I believe in angels. I believe in magic and fairies and whispers in my ear from the Universe. I believe. Mainly I believe in good. There are times that I hear people talk about darkness and negative energy. I don’t believe in that. Actually that probably isn’t true. I might believe in that for someone else but not for me. It doesn’t come up in my world. There is so much light and love in my world that the darkness just doesn’t have a place. Partly because I don’t see how it would serve me to worry and partly because I think I was just born like this, ridiculously optimistic. I walk around in my life feeling protected and loved. Bad things have happened to me. And the list isn’t short. It just so happens that I’ve mastered the art of turning ‘bad’ things around.

I have some friends that are rolling their eyes at this point. And I have some friends, my Mother especially, that are nodding a little too hard because they too have been blessed with rose colored glasses. I get it, it can be annoying, but it is who I am and it is a hell of a lot better than living in fear.

This interest in angels started about a year ago. So I finally went to a mini workshop on angels to see if anything resonated with me. It was fascinating. I learned about the differences between deceased energies (family members that have passed away), spirit guides (our teachers that we may or may not have known), and angels. They all have different vibrations.

As I listened I knew my Grandma Harriet, Gigi, was one of my spirit guides.

By that time I had already seen an energy worker woman, kind of like Reiki I guess, and she had sensed my grandma by my side. As she talked about this presence that was with me, she described my grandma and my eyes welled up with tears and spilled over. Not because I missed her, but because I was so happy and felt so blessed to have someone confirm this truth that I had been feeling. My grandma died four years ago and after she died I would randomly tell Carlos that I thought of my Grandma a lot that day but I wasn’t missing her. It wasn’t with sadness. I told him that it was like I felt her with me or something. I couldn’t explain it.

After the mini workshop I saw two other psychics, energy workers, or whatever they call themselves. They both asked, right away before we even started the session, if I knew that my grandmother was with me, by my side? One even went as far as to clarify she is my mother’s mother (which indeed she is) and she described her physically as being petite and looking up at me in awe. This time I didn’t cry.  My eyes got watery but I wasn’t shocked anymore. I know that my grandma is with me a lot, if not all the time. And I’m used to it now. Sometimes it isn’t appropriate for my grandma to be with me, then I laugh and politely ask her to leave.

Grandma Harriet is petite, loving, compassionate and sharp. She lived in Evanston and I lived in Madison so we didn’t see her a lot but when we did one thing I remember most was that she would stare at me.
Like creepy almost.
She always sat in the very same place at the dining room table, it was like her throne, and I would sit with her eating my cereal, still not fully awake, no makeup and with morning hair and I would feel her staring at me. Finally I would look at her and say, ‘what?!’ and she would smile and start telling me how beautiful, how amazing I was. Are you kidding? I would sheepishly tell her to stop and keep eating and she would keep staring at me. Finally I got used to it. It made me laugh. I would ask her if she was smoking crack. I made faces at her when she was in her moment of awe. That is what it felt like; it felt like she stared at me in awe. Like she couldn’t figure out how I was created to be such a beautiful creature in her life. Like she couldn’t believe I was her granddaughter. She looked at me like I was this angel sent from heaven. And maybe that is what it felt like to her to have a granddaughter. I don’t know. I just know that I have never felt so adored and so loved in my life by anyone else.

My grandma stared at me for so long that I would get uncomfortable yet she didn’t care about my discomfort because she simply loved to look at me. Who does that? It would have been creepy if it were anyone else. Absolutely. But it was my grandma and she was so cute and precious and loving that it made me laugh.

We always shared the big birthdays. When I turned 25, she turned 75 and we had a big party. She loved parties. Nine years later I was 34, she was 84 and she was still living alone in her condo, driving when necessary to appointments (she never missed an appointment with her hairdresser). She was getting old, yes, we all knew that but she still had another 16 years left before we were going to consider her moving on to the next life. I was certain she’d make it to be 100 years old. She took such good care of herself.

This is the woman that called me frantically one morning because she had just read this really important article about vitamin D and that kids aren’t getting enough of it. She wanted me to go out right away and get some for Alex. She was the queen of vitamins and supplements. We always called her when we wanted to trouble shoot an illness or talk about a remedy.

Her heart was big and full of unconditional love. But apparently it wasn’t a healthy heart and she had a heart attack. She was able to call 911 and even after she died on the operating table, the Doctors brought her back and kept her alive. We spent a lot of time with her in the hospital as she tried to recover and overcome all the setbacks that major heart surgery does to a body. The time was for us. It wasn’t for her (although I had this feeling that she was pissed she didn’t get to clean up her house before she left and even when she couldn’t talk I could tell she wanted me to make sure her eyebrows were properly penciled in). We weren’t ready for her to go and it took us time to accept that as sharp as she was mentally, her body was not going to heal and give her the life she’d want for herself. After four months she died.

I had so much peace in me around her death that I questioned myself and was critical of the way I was grieving. I wasn’t crying that much and it was clear to me that the sadness I did feel was for our family, my mom and my uncles more than it was for losing my grandma.
The reality is I never felt like I lost her.
I had this relationship with her that was like a shiny stone in my pocket. Like I could reach into my pocket and rub the smooth little rock whenever I wanted. She was a gigantic part of my life. And that wasn’t going to end because she died. I thought I would miss her terribly. But I don’t. I think of her every single day but it isn’t a missing feeling. Not like the kind of missing that hurts in your heart. I know that feeling. This isn’t that. I don’t miss her because she isn’t gone.

I feel her with me. I have felt her with me since she died but I didn’t really understand it. I have a stronger relationship with her now than I ever had. She is so loving to me. She is always squeezing my hand, petting my hair and lovingly telling me to slow down. When I start to freak out about something (which happens often enough) I hear her telling me to chill out. And when I don’t listen she throws in a ‘damn it!’

My visits to the psychics have not been for the purpose of connecting with past loved ones or searching for signs of my grandma. There have been other reasons that in no way relate to her. Yet, one of the gifts I’ve been given is the affirmation that she is here by my side, on my right side. She nurtures me in a way that I struggle to do for myself. She is adoring me and inspiring me all the time.

My youngest son used to obsess with worry about me dying. I would tell him that even when I’m dead I’ll always be with him, in his heart. I used to say it because I had to say something. But I don’t think I really believed that would be good enough. Now I do believe. If I can truly feel like I still have this amazing relationship with my physically dead yet spiritually alive grandma then I can only hope and know that it can be true. I can make it my truth.

And so it is.