Just Another Day At The Beach

Before I left Utah, I set the intention that I was going to use the 10 days in Los Angeles at The School For The Work to grieve the death of my husband, Jay, who died of ALS in 2003. I had not grieved during the 8 years since his passing. I rationalized that I had grieved with the loss of every muscle group, and I did, and I had not grieved the full impact of his loss or the loss of my Step-Sons and Daughters-in-Law who were forbidden by their mother to see me after Jay’s death. I had not grieved the loss of our lifestyle, the loss of our dream home, or the loss of a business.

Sometimes the loss goes deeper than just the loss of the loved one. When my mother died in July, it brought everything to the surface.In 2003, I felt that I had to be strong for my daughters, step-sons and their spouses. I had to demonstrate how to create a life; in my case to re-create a life. So I set about doing so. I sold the home we built during the last year and a half of Jay’s life and moved back to Salt Lake City to be near my daughters and grandchildren. If I look back now with laser sharp 20/20, I can see that I was placing the responsibility for my happiness on my daughters and innocent little grandchildren. They made my heart sing and I used it like a sedative.

I opened a business which consumed me like a pregnancy; labor pains followed by birth, nurturing and feeding. In the hours that were left I started dating again. It too was like an opiate to ease the pain. I was so not ready to date yet and became a serial dater with the most common word in my vocabulary being “next”. These poor men had some incredible shoes to fill. How brave they were to try.

I ended up sticking it out with the one who put up with my bullshit. At that time, to me that equaled compatibility. Doug was his name and from the beginning he loved me with ALL of his heart. I on the other hand was flat-lined. I could feel neither joy full out nor love full out and most importantly pain full out. It was safe.There were fleeting moments when I would question my lack of emotion but it was too scary to look at for very long. And besides, Doug loved me like a puppy; unconditionally, consistently , supportively and totally. It was working in a mechanical sort of way and I was functioning well most of the time. “And then the day came when remaining inside the bud was too painful”, to quote Anais Nin. I was living against my true nature and heart. Something was preventing me from blooming.

As obvious as it must have been to everyone around me, I didn’t recognize it until I was doing the 21 day meditation provided online by the Chopra Center. The series had the intention of allowing a person to discover his life purpose. I had already discovered my life purpose. Recovering addicts were showing up on my doorstep wanting to know how to re-create a life after the devastation of their addictions. I was an expert at re-creating a life. I was also an expert at the art of surrender and I had the spiritual tools in place to act as a conduit to help others to find that sweet spot.Once I had set the intention to become a Life Design Coach, the key players started to show up in my life to make my vision complete. So in my meditations with the Chopra Center, the question I was meditating on was “What is the next step that I should take?” Within 5 minutes of the meditation on the first day, I heard the word clearly, “GRIEVE!”

My father died in 1988, my mother in July and Jay on Easter in 2003. It was as if it was a trio singing the word in unison. These three key people in my life were the three people who had received my full heart. It was as if they had taken little chunks of it with them. Actually they didn’t take it. It was I who had secretly tucked the pieces into their pockets. So there IT was; the missing piece…. a, “hello”. I knew that if I were to be a clear space to facilitate others, I had to take care of my own stuff. To help others to fully heal, I had to experience healing. With money my mother left me, I enrolled in the Byron Katie School for The Work.

The school is experiential and divinely set up so that each person receives exactly what they come there to get. The first day of School, Katie personally facilitated a chunk of my grief. I had to get clear with an element of it. So I narrowed it down to, “I am angry with Jay because he chose death.” The Work is four questions and turnarounds. She began, Is it true that Jay chose death? I answered, “yes”. I had known 4 months before his diagnoses that he had ALS. I had a spiritual experience that was cryptic but I knew exactly what the flash of vision in my mind had meant. I later had gotten the words, “he can choose life.” Luckily he had believed me when I revealed the first “vision” and had purchased life insurance, but I wasn’t as convincing about the second one. He didn’t even do the stretching exercises they had given him to add time to his ability to walk. It pissed me off. Until I had the war with myself on paper in The School for the Work, I didn’t know that I was angry.

Katie asked the second question, “Can you absolutely KNOW that it is true that Jay chose death?” My answer was “NO”. She continued with the third question, “How do you react when you believe this thought?” I have just described to you in this writing how I reacted when I thought this thought. I was completely shut down. Then she asked the 4th question, “Who would you be without this thought?” I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes. I would be who I used to be; free, joyous, I could laugh again, dance in the kitchen, roll down hills with my Grandkids.Then Katie said, “Can you do the turnaround?” And I GOT IT! I began to sob. The opposite of Jay chose death was “Jay chose Life.” It was such a profound truth that it almost knocked me to the ground. He was trapped in a body that couldn’t move. He could only blink to communicate. To Jay, DEATH WAS LIFE. The next turnaround was equally as profound. I CHOSE DEATH. For 8 years, I was the walking dead. I couldn’t control the sobbing and was encouraged by 235 people to let it go.

I followed the simple directions.When I sat down, I noticed that my back pain was less intense. I had been suffering from 3 bulging disks for a year. I thought that it must just be a coincidence.I followed the simple directions every day at the school and I felt like I was making progress cleaning house with the underworld of distorted thinking.On the fifth day in Los Angeles, buses picked us up to complete one of the exercises.

I had lived in Southern California for 8 years. Los Angeles was not a strange city to me and yet heading towards the city, I felt a little like a child. It was curiously exciting and I boarded the bus with a sense of adventure.The bus began to travel west from the Hotel near the Airport. And then it kept going further west and the farther it went the bigger the knot became in my stomach. Seriously, they were not going there, no they wouldn’t go there, they couldn’t go there……they did go there.

Jay and I were High School Sweethearts. We went separate ways after high school and ended up marrying other people. 27 years later we were synchronistically reunited and the first time we were alone together we drove to Santa Monica Pier. The bus pulled up on Ocean Blvd. alongside the Santa Monica Pier. My heart felt like thunder in my chest.I got off the bus and the city went silent. I headed for the stairs down to the ocean. I walked across the parking lot where we had parked. I retraced the steps in the sand where we had removed our shoes to squish sand between our toes. I just kept walking along the beach, meditating and reliving the experience. The beach was deserted. For as far as I could see it was just white sand, blue sky and ocean. The ocean sparkled with flecks of light from the sun. The temperature was the perfect combination of sunshine and sea breeze. The universe wrapped me in its arms as I kept walking.

This day, this moment, was designed just for me…..by me ??Finally, I noticed a homeless man half sitting, half laying on a bench. I was drawn to sit next to him. He grunted when his anesthetised body felt my presence. This was the place. This was where I would lay it all down. Katie told us that our energy transmits, and I could see that this homeless man was in serious emotional pain. I knew that by releasing my pain here that it would help him to release his also.

I began to breath in slow deep breaths facing the ocean and the sun. I was here to test the friendliness of the universe and at that moment, I met my friend. A portal opened up and I saw things that had always been there but that I had never noticed.I imagined Jay standing shoeless in the sand in front of me. I began to apologize for all the things that I wish I had done and for all the times when I had been less than loving. I told him that I would love him forever but that it was time to say goodbye in what Katie calls, “THE DREAM”.

Suddenly a movie began to play in my head; the highlights of my life with Jay and his boys from the beginning to the end. I had come Full Circle.Then my mother appeared and I reconciled my unfinished business with her; amends, then love. She was joined by my father and I did the same with him. I didn’t feel sweet forgiveness…I felt the sweetness that there was never anything to forgive. We all had done the best that we could do at the time, in the Dream. The only thing they wanted for me was my happiness. There stood the trilogy of those whom I had given my full heart.I told them that I was ready, that I felt safe to release the pain. I would leave it here on the bench at the beach where it all began. I asked them to jump start my heart.

And then I wept. I wept until it was complete. At one point, the light became so bright that the man on the bench stirred, sat up an leaned away from me. It was too late, the love and light had already done its’ job.When I was ready, I rose slowly and walked across the sand to the bike trail. With each step I kept repeating the word, NOW, and NOW, and NOW….I looked up at the pier and saw the boardwalk and Ferris wheel. The memories flooded my head pulling me out of the precious moment.

Suddenly, a man on rollerblades was at my side. He was talking so much that he wasn’t noticing that I was silent. He worked as an accountant up on Ocean Blvd., he had a rock band and moved from the mid west to get more exposure. He was so glad to have a beautiful day so that he could blade on his lunch break. He finally asked my name. I said, “Terri”. He asked me if I lived in Los Angeles and I shook my head “no”. He suddenly lost interest but before he bladed off, he pulled a business card from his pocket and handed it to me. When he was down the bike path a ways, I read the card. The name of his band was “REALITY CHECK TRIO”. I found that so hilarious that I had to sit down on the sand and just laugh. I laughed as hard as I had been weeping. I could not remember laughing that hard in 8 years.

Up on the boardwalk, I sat on a bench and watched the people with all their unique differences. The smells of the food cooking were intense, and the colors vivid. There wasn’t anywhere I looked that I didn’t see beauty. The shop behind me was blaring songs and I listened to the lyrics, ”I know a place. Ain’t nobody cryin’. Ain’t nobody worried…. Help me, come on, come on help me now. I’ll take you there. Help me, I’ll take you there. Just take me by the hand. Let me, I’ll take you there. Let me, let me lead the way. I’ll take you there.”The next song to play was “Love Will Find A Way”. I thought that if I stayed there all day there would be one song after the other with messages from God.

I was ready for more adventure, so I headed to the end of the pier where Jay and I had stood to have our first serious conversation. Another musician was there, a singer/songwriter who was selling his CD’s. The lyrics to his songs could each have been a theme song for The Work. The next message from God, said through the lyrics were, “Keep the good, release the bad, love will show you how.” I knew that it was important to remember this. Katie’s words ran through my head about losing a loved one. She said, “There is no getting over love. Once you question all your thoughts surrounding it, there is no sadness left in you. When the tears roll down your face and someone asks you if you are sad say, ‘I m ecstatic! I’m visiting with a loved one’.” I sat down for quite awhile and just enjoyed the music. I couldn’t remember the last time that I didn’t feel like I was in a hurry.When I was ready, I headed back on the boardwalk toward the street. I saw a classmate who had joined a street musician wearing a brightly colored, striped top hat. She was playing the cow bell. I stopped to share the delight of the moment and then meandered up over the bridge to Ocean and headed down the street.

The whole day felt like a dream, but I had never felt so alive and awake. As I walked, I realized that I had no pain in my back. I had been walking for nearly four hours and the pain was gone. I had left the physical pain back on the bench with my grief. I haven’t had pain since. A coincidence? I don’t think so.

My life had been a feast. It was full of characters past and present who adored me. By repelling the love, I was starving myself to death. The last day at the school, I was telling a classmate about my experience. She said, I have a story to tell you that will complete your circle. She had encountered a homeless man who had starred into her eyes and said, “THIS VACATION?…..GO HOME.” And that is exactly what I did……