STAGES OF GRIEF HEALING Article Series

“HeartSpun Talk from the Crucible of Experience”©

From the life of Ken Matthies - Author, Poet, Real Life Storyteller

Welcome back to the sixth in a series of ten special articles of homespun real-life talk, about what has by now become the issue of healing while you grieve, as opposed to continuing to experience the ravages of outright grief.

This will be the first of a three part series within these articles dealing with different aspects of reconnecting to your loved one.

The subject today about ‘Talking To Your Lost Loved One’ may be controversial to some, but is one that remains common and possible to all of us as another method of healing ourselves.

I include this topic in our talks over the next three articles because of the huge and wonderful potential it contains to reconnect yourself in spirit and memory to the one you’ve lost.

The simple truth is that the voice of your loved one is still permanently imprinted in your heart, mind, and memory!

Everything about them is still living inside you, from the way they spoke, to the sound of their voice, and the details of expression on their faces as they talked to you. In fact it’s likely the sound of their voice that you not only miss the most, but also remember most clearly even today.

And there’s no doubt in my mind you would give almost anything to be able to have conversations with them once again, even if it was only in the sanctity and privacy of your own mind and heart.

It’s a perfectly understandable feeling considering the magnitude of your loss, and one I remember all too well for myself.

Before my daughter died I‘d heard lots of stories throughout my life from people who told me they spoke to their own loved ones after they had died. I never asked for details, and tended to treat those stories with a huge grain of salt and a liberal dose of skepticism – until it happened to me!

During one of my long grieving walks coming down the mountain behind my home late last winter, I experienced this wonderful phenomenon for myself for the very first time – and the experience of my grieving has changed dramatically for the better ever since!

Walking through the snow that day I was grappling yet again with the emptiness of my life without my daughter in it, and calling out my feelings and questions aloud to her as I walked.

Suddenly I found myself stopped dead on the trail, because I actually thought for a moment I had heard her answer me with that gorgeous and familiar bird-song voice of hers!

I figured at first I had to be hallucinating!

And then there it was again – clear as a bell – filled with all the beautiful nuances of her speech, and brimming over with all the love and caring concern she’d always shown me while she still lived physically on this earth with me!

It stopped the breath in my chest for a long moment as I fought to determine if this was real to me – or whether I’d fallen right off the bend completely!

It was in those moments of decision when I realized the truth of what I wrote above, about the voices of our lost loved ones being permanently imprinted on our hearts, minds and memories.

It was also in this moment that I came to understand my girl’s voice had always been there, just waiting for me to acknowledge its existence, so it could once again become real to me in this way.

It was in understanding this truth that I finally felt my wounded spirit set free of its limitations – and was able to begin to bond once again with the sweet spirit of my daughter, simply by opening myself to hearing her voice.

And it didn’t even matter to me at that point in time if everyone I ever told about this experience thought I was crazy (and it never will, come to that).

To me it had become a sudden and wondrous reality, one which was about to bring utter change into my grieving and into the healing path I had begun the day I started writing my book about us, in the Light of our love and memories.

And oh my – the conversation we had that first day!

As I poured out my heart’s feelings to her it was as though she was walking alongside me, and sympathizing in complete understanding of my experience of losing her and the emptiness of life without her.

Her voice to me was gentle, and kind, and loving almost beyond belief. I found myself suddenly believing in possibilities again as never before in my journey.

And the proof that’s come with the pudding of this experience, so to speak, is that I can talk to her now in this way at any time I wish, day or night, and I can hear her sweet voice answer me with all the love of the heavens contained within it.

Now I find comfort and peace in doing so with her.

As I said earlier, the experience of my grieving has changed dramatically for the better ever since, as I came to another and deeper understanding of the gifts of memory I’ve been blessed to receive from my daughter – gifts which I now can and do use every single day to help my healing.

Naturally this now begs the question of whether or not this way of helping you heal has become a part of your own private reality.

Has it already – or would you even like this blessing to become a part of it?

Do you recall what I said in my last article, about each of us experiencing our loss and looking for recovery in a way unique to us alone?

The issue of talking to your lost loved one clearly falls into that category – and whether or not others who are not immersed in the experience of grieving believe in it or not, should become totally immaterial to you.

What is your heart crying out for here about the possibilities of once again hearing the voice of, and talking to your loved one in this way?

Does it make sense at this point of your very personal grieving journey to listen to the talk of those who haven’t been where you are?

Or even of those who have, but couldn’t for whatever reason bring themselves to believe in its possibilities?

Take the chance to find out for yourself what’s possible for you within your own memories, and the gifts of voice from your own loved one that are contained within it.

This too is another way to ‘stretch yourself to believe (again)’, to believe in something which can make a profound difference to the way you’re dealing with your grieving.

Try talking to them, and open yourself to hearing their voice again.

And if it works for and helps you as much as it’s helping me, who’s going to tell either of us we’re crazy, or shouldn’t be doing something like this? Would you even bother listening to them?

I know I won’t, because to me these are conversations of the heart I’ve always had ownership to – and now I’m able to hear them again.

I have the beauty of my daughter’s voice back in my life, and know without question its positive impact on my healing. I’ve simply chosen to accept this reality for me and be very grateful for it.

I can’t help but wish the same for you.

(If you haven’t already purchased it and want to learn the full story behind the truth of these articles, be sure to visit my website and download a copy of my book entitled “How to Survive the Death of a Child - A Father's Story of Healing Light” available on Amazon Kindle at www.kenmatthies.com/ )

Author's Bio: 

For almost forty years of his life Ken Matthies has been a writer and chronicler of life expressed in poetic form, following the family tradition laid down by his grandfather before him.

Faced with the dramatically life altering experience of his helicopter pilot daughter’s sudden death in 2002 he has grown to also become a literary author of true events based on his own life. Though grief opened his literary doors it is the Light of Love and Memories supplying the fuel of inspiration to write through them.

As a second-chance dad given the opportunity to verbally share his life stories with his newly rediscovered daughter it was she who told him that she believed him to be a ‘worthy man’ after having heard them, and who encouraged him that they should be shared in written form beyond her own life – not yet knowing as she said it that she was soon to leave him behind. As a bereaved father and writer learning how to live life again in the Light of his own Love and Memories of his daughter, he writes those stories now as a testament to her belief and faith in their value.

His full length book entitled "How to Survive the Death of a Child - A Father's Story of Healing Light" was the first of these stories which he wrote in the Light of those Love and Memories.

He lives in the solitude and grandeur of a tiny southern Yukon village with his Tlingit native wife Skoehoeteen and the successor to their venerable old Tahltan bear dog Clancy Underfoot, who now happily awaits them at the Rainbow Bridge in Doggy Heaven. She’s a new female puppy named Hlinukts Seew which means ‘Sweet Rain’ in the Tlingit language, a wonderful phonetic variation in memory of Clancy’s name who was also called C.U. for short. It’s a good place to tell those stories from.

You can read more of Ken's writings and find his Amazon Kindle book at www.kenmatthies.com.