Letter 19

February 8, 2016

Dear Jesse,

Two years.

It’s been two long and soul stretching years, Jesse, since you took your last breath. It’s been two years since life thrust me on a journey that would challenge every aspect of my existence as well as yours.

Yes, your existence.

How we are coexisting.

It’s taken me quite some time to get comfortable with this expanded reality that has at times scared me, yet comforted me, in ways I don’t think I’ll ever be able to articulate to anyone. The sincronicities of events, signs and physical manifestations of your essence has rocked me to the core and challenged everything I’ve thought about death, about loss, about the concept of endings.

Everything.

I’ve had to arrive at a place where I have thrown out the the fear of others opinions, perceptions and ideas about my experiences. I’ve had to come to an understanding that these things are all a part of it. Jesse, I know you still exist, and I’ve finally gathered the courage to publically say it. I know you are with me as well as so many others, but I also know that we have something very important to do together in this life.

This.

Your story.

My story.

Our story which didn’t stop the night you suffocated the last breath out of your body, it only moved into a different light, a new chapter, even though it was one I never imagined for you, for me, for us, when idealizing the future like we do.

It was November 3, 2014, just 9 months after you took your life in the Motel 6. I was still living in New Orleans at the time and had dropped Dylan off at his preschool one morning. I was feeling very heavy with depression. I missed you so much and felt so alone during that time in my life. I didn’t want to return back to the house and work as I was feeling suffocated by my own heaviness.

God, the heaviness, it will crush you if you do nothing.

I knew I needed movement in an open space so I headed to the local park.

I just walked.

I kept walking.

I remember started to verbalize my feelings to you. Instead of crying about you I was instead crying to you. I missed you so badly. I just walked with my head down and talked to you. I wanted you to hear me, I wanted to not feel so alone in the abyss of my pain. I remember coming around a curve on my walk and something happened, something entered my mind. The best way to describe it is it was similiar to how an idea pops into someone’s mind, but it wasn’t mine. It felt different, it felt like it came from an external source not from within my own thoughts.

“Go up on the hill.”

I stopped.

I just stood there kind of confused.

When I had looked to my left there indeed was a very high man-made hill in the middle of acres of flat park and I remember it looking very out of place actually.

“Go up on the hill?” I thought to myself.

I stood there some more.

I then changed my direction and started walking towards the hill. I remember questioning myself with every step.

“What am I doing?” I asked myself.

I kept walking up the hill only to finally arrive at the top.

I looked around.

It was a pretty view so I just sat down on the hilltop.

Moments passed and I just took in the best I could in the state I was in.

I remember feeling an urge to want to turn around. I didn’t question it and when I turned to my left something I never saw coming happened… out jumped a bald eagle from the top of a tree as the words,

“THERE I AM” were shouted through my consiousness.

I remember my jaw dropping down as I caught my breath. I’ll never forget the surge of life I felt jolted through my body at that moment. I’ve never felt so connected to this life source we human beings all belong to. There was an instantanious feeling of pure life pumping through my body. I’ll never forget that feeling, ever. I just stared as the bald eagle flew towards me, directly over me, and as I turned I watched it fly straight ahead. I remember following it until I could only see it disappearing into the wide open sky.

As I drove back to the house I was just in disbelief as to what had just happened. I can’t tell you how many times I muttered to myself,

“Holy shit did that really just happen?”

Arriving home I went straight to my outside deck. I just sat there trying my best to soak in this event. What happened next was just incredible. As I sat looking ahead I noticed a mark on the deck and remembered Dylan had been painting the night prior. When I got up to look closer the image of a bald eagle head within the smeared paint stopped me dead in my tracks…

Little did I know this was just the beginning of an expansion deep into myself in a way I’d never known before.