Ann’s Blog

A Life and a House to Rebuild

In mid March 2006, our normally below-the-snowline valley had been visited by a rare and un-seasonal storm. And although awesomely beautiful it was equally devastating.

Seventeen trees had been brought down by the weight of snow on early leaves and weakened limbs, blocking the only road in. Numerous other trees had toppled within our acreage. The most consequential had been an immense oak with roots extending beneath the front portion of one of the two houses serving family and guests. Standing at the kitchen window in the lower house I had watched, as in slow motion, the mighty oak had fallen forward and downward, and in so doing lifted the foundation and the entire front section of the upper house, pulling it away from the rest of the house and leaving it suspended in mid air.

Some days later Bob would tell me that when the oak went down he knew it signaled his own impending departure. I think we all did.

Bob’s Surprise Visit

For several years I had been putting off knee surgery, waiting for a more convenient time. Once Bob’s memorial service was over, I knew what I needed to do and asked Anna to take me home with her for knee surgery. A nurse and well-connected to the medical community where she lived, I knew this was the ideal and best possible choice for the new beginning of my life. Each of the children had tirelessly been on hand to help since the onset of Bob’s health crises the previous July. Similarly, each would now under gird my physical healing and lend their emotional support as I met the challenges ahead. I knew surgery and recovery would be painful, but necessary if I wanted to regain mobility and step back into an active life. I also reasoned that the physical pain would help me bear and even offset some of the emotional pain. I understood, or perhaps intuited, this as having something to do with a transfer or a sacrifice of energy on one level for that of another. And so, a few days later I headed with Anna for what would be my home away from home for the coming year, culminating with our trip to Scotland.

Arrangement for my surgery fell into place in a remarkable way and on April 7^th, my 77^th birthday I found myself in a hospital bed behind a partially drawn curtain in the surgery staging area. Of a sudden and taking me totally by surprise, Bob was there; his presence palpable and unmistakable. I expressed or thought appreciation for the effort I assumed it would have taken for him to be so tangibly present. To this he telepathically replied that of course he would be with me. Not only for my surgery, but wasn’t it also my birthday? I was overwhelmed with gratitude at his presence, and I felt deeply at peace and confident all would be well. Again, in the operating room and just before going under the anesthetic, he was again there and just as palpable as before. With this I lost consciousness, but the memory sustained me throughout my stay in the hospital and the coming weeks.

Back at Murray Creek

In the meantime, back at Murray Creek a friend in need of a place to live moved into the lower house “to hold the space and honor the vision of the sacredness of the place.” While three hundred miles away, with Anna and her husband Jim, a building contractor, plans began to take shape for using the storm-damage insurance to rebuild the front portion of the upper house. Before Bob’s transition I could not have imagined my life at Murray Creek without him. But now I began to embrace an image of myself living out the remaining years of my life in this house on a hill overlooking creek and valley. And in my journal dialogues with Bob he insisted this was where I needed to be for what lie ahead.

Jim, with lots of help from sons, grandsons, and even neighbors, began the project of rebuilding the broken house. Moreover, with the demise of the great oak, a magnificent view of the valley and mountains opened up.

Looking Back / Looking Ahead

With Bob’s transition on the vernal equinox of 2006, my outer as well as inner journey took its most decisive turn since the wintry eve sixty-two years previously when first our eyes had met. I had been fifteen and he seventeen. The above illustration from a 16^th - 17^th alchemical work titled Rosarium Philosophorum is a picture worth a 1000 words of what the future held for us.

But before delving into the archetypal under girding of the forces of attraction by which two lives who are so destined become conjoined, let me bring you up to date.

In moving into year two of my life after Bob’s transition, I am persuaded to begin a more personal level of sharing from the somewhat voluminous journal dialogues that have transpired between us. Also, with the passage of a full year’s cycles, my vision of what lies ahead is beginning to take shape, this occurring incrementally as we have moved to a surprising new level of our souls’ eternal connection.

My first year after Bob’s transition was spent mostly away from Murray Creek, and culminated with a trip to Scotland accompanied by Anna, our oldest daughter. The trip was to visit our eldest son Robert Jr and was prompted by a dream in which Bob had appeared in full Scottish regalia. In working with this dream and in subsequent journal dialogues, the indication was that an aspect of healing work we had been doing for many years was to continue, but on a new level with him en spiritu and me still physically here. The dream was on July 21^st, exactly four months after his transition.

Bob is in full—really full—Scottish regalia. Masses of people are congregating. The setting is a combination of an outdoor area with a nearby large parking area. We decide that I should go get our car and bring it to a place where we agreed to meet. I am not concerned about getting separated from Bob, although normally I would have been. It is as though we have built-in homing devices. The sense is of some culminating collective occurrence. Most of those gathered don’t seem to understand what is happening, but have been drawn en mass by what I assume to be “instinct.” Bob, because of the way he is dressed stands out against the background of the crowd. The outfit he is wearing somehow identifies or relates to his role.

When son Robert was home for Christmas we made plans for me to spend the last two weeks of February in Scotland. This would include a trip to the Elliott clan territory in the Borders region. At that point I had no further specific instructions concerning what Bob referred to as the “assignment.” But I did understand it to be along the lines of the same “generational” healing work we had been doing for a number of years whenever such need had been discerned. By now I also understood that once this “assignment” was completed I would return to Murray Creek where, as Bob had repeatedly emphasized, our work together could best be carried out.

In preparation for our trip Anna sent for maps of Scotland. We also researched the Borders area and particularly the Elliott clan lands. In studying a map of the area the most significantly Elliott territory seemed centered around Heritage Castle, traditionally where the head of the clan had resided. Further instructions came concerning marking a triangular area on the map. This was in order to limit the scope of the healing work to be done. With Heritage as one point, to find the second point of the triangle I dowsed an enlargement of our map of the area with the indication pointing to Hawick, some twenty miles to the north of Heritage. The third point was then a simple matter of triangular geometry and turned out to be at the edge of the Wauchope Forest, close to but not exactly on a spot where a particularly bloody border battle between the Scotch and English had taken place in 1575. A fourth and the most significant point was given as the exact center of the triangle. Our map indicated this as being on Wyndborough Hill, the site of an ancient burial cairn.

The remaining instructions for our visit to this particular triangle of the Elliott clan territory included some sort of “witness” to be left at each of the four points. For this Anna made laminated facsimiles of a Murray Creek Labyrinth coin designed and minted some years ago by Jim Naylor. We also chose four crystals from Bob’s shamanic bag to leave at each point.

Once in Scotland I asked for a liturgy suitable for the work and which would put it within the context of a sacramental and transpersonal empowerment. The following was given:

Prayer of Divine Mercy for the Repair of the Breech

Eternal Father, Divine Mother, we offer you the Body and Blood, the soul and the divinity of your dearly beloved son, our Lord Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world.

For the sake of his most sorrowful passion

Have mercy on us and on the whole world.

Pour out your mercy on this place, and on this land.

We pray for all souls harmed here in any way so as to have lost their way on their eternal journeys.

Pour out your mercy on both the perpetrators and the victims of violence here and in adjoining vicinities.

We petition in behalf of and for the release of any souls or fragments of souls held here.

We deliver any souls so desiring into the care of the Beings of Light and your assisting Angels here to guide their return to pathways of light.

We join with all of heaven in rejoicing at their reunion with loved ones from whom they have been separated—even the lost parts of their own eternal souls.

Gracious Father, Loving Mother, Beings of Light and assisting Angels, we give thanks for the privilege of having a part in this work of reparation.
Amen

Return to Murray Creek

On my first attempt to “come home” I lasted a week before, from lack of restraint, I suffered a mid-back compression fracture. So back to nurse Anna’s I went to have this repaired. The very day after the procedure I was again determined to make the trip back from Paso Robles to Murray Creek in time for the Easter arrival of Conal and Holly with their u-haul trailer of their drastically pared down earthly possessions. They were coming to live in the house Conal had purchased some three years previously on the 20 acres just to the east of our family 60 acres. But my back, instead of quickly restoring me to a pain free life, worsened. And back to Anna’s I went once more for another round of medical treatment and a month of physical therapy. With significant gradual improvement and with the expectation this would continue, Joseph and Ebru came down to bring me home. This third attempt to settle in at Murray Creek seems to be working with proof being that each morning with my trekking poles in hand I walk to and through the Labyrinth and back home.

And so with this entry I once again take up the task of writing about the ups and downs, the twists and turns of this journey called life.