It's been 4 months since my wife Jami passed away, and 7 months since my mother passed.

I have written a lot about grief, how to conquer it, cope with it.  What I have learned is that grief is a struggle, an

overbearing and overwhelming struggle when I stay in its path by thinking of sad thoughts, sad feelings of missing whom I have lost.  Feeling guilty that I may have been able to fix my wife and possibly been more understanding of my mother. 

In coming to terms with my grief and it's process, I can only say that it can be one nasty roller-coaster ride!

And if you allow yourself to lye on the tracks, it will dice you and slice you like the 'vege-matic' food processor!

Lately, I have preferred changing that ride.  Does grief necessarily have to be a roller-coaster?  Why not a

farris wheel?  Roller-coasters always made me sick, and even now when I view them even from a distance, I

get kind of queezy.  

I always loved the farris wheel because when you get to the top, you can see everything from a distance.

When we live our lives day to day in all of it's hectic twists and turns, our problems are right in our faces, but

when we view our problems from a distance (top of farris wheel), they can be seen as reactors, small stuff, so 

small from a distance.  This can give us a chance to put our lives into perspective, our grief into line somewhat.

We need a purpose, a purpose in knowing why this happened to us, why we are still here, but more importantly, during

our grieving, I have found that it is easier to view grieving and its components from a distance, from the top of a 

farris wheel!  

I very much miss my wife and mother, everyday I still cry, it has gotten a little easier and I know it takes a while.

Sometimes I wonder, when we get down, sad, begin to cry, are they missing us too?  Are they holding and caressing

us?  Communicating with us, crying also because they want to be back with us in physical form but they can't?

You would have to wonder huh?  

I've come to the conclusion that all during our lives, all of the love we express will stay behind with our loved ones.

I feel my wife's presence very much in this house.  We were married 5 years and lived her for 5 years.  I remember

often times hearing her say,"Someone died here before.  Something happened here before we moved in!"

About 2 weeks before Jami (wife) passed, she told me that she had a dream of Jodi (her sister who passed 3 years

ago), and the dream was really bloody.  Also, prior to my mother passing away, my Dad said that she was talking

the whole night before to her fraternal twin sister Tina, who passed away around 10 years ago,  

Both Jami and Momma Rose passed away in their sleep, and they both had either premonitions and/or contact with

their sisters.  Now, this has hit not just close to home, but right at home.  

I am convinced that this spiritual contact is a reality!

I use my imagination quite a bit also, in imagining that my Mom and Jami are still here.  I accept that they are not physically here, but I can still really feel them both.  Talking to them, thanking them verbally for the time they were here can give you such a buzz-feeling, a positive energy, it's like they can hear or sense your communicating.  And at times, I get a response, a sub-conscious kind of word/sentence response of which I can hear or feel, that I really can't say that I am processing those words.

I get an overall feeling as if hearing them both say "I love you, or "we love you"

Very weird it is indeed but so comforting !  

In finding my own ways of coping through all of this, I have learned that it is healthy to let them both go.  And

what I mean by that is to let them go by no longer feeling sad that they are gone, but keeping them both with

me in a happy and loving way!  Maybe even taking them both on the farris wheel with me!

Jami and Mom, thank you for being and staying in my life spiritually.  I know you're both still here, you can't fool 

me!  I feel your love just like the good-vibe, the pulse that I feel from 'On-Line Grief Support'.  

To my friends and others on OLGS, I wish you all of the love that your lost loved ones still have for you, and I love you all too!

We are not here to suffer, we were not put here to suffer, so let the light shine in and shine on you and your families and your lives!   I believe our loved ones are in the sunshine, in the rain, in the air, and just basically in nature.  They have become a greater and more beautiful part of this world, part of us all!  

Life is an on-going process, and it just never stops!

And we should never stop trusting that they never truly leave.  Think about it, if it was your time to go, wouldn't

you go out of your way to keep in touch with who you were survived by?  I would!

Doesn't life just seem like a circus anyway?  There has to be a greater existence that we probably all came from, and when we are finished here bodily, we go back to that!

I have had many Cardinal birds in my backyard recently, nesting on a wire most times within a few feet from me.

Over the 5 years we have been in our home, they were always at quite a distance.  But recently, there has been a change with that.  When I told my wife's mom about the encounters with Cardinal birds, she informed me

that when my wife was a young child she would see a cardinal and scare it away by yelling "Red-bird, red-bird!"

I'm not saying she changed into a cardinal, but it was nonetheless amazing to hear about that from her mom right after my close encounters with Cardinals, and ever since I got this information, I haven't seen a Cardinal for about 2 1/2 weeks!

Thank you all and have a peaceful life on your farris wheel ride!
Michael