CJ's Advice 5 Years Later

At CJ's celebration of life, I shared three pieces of advice that he had given to me. As the five year anniversary has come and gone, I thought about that advice and what it has meant to me.

CJ would say it doesn’t matter if you believe in God or Buddha or Aslan. Just believe. He was talking about faith in something bigger than ourselves, faith in a continued spirit after we were gone.

Now 5 years later, I don’t even have to think about faith. I know that there is an afterlife. I am shown signs everyday that CJ still exists. He doesn't just show me, he shows so many others who have opened their heart to see the signs that he exists. He has shown us that faith.

Passing from this world to the next, is like walking through a door, one where we can’t see to the other side. CJ made that journey ahead of us. When a young soul leaves this world it is a travesty. It is an out of order death that sends ripples disturbing the natural order. So a balance needs to be achieved.

I believe that those young souls are allowed to wait at the door, holding it open just a sliver, to connect the two worlds. If you open your mind and listen with your heart and feel with your soul, you will get a glimpse of them through the signs of the universe.

Knowing that CJ waits at that door and reaches out, is a truth I have absolute faith in.💜

The second advice from CJ was to lean on each other.

CJ always admonished me about my inability to let others help me. He taught me that a person who has others constantly leaning on them will eventually falter under the weight of that responsibilities. But that for two or more to lean on each other, they would hold each other up.

For these last 5 years I have done that, and then some. I have learned what he taught me - we need to lean on each other so we hold each other up. I have found that in helping others, I help myself. Some of the most important people in my life are those who share this journey with me. In helping each other, in sharing our pain, we help each other to live with this burden. Family and friends have become invaluable. They may not know this journey, but they lessen my pain each day with the memories they are creating with me, integrating their love and memories of CJ into these new ones.

The last piece of advice I shared from him was wrong. His advice to everyone would be to cry for him, and then move on. To live a full life with love, friends, family and laughter. But CJ didn’t know what this journey was like. That's not how it works.

Oh yes I have found life and laughter and love with friends and family. But I don’t move on. It’s not about moving on. It’s about finding that life and love and laughter in the grief. With the grief.

CJ did not have the knowledge that with continued love is continued grief. And that’s OK. It’s the connection. The grief is the access to the other side..to them. Through this connection we bring them in our hearts and in our head along with us now. And with them, in this grief, we find the ability to live.