years without my other half. But Lord Thine will not mine.
Something has changed! I am now aware of my wife, Patricia’s presence touching me every day. It is as if Pat and I were made whole again; Oh I still miss her physical presence and her words and tears still come at small memories. But she is there with me, her presence and her spiritual strength comfort and support me. Surely we shall dwell united in the house of the Lord forever.
Okay how do I know this is not a trick of the mind. I recently read this: “This feeling has been called “The sensed Presence.” The brain scientist’s explanation for this lies in the idea that we have two senses of self, one on each side of the brain. Ordinarily, we rely primarily on the one on the left, where language, both inner and outer, is produced. When a person is having the sensed presence, the senses of self on the two sides of the brain have fallen out of phase with each other. The right-sided self comes out where the left-sided self can experience it. It’s being projected, or its a projected being. It’s real if you are.” Sounds plausible.
The thing is I’m not convinced. Feeling Pat’s presence is like all the times we felt each other in the house and knew we were not alone. I’d wake from a nap and just feel Pat’s absence because she had gone out for a walk alone. As Pat said, you feel the other’s presence because he/she affects the vibrations and atmosphere of the whole house. Each of us have a presence that can’t be explained by the “brain scientists”. Why is it a response to grief when your spouse dies and not when we were both happily alive? We are more than the sum total of our physical parts. There is something in all of us that is there watching, in command as the brain and body does it’s thing. It surely is the soul. I am sure when God designed us to be like Him it was not the physical body that resulted. It has to be the soul. I have read that medical studies have found a miniscule loss of weight when one dies. It has to be the soul leaving the body, taken up in the arms of Christ.
How is it I am able to feel Pat’s presence? I think I feel Pat’s presence – I feel her thinking, her pleasure and displeasure at a thought or emotion almost as I feel my own. I am feeling her emotions and not mine as they can be quite different – she’s at peace now while I’m still on the grief journey. I also think I feel her love for me almost as strongly as I feel my own love for her. But this is no different than before she died; we were always able to feel each other’s love. To love you need someone to love – love is always directed. I seem to know when she is pleased or displeased. This is different as when alive we show what we are feeling in physical signs that are very difficult to conceal; now I feel her emotions inside me. One odd think about her presence in me is I seem to be able to see (okay with my eyes partly closed or completely closed) what she is seeing – mostly the words she is typing or writing. All I can say about that is Pat was a word person and I miss her words very deeply. Thank God for her dairies, poems and writings. I definitely felt her kiss me the day after she died – what sense in me was that?
So I do believe in the real presence. We are not two separate souls separated by death but a continuous united soul in the eternal body. Our love allows us to share her new eternal body in the LOVE of Christ. I must not allow myself to slip into despair because it is OUR life I am affecting. Pat and I put our love first. We did everything together. After all we were and are still one flesh. We shared and wanted to be together. We wanted the Good for each other. I believe Pat and I found in each other our true Soul Mate our hard to find one True Love. In Pat’s words: “For you and I are so entwined / that we can read each other’s mine / at times, a simple exercise.”

I am reading Vanauken’s “Under the Mercy” and am deeply moved and completely agree with his thoughts on marriage (the one-flesh union) which LOVE promises and points to. Marriage vows are NOT vows to each other but the vows are THEIR promise to God as well as each other. The vows are a gift from one to the other; not a protestation of love as those who write their own vows don’t seem to understand. Here and now they are saying, each to the other: “This is my promise, my vow before God. This you can trust. This you can lean on in the bad times for all eternity, whatever I may feel at any given moment, I WILL be faithful. Never fear. You have my word made before God. Pat and I were never out of LOVE with each other. We wanted nothing so much as the good of the other. Our Quiet Love was cherishing, wanting each other’s best good and shall last for all eternity. Yes the one-flesh union endures and grows in Heaven. I clearly saw in Pat’s writings that she believed and felt as I do that our quiet love kept getting stronger and was a foretaste of Heaven. A person alone is incomplete. The mystical union by marriage into one is the true second birth, a fusion of their personalities into the beginning of the eternal Resurrection body that happens after death. When the body dies the soul is taken up into divine Love and illuminated with God’s light to await its other half. – our love keeps right on growing. It belongs to “the conscious circle of spiritual life we Christians call the communion of Saints. It is what I am feeling when I feel Pat’s presence in and near me. Pat I truly love you forever!