Channeling Spirits

 *Things have seemed a bit heavy lately: many dear friends suffering injuries and losses, and despite all the very positive accomplishments and days in general, I've found myself weeping at the slightest things. 

I created this piece in July while attending the New Orleans Writing Marathon, the first since 2019, since 'the pandemic' closed down the world. 

I've edited it a bit with possible family readers in mind, and though it might punch you in the belly somewhere around the middle, it ends on a beautiful note.

It means a lot to me, and I hope it offers someone who might need it right now some peace and hope.

4:10PM @"The Seance Room" upstairs at Muriel's in Jackson Square w/Janice, Kate, and Jessica

"Channeling Spirits"

    Channeling the spirits. This was what I opened myself up to while on my way here from Michigan. Wearing my pendant of ethereal, spiritual connection enhancing stone, I had readied my heart, head and notebook. Yet, these are not the things my pen has brought to life so far. Instead, my pen unfolds the living souls in the Quarter. I know better than to fight what flows, understanding whatever happens in my New Orleans Writing Marathon days is meant to happen.

    Yet, I awaken from sleep here each morning with wisps of my dreams hovering in my consciousness. Before evaporating, they gift me with the scent and feel of my beloveds, yet without solid moments.

    The night after my son died twelve years ago, I had a dream so real that when I woke, I could still feel him, still smell his scent on my fingertips.

    There have been many dream minutes spent together since, but none so vivid as that night, as I know without doubt he visited in that dream to assure me he was going to be with me always and that, as he insisted, he was all right.

    Hawks began visiting me: swooping over my car and truck as I drove, so close I could see downy white bellies and orange-red tail feathers; landing upon the corner fence post across my yard and staring at me while I stood in the kitchen; resting in the leafy green branches of the tree ten feet from my front window to watch me as I sat upon the couch.

    After my brother died not quite two and a half years ago, my hawk visits ceased. Stopped cold. My heart was broken, crunchy with grief, anger, and unexplainable loss. 

    How could my brother, who'd become one of my best friends, who knew how my son's death had devastated our family-his wife and three sons included-How could he have ended his own life?

    How could my son, my hawks, abandon me when I needed them more than ever?

    A month or so later, as I sat on my porch talking with my slowly recovering sister-in-law over the phone, her words stopped mid-sentence. I heard a sob.

    "What is it? I'm on my way!" My feet were already moving. But then..."No, Kristine-" A laughing sob. "Two hawks just swooped across the river and are circling over my deck..." Another sob.

    My son hadn't abandoned me. He'd simply been busy greeting my brother, showing him the way.

    Though I'd hoped the pendant would help show me my spirits, as I sit here in the red tinted light of the seance room, I realize it has. It has brought their story to my pages, which I haven't been able to write about until today. Here, at the Writing Marathon, in the Seance Room, surrounded by friends and honey child martinis.