A Samhain experience

My soulmate and wife died just over seven weeks ago. It was a conscious, medically assisted death to end the suffering of ovarian cancer. Through that we managed to achieve complete closure.

Tonight I went to the restaurant that prepared her final meal. I had the same meal she did - grilled scallops with rosemary, and a creme brulee. Opposite me on the table was the urn with her ashes, adorned with the amethyst pendant that was our love totem.

Tonight, when the veil was at its thinnest, I said my final earthly goodbye and surrendered the soul of my beloved to the Beloved. I pledged that tonight would be the beginning of my own healing.

No black cats, no witches, no candy.

Here's what happened:

I'm home. It was perfect. The restaurant staff all knew the score. The service was an impeccable combination of warm and respectful - and when I ordered creme brulee for dessert, they brought two, with two spoons.

I spent two hours meditating on the small altar I set up opposite me at the table - her urn (actually just a very plain discreet black box), the amethyst pendant, a feather for the wings that were a constant theme in her art, and a transparent green stone carved in the shape of two hearts, that one of her LA friends gave us as a reunion gift.

For two hours we reviewed the highlight reels of 45 years of ourstory - the transcendent, the good, the mundane and the ugly. I asked her how she felt, and she said she felt bigger than it's possible for us to imagine. She said the moment of death was a contraction to a singularity, and then an instant expansion out into an entire universe, but as the universe itself, not just a participant. It sounded very bigbangy.

She reminded me that it's not that I'm "here" and she's "there". She's here too, and I'm there too, as are all of us, as is everything. There is only this. She affirmed that even though her body died, nobody "went" anywhere - it's just our perspectives that shifted. Oh, and there is no need for me to "wait" to be with her again - I am with her always, as are all of us, as she is with us.

She says that you won't believe what it feels like to be a universe. It's a whole lot better than "taking off a tight shoe" as it has been described.

So, all in all it was a very pleasant dinner...