Exploring the Thin Veil

between life and death

This is the photo of the tree we planted seven months ago when our son died. It stands so firmly in the snow. When I touch it, it feels so sturdy even though it’s just a skinny baby tree. I can feel the pulse of a muscular arm. It reaches upwards with the kind of frenetic energy Keydell always had. I visit this tree often and hold tightly to the trunk as if I am grabbing Keydell’s arm. It brings me a sense of his physical body that I am so missing.

Since he died, it’s been so interesting how each of our family members has felt him, seen him or heard things that brought him to mind. It took me a while to notice how he was showing up for me. I craved some sign, some sense that he was around me.

I felt him most deeply in my heart just as I had when he was alive. I carried my great compassion, empathy and respect for him and what he was navigating in life, there, in my heart. I began to understand that, that is where he would show up for me. Simply as a feeling in my heart. Then he came in cool breezes across my neck and around me as I danced. I don’t know how I knew it was him but it was. It is. And when I see certain birds I think they are him, saying hello and showing me he is flying.

Months have passed, my grief changes day to day and the loss seems greater somehow now. It’s been so long since I’ve seen him, hugged him, held him. I went to a medium who connected with him and shared that he was soaring where he is. He is busy “up there” and feels at home. That felt right. He was always busy when he was alive. She didn’t channel him for long which was no surprise. He had things to do and was done. All I could smell was chocolate at the end of the session. He loved chocolate and seemed to be saying he was ready to eat and no more of this channeling stuff. It was funny. Was he there? Was he sending me a big hello in that moment of smelling chocolate? The ‘veil’ felt thin in that moment for sure.

The medium’s final words from him were “tell my Mom that even thought she understands what I did and can intellectualize it all, it’s still okay to not be okay!” I lost it. I am okay and not okay. What is okay?

Lately, I feel inspired by something new. This thin veil between life and death. The tree and its energy. Watching the leaves fall off and but still feeling the energy of the trunk. The body now a soul that shows up in that space of here and there. The snow melting becoming fog as it connects with warm air. It’s transforming from the physical, to a particle to air. The beauty in death as the bird decays but with its wings spread as if ready to take off and find its place in the next realm.

I am inspired to create images that explore this thin veil between life and death; this exchange of energy, of form. Maybe not being okay is a form of a change for me too. What does that look like for me? I know I will be “okay” and then I’m not. Just like he was okay and then he wasn’t. Maybe there is creativity in my not being okay. I am transforming from this experience and will never be the same as I was before. Perhaps the old me has had a kind of death and this version of me can also soar on earth like Keydell has in the form he has taken.

Grief is a weird experience for sure but as I explore what is in the in between, in this so called thin veil between life and death and in transitions, I will continue to feel his energy as my inspiration to create, explore, stay curious and be okay with not being okay. I hope these images can bring some sense of peace to you as they have for me. The fog gives me a sense of an unknown, that what is beyond is unclear but that the unknown has a beauty all of it’s own. More to come I think.

Namaste

Kim