Hi,
This is Jacob Watson.
I am sharing from my book,
Gifts of Grief,
A Man's Revelations After Sudden Loss.
This is chapter 12,
Lonely Sailor.
This chapter has no love card from Christine to begin.
Instead,
It's empty.
Instead of beginning with the love card,
I will read them all,
All 11 of them,
From Christine to me.
In this way,
I give them life.
I give them expression.
I give each love card to me and to you and to the universe to hold us and remind us that we are loved by the universe.
It is also true that I didn't know what I had in Christine.
I was too blasé or didn't appreciate what Christine was giving me.
Now,
Living with her absence,
I have appreciation I never had before,
And now I understand that experiences are simply that,
Experiences,
And I am able to let go of judgments of this is a good experience or this is a bad experience.
No,
They are just experiences.
What matters now is love,
And while impermanence is part of being human,
Suffering doesn't have to be.
Suffering can be optional.
This gives me the gift of being who I am,
Of realizing that the only solace is in the spiritual realm.
In the human realm,
I cannot imagine anything worse than losing my partner Christine.
The gift that comes out of that is that I can survive anything.
Now,
Looking back at surviving that,
I am so grateful that our relationship was up to date.
This gives me the confidence that Christine will never leave me and I will never leave her,
That I am taking care of myself as if Christine were taking care of me,
And also that I am taking care of our kids in the best way that I possibly can,
And Christine somehow knows that I'm doing the best that I can.
It is a gift that I have given myself to write this book called Gifts of Grief,
To record these chapters,
To allow meditation time in each.
I also know that new gifts will arise.
Some will be unexpected,
And I welcome them.
This is another sign that I am not alone,
That none of us is ever alone.
Here is some quiet time for you,
Meditation that's longer than usual for you to explore how the gifts are coming to you from the universe.
Please come out of the quiet time gently and calmly and return to the teachings.
The universe gently reminds me that I survived the first horrendous year,
The first brutal year,
A word that I used at Christine's memorial service,
By journaling,
By doing what a writer does,
By putting down the words and the phrases that expressed the natural emotions that I was feeling.
In this very real way,
I was confirmed that everything I had been teaching for many years was true.
The natural emotions hang around only to be acknowledged and expressed.
It is a gift to know that my life is all a spiritual practice.
This is a relief to finally grow up,
To understand that the divine feminine is always with me,
To know finally and completely that I am never alone,
That the present is a gift.
Indeed,
Life itself is a gift.
