I’m sharing this in the hopes that it might help someone.

The first few weeks after Brendan died I kept writing in my journal the sentence. “Where are you Brendan?” Where are you? Where did you go? You were just here and now you’re gone? Every night after work and before going to bed pages and pages of the same thing written over and over again. After a couple of weeks of this one evening, I was falling asleep to some soft, mellow music and I heard Brendan like he was just right there, not even far away, about 1 foot away and he said, “Wendy, if anybody knows this place, it’s you. You already know all about this place.”

It was then that I suddenly realized if I was going to continue to have Brendan in my life I was going to have to create a whole different relationship with him. He was no longer going to be the same as he was on earth in a physical body and all that comes with it. I can’t help thinking he was really happy about that. I don’t think he fit into the structure of Western Civilization very well. Money and Career didn’t matter at all to him. It was all about friends, family, and playfulness. And that can only get you so far in the material world. Especially in the Western World. So I was happy for him that he didn’t have to deal with those things anymore.

I decided I was going to trust myself and if I sensed he was nearby I was going to pay attention to it. I instinctively knew that I was the one who was going to have to change and trust my intuition and not rely on anyone to tell me how to sense spiritual things. Because you know how it is with these sorts of things. You have people who are atheists and my experience is just going to be a joke to them, or they think that I don’t understand Science, or maybe I’m hallucinating or wishful thinking. Then you have the religious people who are super invested in you only connecting to the spirit in a Christian way or a Hindu way or a Buddhist way. And if it doesn’t match their religion then they conclude that you’re naive or talking to the devil or something. So I knew if I was going to continue to keep in contact with Brendan that I had to change and start practicing listening to my soul. Nothing super profound has happened, so no one is going to be knocking on my door asking me for a movie deal. It’s not like I’m now a medium who channels spirits.

The only thing I learned (profound or not) is that our soul already knows that “other” place. And the other place is really super close. You can definitely sense it if you spend time alone and in quiet spaces. Meditation and pulling yourself away from the outside world really helps. Of course, that's difficult when you have to work 40 hours a week and raise children, etc etc. (This is when a pandemic and isolation has its advantages)

I had to stop framing the “other” side in terms of religious teachings. Also, Brendan stopped becoming someone ‘up in the sky’ or somewhere ‘else’. It took me 2 years to realize that he was a part of me now. I really started feeling him in my heart. Which sounds cliche and corny and I wish I could explain it better but I can’t. I resisted that feeling for so long, I didn’t want him to be a part of me, I wanted him to be Brendan and physically look how he always did on earth.

I remember at Brendan’s Scituate (South Shore) Memorial Gathering, Al Gibson came up and started talking to me about Brendan being a part of all of us now. I was selfish and didn’t want him to be a part of “all of us”. I just wanted him to be the same old Brendan in the same body, being the same person he was. After months and years of grief, Things have evolved for me. When I think of Brendan now it’s either right next to me or at one with me in my heart. When I say ‘at one with me’ I don’t mean only me, I realize that every one of us is connected and if we wanted we could experience it by focusing on our heart space. It takes practice though. So Al Gibson may be surprised that I still remember him saying that. (It really irritated me at the time because of the grief I was feeling but I understand what Al meant now)

I think there are a lot of people experiencing this with their loved ones who have passed on but they don’t tell anyone, they don’t share it because people have reactions to these sorts of things and end up shaming you for them or thinking you’re crazy and who wants that kind of judgment placed on such a sacred experience?

Sometimes I’ll be minding my own business, (usually late at night making some herbal tea before bed and suddenly I feel a really strong presence right next to me. I’ve learned what Brendan’s presence feels like to me so now I can identify it.)

I also don’t want people who loved Brendan wondering why they aren’t experiencing this kind of thing, but I think it’s simply because we expect the experience to be something startling, a big, grand vision and hearing perfect sentences spoken out loud. Seeing an apparition of our loved one in front of us with a message. But we have to remind ourselves that we are in this strange material world with 5 senses and that the spiritual world is much more subtle and works in a different way. So instead of expecting our loved one who has left earth to conform to our earthly expectations, maybe instead we need to become more spiritual and sensitive to the spiritual world which we are always a part of.