Susan Lewis Storey

This is a painting I did after Phil's transition three years ago today.  Archetypal in nature he is represented as the wise shaman he was....and still is.  In honor of this anniversary I am sharing an excerpt from a book I am currently co-authoring about the nature of conscious transitions, staying in communication with those that transition ahead of us, and living in the experience of eternal life...because there truly is no death!  We just trade in a physical body for an incredible light body and step more into the fullness of our being.  Misconceptions about death and the conditioning we have around that concept are the only things that keep us seemingly disconnected.  As you will read in the story, Phil has never left.

STAYING CONNECTED

Unexpectedly widowed at fifty-six, a series of beautifully guided, synchronistic events,  had me living at my daughter’s home just prior to, and following, my sweet husband’s untimely passing.  A few weeks before his transition, he and I made an agreement to stay connected.  Our beliefs supported this idea though neither of us knew just how we would pull this off.  Therefore we decided he would be the one to let me know just how that was going to happen once he ‘settled in’.  

Several weeks after Phil’s passing I was writing one of my evening letters to him in my journal.  This a practice I had started after his transition to ease into a new way of being with him.  It really seemed to help me find ‘us time’ to share my day with him this way.  But it wasn’t a two-way street and I really wanted that.  Since we had agreed before his passing to keep in touch,  it dawned on me to give him a symbol to use to let me know he was around.  Dragonfly’s had always been a personal totem for me and was even the logo I used for business in the form of my initials.  This seemed the perfect symbol.  As I wrote the letter telling him to send me dragonflies if he was around, I also wrote how difficult this might be since I was most always inside.  Not long after I put my journal away the phone rang.  Lo and behold, my three year old grandson was put on the phone to tell me about his new temporary “dwagon-fwy”  tattoo.  I laughed and cried and excitedly shared the news with everyone.  Phil and I were in touch!

Lighter and happier, the next day I shared the news with a girlfriend as I accompanied her to an appointment she had.  As we sat together across from the man she was seeing, he began questioning me rather than my friend.  I explained that I was just accompanying her, but still he asked me a bit about myself and my work.  As he listened a look of excitement came over his face and he reached beneath the table he was sitting behind, pulled out a rather large book and said,  “Oh, you have to read this!”  A huge dragonfly illustration adorned the cover of the book he held up, and my friend and I could hardly contain our amazement.  The book, as it turned out, addressed many of the esoteric based questions I had been asking my late husband about in the letters I wrote each evening.  This was not only his way of answering the questions, but of saying hello.  I know this, because as I went to purchase the book that evening, the edition now available had a new cover..without the dragonfly!  Had I not gone with my girlfriend, I’d have never seen that edition let alone been directed to it for the answers I sought from Phil.  I have since learned how our loved ones can inspire our thoughts in order to align us with such synchronistic events.  This is exactly what Phil had done!  And he wasn’t through yet.

I began hearing from my family about their own unusual dragonfly experiences.  My mother, who had become widowed only a day before me, had a dragonfly visit her patio daily that she had never encountered before.  My sweet niece for the first time she could recall, not only had a dragonfly appear at her home, but it perched itself on her shoulder, which she couldn’t wait to tell me about.  They randomly appeared to my daughter and my grandson’s mother around this time as well.  But no dragonfly dance was as profound as the one I experienced last year.

Prior to his passing, Phil had never expressed one bit of concern about my life without him.  When I would say how much I was going to miss him, he would simply reply “You’ll be fine.”   For twenty-two years we had done absolutely everything together and loved the introverted cocoon we had built our life around.  Imagining life without him was impossible.  But now, as I look back, I wonder if he intuitively knew something I didn’t.

About a year after Phil’s passing, I went to dinner with a man I had met through yet another series of profound synchronistic events.  Such alignments had become almost a way of life and I needed only to follow the clues scattered like breadcrumbs before me.   Seated at a window overlooking a lake, my mind turned to Phil.  He had loved the water and whenever I am near it he always comes to mind.   I suppose it’s natural, after a long marriage, to wonder if your late spouse approves of your life moving along with someone new.  Having had no doubt, that Phil had a hand in arranging our meeting, still I wondered what he thought.  Just then a truly huge swarm of tiny dragonflies arose from the lake right in front of the window where we sat.  They circled and danced outside the window the whole time we were there.  For me it was Phil not only acknowledging his approval, but taking credit for the matchmaking itself, saying….”See, I told you you’d be fine.”  

Dragonflies were not the only way Phil communicated.  One day, not long after the phone call from my grandson about his timely tattoo, I was in my bedroom at my daughters house tidying up.  I was talking out-loud to Phil as I always did, telling him we needed a better system.  Dragonflies were great for saying hello but I needed something more.  As I continued to talk to Phil about ways we could connect, I reached for the remote and turned on the TV.  Again, perfect timing!   Just as I turned on the TV a woman on the screen was demonstrating how one could use a pendulum to connect with their deceased mother.   The series, which I had watched countless times, had never even remotely shown anything metaphysical….let alone a clip about connecting with a deceased loved one.  Phil had done it again, and I reached for my my long forgotten pendulum; a beautiful handmade glass bead Phil had once bought me.

In the years since his passing I have learned how easy it is for our transitioned loved ones to inspire us with guiding thoughts toward things they want us to know or experience.  As much as this has happened between Phil and I, I still pull out the pendulum from time to time to verify what I think I am being shown.  It has proved to be a great tool for ongoing communication and greatly reconnected me to Phil on an emotional level in that first year following his transition.  Apart from communicating, I use the pendulum, and have taught others to use a pendulum, to regain a physical connection to those who have transitioned.  I can’t tell you how many times I have held it and simply asked Phil to use it to ‘hold my hand’.  For us that means when Phil is near, the pendulum will spin in a circle with quite an energetic pull as I hold it.  This worked like magic to lift my spirits in the first year following his passing, because the physical absence was so profound.  

Since Phil’s transition I have been blessed with two separate mediums who have connected with Phil and given me confirmation of messages I intuitively received from him, without me sharing the tiniest bit of such information with them.  This initially helped me to trust what I was picking up.  Mediums are great if you can find one with a good track record.  There are lots of charlatans however using something called ‘cold reading’ to appear to have a connection, so, if you are inclined to use one, do your homework.  But, trust me, there is nothing like having your own ongoing connection.  

My new life partner has honored my marriage and my stories of Phil from the first day I met him.  Phil’s photo is on the shelf near a tiny Buddha from Phil’s collection and an anniversary gift I once gave him depicting an East coast harbor scene like those he loved.  Inspired to write a book about my ongoing experiences since Phil’s transition, in hopes of teaching others about the eternal nature of life, preparing for their own conscious transitions, and staying connected to loved ones following a transition, another synchronicity presented itself. In the ever unfolding nature of such occurrences sprinkled across my life since Phil’s passing, this new man in my life recently reminded me that he once had a very successful career with a major newsgroup as an editor!  Yes, as it happens, it seems I am living with my editor!  You can call that coincidence if you want, and I am sure skeptics will, but Phil and I both know better!  We are writing a book together and he chose the editor!