This is a re-edit of a journal entry.  As I sit with my lessons, they deepen and I see something I missed.

The Year of Flight

Over the weekend, I watched OWN‘s Master Class with Maya Angelou and I was rocked to my foundation. My personal inventory of excuses and pretenses was shed from me like dead skin. I hadn’t expected an exfoliation treatment when I turned the program on. The candor and clarity of Dr. Angelou’s storytelling stripped me to the bone. To witness this civil rights activist, artist, teacher and warrior woman clearly share her insight as to the weight of a word is the very definition of what it means to be mother, sister, scholar, teacher and friend.

To use your Life as a class and open yourself up for the education of others is courageous, particularly as you potentially invite ridicule from critics and/or the lesser evolved. For this reason there are some stories I have never told. This is one such story. I contemplated sharing it last year but I didn’t have the inspiration to put it out there.   It is now time to tell. The story is 100% true and the only thing I have changed are the names.

A number of years ago, a friend of mine, Susan, lost her mother, Ellen, to pancreatic cancer. It was sudden. The diagnosis occurred in January. She was deceased in less than 3 months.

One crisp March morning, I received a call from Tom, Susan’s husband. He informed me that Ellen was gone and the funeral was in two days. I dropped everything and traveled down South. After the funeral, Susan asked that all close family friends stay the night. She didn’t want the house to run quiet and cold suddenly. In her mother’s honor, we sat around drinking wine, whiskey, laughing, singing songs, telling stories and eating. It was joyous despite the emptiness in our hearts. The next morning I went home.

Nine months later, I was going back for my yearly visit. It was a Christmas tradition to spend time with this, my adopted WASP family. Tom and Susan had moved into a new home. With so much change in such a condensed period of time, the little things are much more important.

Within moments of arrival, I could see Susan was clearly wrestling with her grief. It was as if Life had been drained from her face. I spoke with Tom in private. He admitted the year had been an emotional rollercoaster and their marriage tested. I could offer no comfort just an ear.

I went to my guest bedroom that night saddened. I remember saying to myself “I wish I could do something to take Susan’s grief away.” Everyone deserves peace. I was sitting on the edge of the bed mulling over my options to help when I laid back and closed my eyes. Suddenly, I felt someone sit beside me. I sat up and turned my head to the left. It was Ellen.

You would think sitting next to a ghost, I would freak out? I didn’t. I had the same reaction I did when my plane crashed in Utila, I was calm. Life, as I knew it, was  moving in slow motion. Ellen stood there in her pearls and she looked amazing. I don’t know who does hair and makeup in heaven but they got it going on.

Ellen said,”Erwin, I need your help.”

I nodded.

“I need you to pass a message on to Susan for me.”

Again, I nodded, eyes wide open and leaning in with anticipation as if I was saying “speed it up, lady.”

“Please tell her that I am with her. I am with her. I am beside her. I have been trying to talk to her but she can’t hear me. She can’t hear me because her grief is so strong that she is tuning me out. Ask her to put her grief down. If she were to put her grief down for long enough, I could speak to her. Will you do this for me?”

After listening attentively, I said.”Noooooo…. I’m not gonna do that. Sorry. You know Susan. She’s gonna think I’m crazy. I think I’m crazy. I can’t go tell her that. You have got to tell me something that I would not know. She’s gonna want proof.” As I write this, I realize I had become Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost… sigh.

Ellen said, “Call her Suzie.”

At that moment, I awoke. I opened my eyes, still in the same position on the bed as I was before Ellen visited. Now, this was the freak out. I jumped out of bed looking for Ellen but she was gone. I thought maybe it was a dream. Could I dream this vividly?  ”Call her Suzie?” What am I gonna do? I paced in a circle and was unsure that I would say anything at all.

The next morning, I went downstairs. I greeted everyone as nothing had happened. Tom took the kids out to the park and I stayed behind to help Susan in the kitchen.

The kitchen resembled something out of a Martha Stewart Holiday Special and here I was about to turn the scene into A Christmas Carol. I was sitting on a stool peeling potatoes. It was then I asked if I could have a second. I downplayed the event as best as I could.

“Hey, last night, when we all went to bed. I couldn’t sleep. I was thinking about how I could help you.  Now, I need you to understand, um, I apologize if this sounds weird. And I don’t even want to say this but…. your mom came to me last night.”

Now that I had her attention, I got up from the stool and stood behind the kitchen island table. I recounted the whole story. Susan was facing me with her back to the cupboard and didn’t say a word. She kept her WASP composure. I was being met with a Martha Stewartesque steely gaze. The kind M.S. reserves for the female anchors of The Today Show. Uncertain if I was being received as either friend or foe, I finished by blurting out,”She told me that if you don’t believe me to call you, Suzie.”

After a long pause, Susan said, “Well, okay, thank you.”  Then she left the kitchen. Standing alone, in a friend’s home, ghost whispering is not exactly a recipe for a stress free holiday.  With nowhere to turn, I sought out the help of another spirit, one I was familiar with, Mr. Jack Daniels. Jack’s a good listener.

Later on, as we were cleaning up after Christmas dinner, Susan pulled me aside. She said she considered what I said. She informed me that Suzie was her mother’s nickname for her. She was the only one who ever called her that. She had not been called Suzie since her mother passed away.

That afternoon, as she was setting the dining table she came across a gravy boat that she and her mom traditionally fought about. Susan thought it was tacky and Ellen thought it a precious family heirloom. They always argued as to whether it should be on the table for Xmas dinner. For the first time there was no one to argue with about it. Susan intentionally left the gravy boat in the cupboard. Later on, when she went to check the table arrangements, the controversial gravy boat was squarely centered on the table. She hadn’t put it there nor would’ve anyone else.

After our conversation, she experienced other similar unexplained happenings. This time she made notice of it all. It was now my turn to affect my facsimile of WASP composure. I said nothing. I just stood there and listened as the color re-entered her face. The pained expression that had become her mask was lifting.

In that moment, I realized that sometimes we hold on to grief for fear of forgetting people. We are afraid of our strength to stand alone. Can we possibly be a source of joy without a catalyst? We are innately suspicious that our memories will not be sufficient to take us through our end of days. Prolonging the mourning is our final attachment. The seemingly hostile emotional landscape was now less and less formidable. Healing had begun.

It may be important to say that I have had a strict Catholic upbringing. However, my Jesuit education taught me to be a skeptic. I don’t believe in superstition and I wouldn’t call myself spiritual. I am at best a human being. To think that a spirit would pass a message thru me, an agnostic, was and is a surprise. If I had not experienced another visiting years later, by someone I did not know, with a message for someone who I did know, I would still question my own experience.

On this Journal, I am never short of opinion. I candidly impart what I know to be true. People don’t respond well to lectures so I believe you tell them your story.  This is all you can do and if one person gets it, the Earth shifts by 1%.

It is on the record, 2010 was a tough year. To use Dr. Angelou’s expression,”Life slammed me down and made me call it uncle.”

Why was 2010 so different than other years? I was older and thought I knew better. I dropped my guard and invited people into my Life that dishonored the invitation.  Like Susan, I was suffering from grief, loss. My adult-sized ego took a huge hit and for a brief spell my confidence was shattered. I questioned everything. Upon deeper reflection my Life has always been consumed by questions. It is my neverending need to get things right.

Watching this Master Class from an 83 year old Life veteran made me know, unresolved emotions stifle freedom. I am now comfortable with leaving some questions unanswered. It is time to move on.

We are all gifts to one another whether we acknowledge it or not. That’s the grace of accepting a gift. You never what you are going to get. You make do. Sometimes you give that gift to a new owner, re-gift. And sometimes you return the gift from where it came.  Some gifts are snatched out of your hands before you are done with them. These are the gifts you miss the most.

Love doesn’t just hold. It liberates.

Over the decades, when I review how former colleagues, friends and lovers exited my path I see now I was liberated.  At the time my ego could only register loss. How often in Life do we ever get to choose how we exit a relationship whether it be romantic, business or other?  Here I was standing in an empty room surrounded by the ghosts of experience. Like Susan, I was holding on. Sorry wasn’t the hardest word. That word was goodbye.

The creation of space so you can say YES to new opportunities is a NOW action. It must remain a perpetual cycle.

I am getting better at accepting nothing is ever really mine. From time to time, I worry about the loss of my parents, loved ones, my employment, money, my Vitamix blender and on and on the list can grow. I check myself.  I, my possessions and my human resources have no owner. We are all only here for a short stay. We are on loan.

To all former acquaintances, you may, or may not, have asked for forgiveness. I may have withheld mine. You may not think you need it. You may not have considered the impact of your actions on those around you. I release all animus all the same. History favors the bold. No more words of disparagement. You opened up a door I may have never walked through otherwise. I am unshackled from my fears, my anger and I have “put my grief down.”

To my family, friends, students, and you, the reader, thank you. Thank You. When I look at the number of readers of my writing, the students in my class, the well wishes of my neighbors, the outpouring of love from friends and family, I view it all as a form of prayer, an affirmation of well being. Nothing goes unnoticed. No unit of energy goes unmatched.

This whole journal entry is at its heart a ghost story. It is about the spirits that haunt us and the sacred mental burial grounds we build our lives upon. It is a meditation on attachment and how love sometimes becomes a weight we carry like a backpack. Ellen came to me to provide a healing for her bereaved daughter. Maya Angelou reached out to me over the TV and delivered the exact same message. If you are provided with an opportunity for closure and the upside is a request to give more, be more, why worry for the source?

Now, you know just one of my many truths and it is yours to have, hold or let go of. I am a fitness professional by trade. I am not a minister. That said, I have always maintained the business of healing and strengthening the body always begins with the heart. The heart always is your compass. When you find you are lost, you have lost touch with your connection to self, return to the basics. Keep letting go. Travel light and your abundance is always near.

Love Liberates.

- E.

P.S. Here is an excerpt of the Master Class video. I encourage you to watch it and go on OWN and see the whole thing. My only intention in posting is the same as the teachers who have brought it to you… FREEDOM. Isn’t this the true purpose of any classroom education? Open Up a Space in your Mind for Something More.