Every Ending Is A New Beginning- Personal Reflections On A Momentous New Year

Hey there. DayZ episode is deeply personal to me. I record this on January 2 2024. Day after my mother in law, Margaret made her transition from the physical into the spirit world. I'm going to make this a bonus episode available to everyone. So for my premium subscribers, I really appreciate you supporting me, I know I've been a little bit remiss on getting some episodes here toward the end of the year, I shall try to get back on a weekly schedule as we go forward, even though I never promised you that. But I'll try to get back to that as soon as I can. But I wanted to make this episode available to everyone because as I said, it's deeply personal to me and I but I think it also will apply to everybody who's listening. So what I want to talk about is endings and new beginnings. And of course, this is a perfect time of year to talk about it the second day of the year. Another joke is, I remember 2023 As if it was yesterday. So as we come to the end of the calendar year, the Gregorian calendar year, it's a time that we kind of mutually agreed to reflect and to think, think of the clothes of one thing and the opening of another. And I experienced so much of that in the last couple of days. So this weekend started with my nephew Adams wedding, he was marrying his bride Emily, in West Virginia. I live in Ohio, it's about a four hour drive from us. So we were going to make the trip and we made the trip. Thank goodness we made it successfully because this time of year in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Allah places we were going to be, you never know what the weather is going to be like the weather was cropped over the traffic wasn't bad. So it was a great, a great trip. But it was also the end of the football season. And for me, I am a huge football fan. I love when the football season starts every year. I mourn when the football season ends every year, regardless of the outcome. And the outcome this weekend was not great for me by the way. I get to that in a little bit a little bit later. So on Friday, we make the trip over to West Virginia to Morgantown to be there for the celebration of Adam and Emily's wedding. And they had the rehearsal dinner Friday night, which we went to and I left to go watch my Buckeyes play, and the Cotton Bowl, and the Buckeyes. Let me down again, after they lost a Michigan earlier and they let me down in the Cotton Bowl, they played terribly. So that was my Friday night. But as we were driving to West Virginia, we got a call from the facility where my mother in law is loving Margaret and from Hospice, saying that she had taken a turn for worse and they were going to up the visits from hospice. And in case you don't know, hospice, they, they don't want anyone to die alone. So they tried to do is, as someone's coming closer to the end, they'll send people more often, once a day, twice a day, three times a day, and then up to 24 hours a day, to make sure there's some hospitals there when the person makes their passing. So we're getting calls and the wedding was on Saturday. And my wife is getting calls during the during the reception, where they're saying, Okay, well, we're going to put her on once a day visits, we're gonna put her on twice a day visits, oh, she's doing better. She's actually eating now. And she's been interacting some. So that was a really back and forth thing, even during the reception on Saturday. So on Sunday, we get up to make the trip back home. And my wife kind of prayed a little prayer, I guess to her mother and to the universe. Please don't pass during the time where God please don't pass during Adam and Emily's wedding. So we're all out of time. We're all in a we're kind of on pins and needles, especially when we're getting these calls during the reception. But we're driving home and everything seems to be okay. Margaret seems to be hanging in there. And I was listening to a podcast as I often do. And I was listening to exactly next level soul. And there was a guy on there. The guest who had had a near death experience, and he, in his experience he had visited with Jesus. And he talked about understanding kind of the meaning of life, and more importantly, the meaning of suffering. And he talked about it that's a beautiful way of thinking of suffering because I've thought about it as like, okay, the suffering is over once we cross over, but he talks about the fact that Jesus kind of took his suffering and and transmuted and transformed it into something that's, that's glorious, and he's, you know, and so he actually embraced his suffering. So I was thinking about that in terms of, of Margaret, and what she's gone through the last several years since her husband felt and passed away, I think about 10 or 11 years ago. Now. I'm not really sure. All she's wanting to do is go be with Felton, all she's wanting to do is is to go home. And so we've kind of wanted that for her to be to be really honest, it'd be really frank because she's not the person that that she was her body has been failing her she had dementia. So her mind was failing her. She had severe arthritis. So she hasn't walked in a while. And, you know, we're thinking about Margaret and thinking about, you know, her passing and knowing that it was coming up and thinking about that feeling you have where you know, a day is going to come. You just don't want it to be today. And so I remember thinking with my wife was like, Okay, well, at least it's not today, maybe. And then just as we're pulling into Cincinnati, we're about 15 minutes from the house on about a five hour trip. The phone rings as hospice again, and they use the word actively dying, that Margaret is actively dying. So Tijuana's starts to call her siblings and you know, I'm taking this and I'm like, Okay, I guess this is it. This is going to be, you know, pretty soon. And as she was talking to her sister, and she was trying to explain it as to what Mark was going through, she started to cry, and I started to cry in it, which kind of surprised me a little bit, because we've known for a long time that this day was coming. And we've known for a long time that, you know, it was something that that Margaret was really looking forward to. So we got home and my wife decided to go be with her mother. I we didn't know when it was going to be we probably know it could still be days. So I stayed home alone ended up watching my big goals lose also. So a terrible end of their season, which I knocked them out of the playoffs that loss. And my wife spent several hours with her mother about 12 hours with her mother and her sister came to town from West Virginia from what we just come from. And her brother drove in from Kentucky. And they spent all this time with her and Margaret didn't pass. So about think about one o'clock in the morning, my wife came back home after after midnight on New Year's Day, which was the first New Year's we haven't spent together, by the way, and wow, I don't even know close to 40 years probably. So she comes home at three o'clock in the morning, we get the call that Margaret has made her transition that her her body has stopped functioning that she stopped breathing. So we go over there and the people come to transporter, and I'm talking to my brother in law rod, and we're talking about Margaret's life which has been an exemplary life, the best mother that anybody could ever hope for faithful to her to her husband, James, to tell and pass the end. faithful to her six children are their living here, and her seventh child and spirit she had triplets. And one of them William Jeffrey, was born stillborn, but has always been included as part of the family. But so Mark was just an incredible woman made an incredible impact at the facility where she was. They called her Miss Lilly because her first name was actually Lily, but everybody calls her Margaret everybody in the family, but they would call her Miss Lilly. And we were just amazed by even some of the workers who were off duty, and knew that she was about to make her transition came back to the facility to see if she was still there. So as you know, Tonya and I were reflecting yesterday on her passing and the way we felt about it, and the grief that we were going through. Now, of course we contrast that with but losing Shana. And what I realized, and I think we both realized together as when we lost Shayna at the age of 15, the grief was just I don't even know how to explain the pain. I mean, it's it's beyond belief. And it's because as you're grieving, losing the future, the anticipated future, the memories that you're not going to be able to have the experiences that you're not going to be able to have. You still have the memories of things you've had together. And you're always going to have those but you really grieve is the loss of the future. And when I think about with Margaret, we've known for a long time that there was no real future memories with her. We haven't spent a Christmas with her and in years, we should bring her home over here for Christmas after felt in the past. Lisa Lisa spent Thanksgiving with her of course, but because of her physical disability her bad knees she's she was wheelchair bound in the last few years of her life. And the fact when you would take her out of the facility that was she was in she would actually get agitated. And all she could talk about was going back we stopped taking her out of the facility during those days. So those days of you know the Christmases and thanksgivings and those types of things you look forward to. We haven't had in a long time. And we did try. We did not try We did celebrate her birthday in April, her 86th birthday and the whole family came to the facility where she she is or where she was. And she slept through most of the time that we were there. And she did kind of come around a little bit toward the end of the time. But it's just been, she hasn't been herself for a very long time. And so when people pass, what I've realized is we mourn the loss of their physical presence, we mourn the loss of them being in the body. But she hasn't fully been in the body for a very long time. And the way I think about the body, now I think of the body as as an avatar. And if you remember the movie Avatar, what they would do when they wanted to get into the tall blue beings, I can't remember their names. I think there was a NaVi, but when they wanted to get into the bodies of those beings that would go into like a little pot. And the pot was the interface to that to that avatar, and that would animate the avatar, and to experience the life through the avatar. That's the way I view our lives here and our bodies here. So our spirit is kind of plugged in. And some people say it's through the pineal gland, some people think is through the brain in general, maybe it's through the chakras, we don't know what that interface is. But there's some sort of interface between the spirit and the body. And when someone passes away, Shana did, for example, that's a sudden breaking of that interface, it's like, interface was strong one moment, and then you know, the body fails, and the interface is broken the next, the way I look at it, the way that Margaret declined, it was the slow, kind of crumbling at the interface, where it was like, sometimes she was connected here. Sometimes she wasn't her spirit, always been strong, always be unhealthy, always being whole. But her body not being able to embody that spirit, if for lack of a better word, her body not be able to function the way that we would like it to. So we were losing that connection, even as her body was still here. So that difference of the way that she transitioned, and I remember my wife saying something I thought was very profound, I think it was yesterday had to be yesterday, because I was just today, her mother passed, she said, I've cried almost every time coming back from seeing her for the last fill in the blank, I don't know, year, year and a half, two years, because she knew that the person the body was that representing her mother was and her mother wanted to be free of that body. So we have this mixed thing where it's like, we want our loved ones, right? We want them with us. But we can't have them with us the way that we really want to have them with us or need to have them with us. So we want them the way that they were. And the thing is, even though people say there's no time and time is illusion, there's no time on the other side, etc. In this experience, and this game, and this virtual reality, whatever you want to call it, there is there is time, and it only moves in one direction. So we can't go back to the Margaret Thatcher we once knew. So we knew the only way out was forward. And that meant for her to actually leave her body. So when that happens, again, just this point, a little over 24 hours ago, very, very mixed emotions about it. Because while we know that we won't see her physically, again, we haven't seen her physically the way we wanted to in a very long time. Anyway, so the grief is very, very different between Margaret and between when we went through with Shana. So as thinking about this, and in terms of the reality that we live in, and I've been working with my friend cow, and I'm gonna be working with her more, and she's gonna be on the podcast. So I'm hoping to have her in my community that I'm building, discussing his concepts about how this this reality we live in is really a lucid dream. And that our loved ones are the ones that are awake, and that we are the ones that that are asleep now doesn't mean that this is isn't real, in a certain sense, the experiences they have the pain that we have real, the love that we have real the memories that we have real we will take those things with us. But the reality itself is not so real. It's not the ultimate reality and it's certainly not the permanent reality. So as we think about our loved ones in in spirit, who can still consensus as we're going through this dream really helps to meet to cope with the, the grief and the loss and think I might link again, or I can't link to it here on the podcast, but there's a song called home by Stephanie Mills that was in the movie. The Wiz. So it's Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, that whole thing and she's talking about her friends who are home versus the the reality that she's living in, you know that as reality which is not the is not the real reality. So check out that song by Stephanie mill. was called home. And I'll explain some of these concepts to you. So this morning, I was taking my my walk and I haven't walked in several days because I don't take it every single day. I'm not like fanatical about it. And I was taking some time off over the holidays. And then we were traveling and stuff. So I was taking my walk this morning for the first time in about four or five days. And I bought for about two, four hour 45 minutes. So I'm walking and I'm trying to go into my my heart and feel my feelings and like, how do I feel about this? Because, frankly, I haven't cried a lot of tears since Margaret passed, even though I feel like Margaret is and was as close to me as a biological mother. I'm very, very connected to to Ana's family. I've known Margaret for nearly 40 years now. She's been by my my mother in law for over 33 years. But as I was thinking about my my grief over her, I was expecting this sadness, but it was really a different emotion. I can't really describe it as sadness. It's really every time I felt sad, I was like, but what about her? What about her perspective? Every time I felt sad, I'm like, what is it I'm sad about why I'm sad about, I'm not going to be able to have those Christmases with her again, I'm sad about that, you know, all the memories, I think about like going to their house members or bring her to my house and memories of her and with the girls. But I wasn't going to have those here anyway, and haven't experienced that in a very long time. And even though I've seen Margaret, I remember, it was about a month and a half, two months ago. She was in the hospital. I thought she was going to die that night. And I remember looking at her even then and thinking, That's not her. It's like her, that's her body. But that's just that's not her. That's not who she is. And when I saw her body as they were getting ready to transported on morning was that Monday morning, a Monday morning, it had the same look as it did that night in the hospital, it was kind of like she wasn't there. I don't know exactly when her spirit left her body. I expect I think that during these last several months, it's probably been coming and going. And I think there have been times when it's been there and times when it's not there. And this is backed up by people in the fat and the ease or, and people have come through meetings have said when the Spirit starts to go back and forth as we near the end. So I see Margaret's body has been gone for a while our spirit has been gone for a while wanting to go for a while. So I didn't feel that profound sadness that I kind of expected to feel. And as I would try to tap in and feel Margaret and connect with her, and I'm not a medium, I'm not intuitive, like some people are. All I kept getting was Margaret and Shayna and Felton dancing, just having a big party. And I kept thinking about how Shayna was probably planning this this Homecoming this reunion. And as Margaret was going through the last several months, you know, or years, talking about her parents talking about Felton, you know her finally being there. And that just kept coming back to me that that vision over and over again. And as I wrote a tribute to her yesterday, and I was thinking about, you know, her homecoming, the words came to me the belle of the ball. And it kind of came maybe from Lisa Jones describing when her husband passed over them having this big party in them announcing him and I could see Margaret, coming in. And you know, we were having New Year's parties here, of course on this side. And I'm having a party for Margaret on the other side. And that was an image that just kept coming to me. So I those are the things I wanted to talk about today I wanted to talk about how every ending is a new beginning. And that we only have one life, we have one continuous life. Now we have phases of our life, just like when we're in the physical body, we were, we are infants, and then we're toddlers, and then we're, you know, children, then we're teenagers, then we're adults. And then we're old people. And we have these phases in our in our one life where we come into the body and out of the body. And we're we're home or wherever you if you want to call it that. And then we're back here, maybe on Earth and then maybe we were in there are not other locations. And so we make these transitions, but we have one continuous life. And this is again backed up by what people have in the East say for example, that's like, I didn't even know I was dead was what some of them say. So I want you to think about your own experiences with endings and beginnings. And when we go through an ending, you know, it's okay to be sad about something ending, but also we should be excited about something else beginning and why should death of the body be any different? And I say very distinctly death of the body because there is no death of the Spirit. Only from our perspective as someone is Someone died because they've again broken that connection that's designed, we're all going to go down this road road. And that's not to be morbid. It's not to be sad. It's actually to be grateful because these bodies aren't designed forever. And we're not intended to be here in this life forever. So those are my thoughts about what I've gone through what we're going through. I'm happy, be happy for Margaret for Felton for Shana from for Margaret's parents for William Jeffrey, who gets to be reunited reunite with his mother again, I'm very, very happy for them. I can say that in all sincerity. I am going to miss the woman's physically. It was my mother in law. But as I said, I've been missing her for a while. So I'm looking forward to 2024 to sharing with you guys to continuing to grow this community continuing to grow this perspective and help share with other people hope you'll share with other people. And let's make this place the best place we can while we're here, and then we'll go have our party. Thanks for listening and have a wonderful day.