It is very early one sweet morning in January that I find myself dropped right into a vivid recurring dream. I have had this dream at least four times since our daughter Zoe died three years ago. I think one of my sons has even had the same dream. For me, these dreams have felt more like working visitations from her than dreams. It begins the same way each time; we have been transported back to the day before Zoe is going to die, with full awareness that this is her last day with us. Every other time I dreamt this I have been so preoccupied with what I knew was about to come that I was unable to enjoy our last bits of time together. My grief dominated. We just sat around crying, emotionally hiding from each other and resisting the truth of what was happening.
This time, the dream was different. Zoe and I are sitting on the floor together. The pending loss of her is thick and terrifying. We both know that we have only a few short hours together before she will be gone. I start to cry but then, from inside the dream, a lucid part of me recognizes that we have once again been blessed with the gift of this experience. Some wiser aspect of myself begins to give the crying me a firm talking to. Buck up Maya! Your daughter is about to let go of everything she loves and go on a journey into the unknown. Set your grief aside and help her this time. What do you want to share with her? How do you want to soothe her and help her prepare? How can you honor her courage and hold space for her to express herself?
Being brought to my senses and in touch with her experience is enormously helpful. I am able to buck up. As we sit and hold each other, we talk and share about silly things and profoundly deep things. Wisdom is pulsing in the room with us, and it seems like there is a bigger truth unfolding all around. The Divine Mystery is alive and crackling like the beginnings of a thunderstorm.
I feel that from our place on the floor, we visit the cosmos together and a deeper understanding penetrates both of us about the events that are about to take place. Her departure is going to catalyze us and drop kick every single one of us who loves her dearly into a new way of being. She is our teacher, our transformer, she brings clarity, and it feels like we are following an intelligent plan.
I am aware that while all this is going on, the observer part of me is wondering why we are sitting and sometimes lying down next to each other on the floor. I am also aware that being able to focus on her is bringing me into deep realms of calmness, feelings of rightness and even, dare I say it, excitement for what is to come next. I am feeling proud of myself in the dream for being able to set aside my grief and extend myself to her. How wonderfully unexpected it is that, by approaching this dream differently I have been granted access to so much grace and clarity. So much so, that when it is her time to go, I feel no urge to resist or cling or hold her back. I feel a greater purpose, even though I don’t understand what it is; I am soothed by the purposefulness of her going. We hug, and as things often happen in the mutable dream world, she gets up and departs via a closet door.
Though I cannot yet clearly bring to waking consciousness the depth of what I learned and experienced in this dream, I am aware that I am soothed by the love and new awareness we touched and experienced during our dreamtime visit.
This next part is a bit difficult to read but it is an important part of the dream so I am going to share it. It turns out well in the end, so bear with me for a paragraph.
Through the closet she goes and I think it’s about to happen. Shortly I will get the phone call that she has been in a car accident.” I am calm as I wait. Then, as the minutes go by, an unexpected fear suddenly arises. I sense that she is going to commit suicide and I am filled with panic. NO! This isn’t how you are supposed to die! I run to the closet and yank the door open. It is as though there was a trap door in the ceiling of the closet. I see Zoe from the waist down, dangling from the ceiling; her upper body is in the attic and not visible to me. I fear she has hung herself and I call frantically for help. Help arrives. They gently get a hold of her and begin to bring her body down out of the closet and lay her on the floor next to me. As soon as her body touches the floor she morphs into a brand new, fresh from the birth canal baby! I scoop her, naked and tiny into my arms. Cuddling her, I begin talking and singing to her. I look back at the closet and realize it was a birth canal. My heart is full of splendor and awe.
At this point in real life my phone rings and I am awakened. I answer the phone. A woman named Patty is calling. She says we have met once; she came to me for a session. Patty says, “You may remember that I am a medium. I hope I am not bothering you, but I have your daughter Zoe here with me and she has been asking me for several days to get a message to you.” Patty shares that she was trying to be respectful and not interfere, but that Zoe was so insistent that she call, that she finally gave in and did. I remember laughing, yes, that is my daughter all right, she is anything but subtle. Truth be told, she can be pushy. Patty goes on to tell me that Zoe wants to communicate that she will soon be reincarnating! She wants me to understand that, as she goes through preparing for this reincarnation, the level of communication that she and I shared since she crossed over might shift, but not to worry. I share with Patty that I actually just dreamt this and that I am so grateful to her for having the courage to follow her guidance and call me with this message.
As we hang up, I feel that I am about to get a big teaching on the subject of reincarnation. I have the feeling that it isn’t so cut and dried; it’s not like you die and you come back. I can feel intuitively that there is so much more to learn. Everything I think I know will be challenged and refined. I am suspended in the mystery of it all (much like Zoe in the closet birth canal), and I hang out here in this exciting space until another event begins to unfold …
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Less than a month after the dream, on a beautiful evening with the sun and moon both in Pisces, I awake to find our old dog Jake standing outside in our backyard peering deeply into all of the corners. He is restless and unwilling to come inside. I watch him from the window; this is unusual behavior for him. He walks slowly into the shadows, stands still, looks deeply for a moment, turns and faces a different direction and repeats this deep peering into the darkness. Minutes go by and I try and help him come back inside to rest. He refuses. At that moment I intuitively know he is looking to go home, and that home is no longer in the house with us. I grab several blankets and pillows and go outside to be with him. I make a big pillow bed and, as we sit down together on it, I am instantly transported back into the dream. I instinctively realize this is my last day with Jake. The dream about Zoe had prepared me; it enabled me to recognize that Jake and I were in our final hours together. I knew in that moment why, in the dream, I was on the floor with Zoe: because I would soon be on the floor with Jake. I also wondered why there was a hint of suicide: it would be up to us to help Jake make the transition. We would have to participate with a visit to the vet. I look deeply into his eyes and tell him that we would be honored to help him go home today.
We spent all day on the floor together. I lit the candles on my ancestor altar and called in all the love and healing that was available to us. We cuddled and napped and communed. We ate beef stew and pears as I told him stories of his life: who he was and always will be to me, how he had shaped and transformed our family. We reviewed our creation story; my version is that I willed him into being with my love, his version being that he came because he knew I needed him. I suspect they are both true. We pulled tarot cards to help advise the next steps of our journey together.
1) What do we need to know at this moment?
6 of waters -Have faith, take an emotional risk, renewal.
2) What is of value for Jake to know?
10 of waters -Deep fulfillment, everything is in perfect order.
3) What is of value for me to know?
10 of earth -Inner treasure brought forth into the world.
Understanding that everything we interact with holographically contains everything that exists, I also flowed in and out of seeing and interacting with Jake as if he were Zoe. I seized this opportunity to make the dream come alive in everyday reality. So much of Jake was already on the other side and had been for months that he was like a bridge to Zoe. She was fully present with me in a different earthier way than she had been since she left. She was temporarily reincarnated onto the floor with me, through him.
When my husband came home from work at the end of Jake’s and my day together, David and I took Jake to the Sunny Brae Vet and laid him outside on a sweet patch of grass. Venus hung beneath the Moon which had just transitioned into Aries, signifying a time for action. Soon Mars slid between the two them and formed what our friend Julian called Jake’s galactic activation portal, just as our wonderful dog shifted from our patch of grass over to the patch of grass that Zoe had prepared for him. Last I saw him in my mind’s eye, he was running over rolling hills and getting some mighty fine belly rubs from her.
I feel enormously blessed by this whole amazing experience. I feel I was given the gift of aligning with, not resisting, the magnificent transformation of form into formlessness. The gift of honoring the power that death wields over each and every minute of our lives. I have seen and felt Death and I know Death to be an immense and fierce love. I have no doubt that Zoe died in the exact right moment and that there were signs everywhere that she was being held and suspended in Death’s love weeks, months, even years before she actually left. I look back and am aware of many of the signs I of course was unable to comprehend at the time. But now, in hindsight, I recognize that Death was pregnant with her. Death nurtured, cared for and birthed her into a different dimension of life.
Yesterday was the third anniversary of Zoe’s death. At this moment I am happy. At this moment I do not miss her or Jake because I do not feel separate from them. I don’t expect to always feel this way, but it is my truth in this moment. For me they are alive in everything I interact with, because today it is my experience that everything I interact with holographically does contain everything that exists. It is impossible to be separated from anything. Staggering miracles are everywhere. They are normal for all of us.
Thank you death, you are wise and beautiful.
You introduced me to the holiness of grief.
Thank you grief, you are kind and tender.
You opened me up and softened my edges.
Thank you Self, you are a consistent source of light.
You embraced the opportunity to reach beyond
the veil and discover Divine Love
Thank you Divine Love, you are eternal.
You held me while I came to know completely
that we are one.
~This prayer/poem arose out of a walk with Linda Joanne.
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Patty Davis, the intuitive medium who called me after the dream, is available for readings and can be reached at 707-834-0286.
Linda Wahlund, whose support and skill helped us tremendously as Jake was in his final months, can be reached at 707-445-0207.
Maya Cooper is a founding member of Isis and the publisher of the Isis Scrolls. She offers Intuitive Guidance, Hands-on Healing, In-Depth Energy Reading and Personal Mentoring at the Isis Osiris Healing Temple in Sunny Brae Center. She has been doing energy work for 20 plus years and can be reached at 707-825-8300.
Opening photo: Zoe, Maya and Dave
Bottom photo: Zoe and Jake the wonder dog