The Veil

One friend recently became a grandma.

One friend just lost her father.

One friend learned this morning that her friend of 35 years, passed away in the night.

The baby was born on Good Friday. Two weeks before he was due, but apparently, wanted to be born on one of the holiest days of the year.

The father waited until his wife of well-over 50-years briefly stepped out of the room, threw open his arms in full surrender, and died peacefully. "That was Daddy's last gift to me, not to have me watch him die."

The friend defied all odds, had eaten virtually nothing in two-and-a-half months, her body nothing more than a skeleton, yet her face angelic, peaceful, radiant, beautiful. An anointing ceremony was held over a week ago. The song, "On Eagle's Wings" was played on the piano and sung while her friends, relatives and priest gently placed holy oil on her face and arms, and said their goodbyes. "I'm ready to go, send me off," she said. Eight days later, she was "off."

As you know, I'm a big fan of Theresa Caputo, aka the Long Island Medium. After watching every episode of her show over the years, I'm even more convinced that the veil between "here" and "there" is thin and fluid, and Spirit (as Theresa calls it) moves freely amid them.

"Your loved ones are safe and at peace on the other side," Theresa says all the time. When something "weird" happens, a "coincidence" or unusual occurrence, she says, "Know that that was their spirit with you at that very time."

As "new" spirits come into our lives and familiar souls "leave," it is comforting, for me, to think of them as part of the continual cycle of life and death, and not the beginning or end.

We die a little each day, and ideally, we are awakened, or born, a little, too.