This sucker (no pun intended) is comin’ straight from the heart this morning. My current bout of hormonally inspired insomnia is leaving my brain about as fresh as a bag of last year’s lettuce, but I have to write this. You fellow writers can empathize….when you got words stuck inside, they will keep bitching until they are freed. So here we go!

Yes, it still sucks. It still sucks that my grandparents, aunts, and uncles aren’t in their human bodies currently, that they left me and the rest of my family through various vehicles of death. You would think that because I am a medium, can talk to “dead” people, that my grief at these losses would be so much softer, less sharp and prickly, more blurry, not hurt so much. I can, after all, have the occasional chat with them on my own. Grandpa Sever always hears me when I cry until my eyes are raw because I miss him–I just want him to give me a sign that he and I are still together, that it doesn’t matter that his body was lowered into the cold, hard ground back in 2003. When I ask him to give me a sign that he hears me, this is when the camera will sail off the dresser for no apparent reason, or all the beauty products under my bathroom sink will suddenly be turned upside down. All of them.  About once a year, I will visit another medium so I can have direct communication with all my family up there. I just LOVE hearing what they are up to now, what advice they have for me…..it’s so comforting.

But it still sucks. When totally out of the blue I had my first spirit contact while reading for a client back in 2007, I thought, “Hot Damn!” I am in like flynn with the kinfolk up above, I won’t pine for them so badly at holidays and birthdays, I will hear them so clearly now……this is the sh*t!!!!!! Not. It hasn’t worked that way for me. Grandpa Sever chimes in more loudly than the rest at times; I can hear him very loudly and clearly. With the others, it is just a feeling of what they are communicating. All this is heavenly. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. But it just doesn’t at all lessen the acute longing I have for them, to hug them, listen to their laughter, hear my granny tell me how my brother needs to “reduce” (a polite way of stating he is a fat ass and needs to drop that chub) , share my stories, and hear theirs. Every holiday brings a fresh cascade of tears because I won’t be able to hear the doorbell ring and get so excited to greet them. My birthday…the same. I would give anything just to have one more family birthday party at my granny and grandpas. Granny always ensured my cake was as beautiful as it was delicious, that the gifts were what I had requested, and best of all, hugged me and was genuinely delighted to see her granddaughter and be silly with her.

But what doesn’t suck at all is the fact that I at least had them here for a while. Such a short while, it seems. Especially my dear Granny…..I was only 24 when I clung desperately to her hand as the life support system finally stopped its creepy rattling, Granny stopped breathing. I sobbed until I thought I would puke because I couldn’t believe this wonderful woman was no longer in my life. But she was still in my life, and really, never left. She, and my other family members, live on through me, in the way I treat people, in my ever sharp memories of them….the lessons I learned, of what it takes to die knowing your life was well lived, they are alive and well within my heart. In the midst of the suckfest of my grief, this is what I cling to. The love is still there, the connection was really never severed. When I can remember this, then it doesn’t suck quit so badly.