My Grandmother’s Voice
When I tell you my grandmother has taught me more since she died than she did while she was alive, I’m telling you that she is still with me, and she talks to me almost every day.
Why my grandmother returned
My grandmother died when I was 20, and she returned to me when I was 24, after I had lost twins.
I couldn’t carry them to term. They were beautiful, identical boys. They were born before they were ready for the world and they did not survive.
In the nights that followed, there were difficult dreams. They came to me, raging, and unwilling to look me in the eye. Every day I sank deeper into a sadness that felt like being gnawed at by a beast intent on making a meal of me. One day, it finished chewing and just swallowed me whole.
That moment before you break
Have you ever had a moment when something finally breaks you?
Where life takes you over and draws a line you cannot cross? When the crack finally appears, and then yawns open so wide it pulls you like a magnet to the very thing you have been fighting to avoid?
For me, it looked like this:
Thinking the best thing to do was to ignore my pain, I had returned to work. A few weeks later, I was asked to take a trip to Haida Gwaii (known as the Queen Charlotte Islands then).
I was going to meet new people, represent my company, and see a part of the world I had not seen before. It felt good to be going. And so there I was, in the final moment on the other side of that line, packing for my trip, folding clothes, going over travel plans.
Cue the break
Maybe it was my heart, or maybe it was a piece of my soul falling away, I’m not sure. All I know is that in the next moment, I was on my hands and knees on the floor, sobbing and inconsolable.
I found help. My doctor put me on anti-depressants, my boss gave me a lighter workload, and my friends and family all came forward to offer support.
Still, I remained in a kind of holding pattern. The sense of hopelessness stayed with me, and the dark dreams continued to haunt me.
Weeks drifted by this way, in a gray fog.
In a bubble following the sunrise
Then one night, my grandmother showed up.
“Now, child, let’s take a look, shall we?”
In my dream, I felt her voice vibrate through my body like a warm hug. She was sitting beside me in a bubble that was following the rising sun.
We skimmed over the tops of trees. We flew over mountains and rivers, roads and railways, cities and country fields. The bubble seemed to be traveling at the speed of the sunlight, yet fixed, always, in that endless moment where the first light of morning chases the night away.
And as we flew, she spoke, telling me stories and explaining the meaning of life. She held my hand as she looked straight ahead, and she seemed to be piloting the bubble with her keen attention.
Stories she told me as a child
This was how she had spent time with me when I was smaller. Only when I was eight years old, instead of flying in a bubble, we would go on walks.
She held my hand then, too, and she told me stories. She talked and talked. I remember being puzzled sometimes, and often I could not understand what she was telling me or even why she would talk about such things.
She talked about the cycle of a woman’s life, what it was like to grow old, and how the endings of things are just as important as their beginnings.
I wish I could remember everything she told me. Mostly, I remember her calm, sure voice.
I can say there have been countless times in my life when I have heard echoes of it, and said to myself, “Oh, Gramma told me this would happen.”
You’ll have your hands in far worse things
Like the time I was complaining at having to clean a mess out of the kitchen sink after doing the dishes.
And she had laughed.
“Don’t worry. You’ll have your hands in far worse things, before you’re done.”
To me, it wasn’t funny. She told me that one day, it would be.
She was right.
Every time I have ever had to deal with a mess I have found myself smiling at her, hearing the tone, exactly, as I heard it then. Only this time she also says, “I told you.”
Get on with it, now
In my dream, in the bubble, we flew for what seemed like hours. It felt like we made at least one trip all the way around the world. And in the end, everything she was telling me was compressed into her last sentence, when she turned and looked at me.
She gave me the best hug, ever. I remember her expression as a stern kind of twinkle, and her tone as a familiar, loving admonishment.
I always knew she was being serious when she ended a sentence with ‘now.’ There was a particular snap to the way she said it, so that it underlined everything that came before.
“This life is a gift, my dear, and you have a set number of days with your name on them. Get on with it, now.”
I wanted to stay with her. I didn’t want to leave. I woke up crying, but this time they were happy tears.
That was the day the fog lifted for me, and real healing began.
She’s still with me
My grandmother has stayed close since then. I hear her voice often, and on occasion her advice has led to some places that I can only describe as magical.
It has been quite a journey.
I am 61 years old now, with grown children, and I am a grandmother.
This blog is decades in the making, and it represents my ‘coming out’ as a woman who communes with ancestors, follows paths of intuition, and seeks connection with ancient wisdom and sacred laws.
I am taking the final steps away from my carefully crafted corporate persona. After a career in journalism and communications I am claiming my birthright as a seeker of mysteries to share stories about adventures with ancestors, Indigenous magic, stones, earth energies and ceremony.
My grandmother’s voice it seems, is now my own.