Ethan died unexpectedly on June 19, 2025. He was at his family cottage on Galiano Island. Galiano was Ethan’s sanctuary, the place he loved most in this world. If he had to die young, it’s somehow fitting it was there.

Ethan’s impact on those around him belied his age. He was widely known and loved in the community of Dunbar where he grew up and played soccer and baseball. At St. George’s School where he attended from grade one to graduation. At Queen’s University where he majored in partying and rugby. And back home to Vancouver and the Meraloma Rugby Club where he continued playing the game he loved.

Ethan’s physical strength showed itself early. He started crawling at six months and before he was a year old he was escaping his crib and slowly lowering himself to the floor like an acrobat. In later years it was the finger pull ups he’d do while hanging over the staircase. Ethan wasn’t a big kid but he was immoveable when he wanted to hold his ground. Opponents targeting him in soccer and hockey soon learned that lesson when they went in for a hit and ended up on their butts. In rugby Ethan was known as the guy who was impossible to push back one on one. Ethan was the person you hated having to play but loved having on your team. Nobody worked harder. Nobody left it all on the field like Ethan. He was a leader who led by example.

When you had a conversation with Ethan he was interested in what you had to say. He asked insightful questions. And the next time you saw him he’d remember where your last conversation left off. If you needed help moving or fixing something, Ethan said yes. If he couldn’t say yes he’d find someone who could. He didn’t leave you hanging. Ethan showed up for his friends. And he had friends of all ages, like a man out of time. He knew what it was to take interest. He knew the importance of being present with and for people.

Ethan loved sports. Playing. Watching. Analyzing. He loved music, especially classic rock from the 60s, 70s, and 80s. He taught himself bass guitar and loved making music with his friends. His vinyl collection is a treasure.

Ethan was with us for 24 years, three months and three days. May his memory be a blessing.

Of course, that being his obituary, I only talked about the good stuff. But to be fair to who Ethan really was in life, here are some of the things I didn’t write:

Ethan was stubborn as hell. He could suck the joy out of a room better than anyone I know. His teenage feet stunk to high heaven. When I cleaned out his room after he left for university I could have used a hazmat suit. He could be unkind, bossy, petulant and judgemental. Frankly, he could be a dick sometimes. He made big mistakes and paid a big price for those mistakes. My son was deeply human.

A few months ago a powerful medium named Vicki reached out to me. She wanted to connect. I didn’t know who she was but we had trusted people in common so I said yes. When we eventually met we spoke for over three hours. Ethan’s spirit had been talking to Vicki and she had pages and pages of notes. Everything she wrote down about Ethan and from Ethan resonated. She had messages from him to me that brought me relief and comfort where I had been feeling anxious and afraid for months.

I asked Vicki what Ethan does now, behind the veil. A place with no time. A place of seemingly limitless possibility. She paused for a minute as she considered my question. She was speaking with Ethan in her gifted way to see what he had to say. Then Vicki said this:

‘Imagine a little pond. On the pond are a bunch of toy sailboats, with each boat representing someone Ethan loves. Ethan has his hands in the water, making gentle ripples directed at the sail boats. He is nudging you all toward joy.’

Ethan is nudging us toward joy. I can’t say that sentence enough. It fills me with so much love.

Vicki said Ethan was surprised how easy it can be to do that. He told Vicki he had always tried to do that in life, but now he’s more patient. Now he’s more mature. That made me laugh. Patient and mature were definitely not descriptors of Ethan for most of his life, though he got there before he passed.

Vicki said one other thing I want to share in this essay: Ethan showed Vicki a straight line. He said to her, his death was a straight line, not a fork in the road. Meaning, he was always going to die on that day. He didn’t have the option of coming back. There was no choice. His time in the material world ended as it was always going to.

As I’ve said before, Ethan’s cause of death was undetermined. His heart stopped and we’ll never know why. Hearing Ethan’s spirit describe his death as a straight line fits with that. It brings me comfort that is often in short supply. Losing a child is devastating. My heart breaks for every parent who has ever experienced it. Every young person who lost a sibling. Every grandparent who wonders how it could possibly happen.

Yet here we all are, one year later. The anniversary is close at hand. Whatever I thought the world would look like 12 months after saying good-bye to my son, I was mostly wrong. I couldn’t have predicted the miracles. I couldn’t have predicted a new understanding of the universe and my role in it (or his). I definitely wouldn’t have predicted that I’d have new memories with my dead son.

Ethan was a gift to many. He was a gift to me. He still is and always will be. Endlessly.

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This being human thing can give you whiplash. One minute I was swimming in the soup of despair and the next I was filled with optimism about the life and relationships I can create for myself if I choose. The switch was flipped about a week ago. I wasn’t doing anything special. I was just going about my day when the message entered my mind. Actually, it didn’t just enter my mind, it entered my body. I knew instantly the truth of the message: I can manifest the relationships I want in my life.

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Where did that message come from? I believe it was a message from spirit, from one of my Divine guides. I mean, what does it mean to suddenly think of something? Perhaps it wasn’t me doing the thinking. Maybe the idea was given to me. Revealed to me. Infused in me by some Divine entity looking out for me.

I love the beauty of seeing the world this way. The beauty of knowing I’m not in this alone. That I never have been. My guides have always been there, trying to set me on the right path. Supporting me when I needed it most.

When I was 28 I called off my wedding just 36 hours before I was supposed to walk down the aisle. At 34 I had a 13-month old son in my arms and future Ethan in my belly when I told my then-husband I wanted a divorce. Both decisions left me shattered, but allowed me to retake control of my life. Both decisions allowed me to recalibrate my direction. To start over and forge the path I wanted for myself.

I’ve often wondered where I found the strength to make those two hard decisions. I used to say that somewhere inside me I had a survival instinct that helped me. Now I believe it was my guides helping me make the decisions I knew I had to make.

I listen to a lot of stories about Near Death Experiences (NDEs). They help me understand where Ethan is now. They help me understand what he might have experienced when he died. But they also help me understand this human life we are all living. In every story I listen to the individual who had the NDE talks about the spirits who greeted them when they passed. They speak with confidence and pure knowledge that we all have spirits watching out for us. We all have a Divine support team.

They speak about love.

Not romantic love. Not conditional love. Not love that comes and goes. They speak of pure, all encompassing love that they felt when they crossed over. And having experienced that love when they were ‘dead’ they continue to feel it, or at least remember having felt it, once they’ve come back to this life. This human experience on this planet at this time.

That’s the love that saved me when I made the hardest choices of my life. I made those choices because I somehow remembered that I am deserving of pure, unconditional love. Actually, my Divine guides reminded me and that allowed me to choose me, when those moments came. Even though the decisions were hard. Even though the decisions impacted a lot of people. Though I suppose my guides showed up at those times BECAUSE the decisions were hard. And because they impacted so many people. I needed them to show me the way. To recognize the impact and do it anyway. Both those decisions saved me. They brought me home to myself.

We all are deserving of that pure, unconditional, all encompassing love. It is our birthright as humans. Even the people who hurt us and anger us are worthy of that love. We hurt other people because we forget that all the love we ever needed is inside us. We get hurt by other people because we forget that all the love we ever needed is inside us. It always has been. But we forget. Why? Beats me. All I know is that being human is tricky. But now I’m learning more and more that we aren’t in it alone. We each have our guides, our Divine support team watching out for us. The more we can learn to be open to hearing them, the better this life will be.

It’s the love that my guides reminded me of last week when they sent me the message that I can manifest the relationships I want to have in this life. I am not a victim of the world I see. I create the world in which I live. By my thoughts, my intentions and my actions, I can manifest the world I want to live in and the relationships I want to have with the people around me. But it takes intention and it takes reminding myself over and over and over again that I have the power to do it. You do, too. It’s just so damned easy to forget. Alas, we are human. It’s part of the deal. But we have more power than we realize. It’s about tapping into the love inside us, if only we can remember it’s there.

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I’ve been trapped on the roller coaster of grief these past few weeks. The upward climb is tense, the downward swoosh is terrifying. I’ve wanted to stop the ride, get off and run away but the safety bar won’t open. It’s keeping me locked in place. So I’ve been hibernating. Conserving energy. Each day I try to ride out the ups and downs with as little acknowledgement as possible. I watch the clock and count the hours until I can go back to bed.

I’ve heard from Ethan and intuitive friends in my spiritual community that I need to let myself feel the grief that waits for me on the edge of despair. (Those are Ethan’s words, ‘the edge of despair’) I’ve been to that place before but not for a long while. Hardly ever since I’ve been awash in my spiritual development. Not since I’ve learned there’s a more beautiful way to understand this life, this universe and our purpose in it.

I think I’ve been telling myself that I don’t need to feel the darkness of grief anymore because I now know so much more. But that idea was a false crutch. Perhaps a false idol: the idea that my spiritual awakening and learning means I will no longer feel the grief of losing my son in the same way I did at the beginning. Wrong! I feel it all, whether I choose to acknowledge it or not.

In shutting myself off from my grief I’ve also been closing myself off to my Divine support team. I hear Ethan less often, the few times I’ve meditated I don’t see or hear my guides as readily as I have before. It’s a conundrum! I want to feel the love, support and guidance of my Divine support team but to do that I need to be open. Yet being open means feeling the grief that lives on the edge of despair. I can’t have one without the other. This is the learning of this time.

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A few short weeks from now will be the first anniversary of Ethan’s death. I have no idea what it will feel like. I don’t know if I want to do anything specifically on that day. Will I miss him more on that day than I will the day before or the day after? No. Will Ethan want the anniversary of his departure acknowledged? Perhaps one day he’ll tell me.

Writing this down is both hard and helpful. I don’t feel the flow that I get when my writing is at its best, but as my fingers tap on the keyboard I feel some of the blocks inside me crack and move.

I’ve heard from many people that my writing helps them in some way. That I am a teacher. It’s true that I love teaching. I love helping people understand something better than they did before. I’ve taught sport, I’ve taught professional skills, I’ve led by example. But this feels different than teaching. Today I am a student.

A student of grief, sharing my journey.

A student of spirituality, sharing those insights that leave me in awe.

A student of life, expressing my experiences and unfolding understanding.

A student of the people around me who are my mirrors and my guides.

Thank you for bearing witness. I am less alone with you.

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Most days I think I’m OK. I think I’m well on my way to adjusting to the reality of my son being gone. The signs of grief are different than they used to be. They are less obvious.

A couple weeks ago I did something unusual. I made plans with two different friends for two different times in two different cities on the same day. I walked with one friend in Vancouver for a couple of hours in the morning. Then I drove about 30 minutes to spend another couple hours talking with a different friend. In both cases conversation flowed. We talked about meaningful things.

When I got home from spending time with my second friend it was about 4 o’clock in the afternoon. I was completely exhausted. I could barely function for the rest of the day. I was supposed to join a Zoom call with my spiritual group that night, but I didn’t dial in. I was just too tired.

The following day I felt like I was recovering from a marathon. It’s the kind of tired I used to feel after weeks of work or family demands kept me running. But this time the exhaustion came after about four hours worth of conversation with two different people. That’s all it took to do me in.

I’m trying to be more out in the world. More engaged with life and with people. But it does exhaust me. The exhaustion reminds me that I am still walking along the edge of the abyss. The edge between the physical world where I live, and the place Ethan’s soul now resides.

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About a week ago my intuitive friend Joanie* (I wrote about her in my first essay, ‘Losing my son. And finding him again.’) called to tell me about her dream from the night before. She said Ethan came to her and they hugged. She could still feel his hug in her body. I knew what she meant. One of the first times Ethan appeared in my dream he said, ‘It’s me, I’m here’ and we hugged. I can still feel it in my body. I still believe I hugged my son after he died.

Joanie woke up after her dream. It was the middle of the night and Ethan spoke to her. He said that he stays close to me because I wouldn’t be able to handle losing him if he didn’t. Joanie saw an image of me curled up in a fetal position in my bed—the place I’d live if Ethan hadn’t shown up for me the way he did. Joanie was unsure about passing these messages to me, but she knew Ethan wanted her to so she did.

She said to me, ‘You are still vulnerable, Tracey, and I’m here to watch out for you.’

Her messages hit with a wallop. The thing is, I don’t like feeling vulnerable. I don’t like to think of myself that way. But it’s also true that I can’t return to regular work. It’s true that my social battery is exceptionally limited. It’s true I’m easily exhausted.

In the early days of shock after Ethan died I likened grief to a sweater that would wrap itself around me when the darkness was about to fall. I’d feel the sweater knit its way around my body before I would curl into a ball and sob. Later on, I likened it to a second skin that would never go away. Recently it’s felt like trying on different suits of clothes to see what fits best. See what’s comfortable, or at least wearable. But nothing has been right.

I’ve been feeling two things simultaneously. Firstly, I’ve felt like I have moved to a different stage of grief where I can wear my grief more lightly. Secondly, I know I’ve been fooling myself.

I didn’t know what to make of these conflicting feelings until Ethan intervened in his wondrous way.

My spiritual teacher, Divi also heard from Ethan that he wants me to mourn the parts of his life he never got to experience. He doesn’t mourn them, but I need to. She said I had to let myself feel sad that he will never have a career, never get married, never have children, never grow old.

So far, I have refused to be sad over those things. I’ve refused to think about things that will never happen. Things that were never going to happen. My son was always going to die on that day. He was only ever going to be here in the physical world for 24 years, 3 months and 3 days. The nature of his death made that pretty clear. I’ve taken comfort in that knowledge. But I’m understanding now that I used that knowledge as a shield. I used it to save me from thinking about things I always assumed would happen but now never will. I’ve used it to stop me from going to the bad place where grief is most painful. Into the soup of despair.

With warmer weather now here, I’m spending more time on my deck where I had so many miraculous conversations with Ethan’s spirit last summer. A couple nights ago I meditated out there for the first time in a long while. Ethan showed up right away and we had a beautiful time together.

There’s a pond surrounded by mountains where Ethan often takes me in meditation. He’s told me I can always find him there. That night we sat together on a patch of grass by his pond. I felt pebbles underfoot and the cool water lapping my toes. He had his arm around me and I had my head on his shoulder. I felt the strength of his body.

He told me that I was sad and I needed to acknowledge that. I needed to let myself feel sadness.

He told me I don’t have to work at being strong. ‘Strong is your default, Mom. You have to work at not being strong.’ He said that a number of times so I wouldn’t forget it when I left my meditation.

People have often described me as strong and frankly, it’s a double-edged sword. While people may admire my ability to take what life throws at me and not completely fall apart, I often wish I could fall apart. I want to sometimes, but I seem incapable of it. I wonder, am I strong because it’s in my nature or is it because I believed from an early age that the only person I can really rely on is me?

When Ethan died I asked for help in ways I never have. I relied on friends and family in ways I never thought I could. In response people showed up for me and supported me with endless love and energy. I had no idea so many people cared so much about me, my family and Ethan.

But being strong is a reflex. Lately it’s manifested by blocking my sadness. I see that now. Letting myself go to that place of sadness isn’t easy. I really don’t want to. But apparently I have to, so I’m preparing myself. I haven’t gone there yet, but I will.

In that same meditation where I sat with Ethan beside his pond, he acknowledged the changes that have happened to me as my intuition has grown. He said there is so much more that I’m going to learn, and when I know more, he’s going to take me to some amazing places.

Because time in the physical world doesn’t apply where Ethan is, he said he’s already taken me to those places, I just don’t know it yet. He said all I need to learn, I already know I just don’t realize it. He hugged me and he kissed me on the cheek before I brought myself out of meditation. My emotions churned.

Grief is a shapeshifter. The way it manifests in my body isn’t consistent. There will be no end. It will evolve. That’s all I know. Learning that one of the reasons Ethan has been so close to me since he died is so I can cope with my grief is a miracle. When I try to imagine doing this without him I can barely hold the image. It’s too painful. Ethan showed up for people in life, all the time. He’s still doing it. My son is remarkable. I’m so grateful he chose me to be his mother.

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* For privacy reasons I’m not using my friend’s real name.

I’m a ruminator. If something bothers me I will think on it, chew on it, analyze it, poke it and prod it until I find understanding and resolution. I happily dedicate my energy to my ruminations. I love living in my head.

When I first moved out of the family home and into my own place last Spring I spent hours walking my new neighbourhood trying to figure out what went wrong in my 20-year marriage. I wanted to pinpoint when it started going wrong. And, since this is my second divorce, I wanted to find what connection exists between my childhood and my inability to stay happy in a marriage.

I found many illuminating answers on those walks. That’s the good news. The bad news is that many of my answers involved blaming other people. ‘I am the way I am because of what other people did, or didn’t do, or taught me, or didn’t teach me.’

I was working with a wonderful therapist who helped me process these hurts, which in turn helped me find greater peace. But I still held onto the blame.

Then the worst thing in the world happened. My son died. One moment he was here, the next he wasn’t. And I had nobody to blame. The circumstances of his death simply left no room for it. I suppose I could have railed at the universe for allowing my son to die, but that thought never occurred to me. His death happened. It simply was. No blame.

I started working with a spiritual teacher to help me understand my connection to my departed son and find a place to put my grief. The learning that’s happened, though, has gone well beyond those early objectives. It’s helped me make sense of me.

One of the first things I learned about when I started this journey was the Victim Triangle. It’s a way we humans decide who is right and who is wrong in any negative situation. It’s a way of explaining what led to unhappiness/hurt/anger by placing people in one of three roles: The Victim, The Bully or The Hero.

If I’m unhappy, or hurt, or angry, or afraid then I’m the Victim.

If I’m the Victim, someone has to be the Bully. Perhaps it’s a parent, a partner, a co-worker, a boss or an institution. It could be the clerk at the store or the driver who cut me off in traffic.

The Hero is the person who pulls me out of my unhappiness. A new partner, a new boss, a teacher, a friend, a stranger.

It’s a tantalizing model. Putting people in boxes keeps life clean and organized. It helps explain complex situations in the simplest of terms: I was wronged. My bully should be punished and/or shunned. My hero should be praised.

Then life moves forward and things get murky again. Perhaps the person who saved me, my hero becomes someone who needs to be saved from me. My bully becomes my hero. Or maybe my bully becomes my victim. But if you’re to blame for my hurt then I can’t possibly be blamed for your hurt. You’re MY bully, so I can’t be yours. Stay in your damn box!

Around and around it goes. And what about those unlucky people I elevate to hero? That pedestal is shaky and has no guardrails. It’s easy to fall. And when they do, who do I blame? Them, of course.

The victim triangle is an unending cycle of labelling and blame.

When I examined my own history I saw in hi-def full colour how I used the victim triangle to explain and understand my circumstances whenever things went to shit. Putting people in boxes and keeping them there felt like a way to stay safe. It felt like a reasonable way to protect myself from future hurts. I won’t be a victim again!

But it didn’t work. I still got triggered. I still got hurt. Angry. Afraid. And when that happened I looked around to see who or what was to blame so I could protect myself from that, too.

The layers of protection I kept adding didn’t keep me safe. They kept me separate. Separate from people. Separate from experiences. Separate from understanding. Separate from growth. Separate from love.

So this leads to the question: If the victim triangle isn’t useful for finding peace and understanding, what is?

For me, clarity began by accepting that most (all) of the negative reactions I have to a person or situation are based on past hurts I’m still hanging onto.

Let’s say I had a boyfriend in the past who often wore a red flannel shirt. And let’s say that relationship ended badly. I then get a new boyfriend who treats me so much better than my old boyfriend that I see him as my hero. I also tell this new boyfriend to never wear red flannel because it triggers me. Then, one day I see him wearing a red flannel shirt and I flip out. How dare he?! He knows red flannel is triggering for me!! And off I go.

I judge his decision to wear a red flannel shirt as an attack on me because I warned him not to do it. And I warned him not to do it because I’m still holding onto the hurt I felt from that old relationship, though I’m unlikely to make that connection consciously. Now I’m the victim of my new boyfriend, who I thought was my hero. But he’s not my hero, he’s my bully. How did I not see that?! I tell myself: He’s no different than the other guy who hurt me!

I then find out that he wore the shirt because he was going to see his mother that day and she loves when he wears that shirt. Now who is right and who is wrong?

Nobody. There are no victims, bullies or heroes in this story. He was a man wearing a shirt, that’s all. I attached the meaning. I made up an entire story about it and decided it was true and valid. Then mistrust reared its ugly head and whatever I believed about this man and our relationship was changed for the worse. In that moment he went from being my hero to being my bully. And yet, I made it all up. Nothing was real until I made it real.

I made it real.

And that’s the point. I can make anything real. And when it comes to feelings of anger, sadness and hurt I can make them real better than anyone else because I have so many past experiences to draw on. If a situation reminds me of something that made me happy, then I am likely to feel happy. If a situation in my past made me angry, I’m likely to feel angry about a similar situation now.

It’s much more difficult when I can’t recall where the original hurt came from. That’s not unusual. We all have many hurts from our early years we can’t recall or put into context for today. But their impact is real and can be debilitating. (If your own internal excavations don’t reveal what you need to know, it’s helpful to find a guide who can help you. Someone who can help you find the root event or cause without judgment. It’s about being curious and open.)

It’s been wild to learn that I’m responsible for what I feel. Nobody else. I’ve been making myself miserable for years without realizing it. That doesn’t mean that people haven’t done or said crappy things to me, and they likely will again, but I’m no longer keeping score. I’m no longer labelling people or their actions and putting them in boxes.

We all have fears and triggers. But rather than protecting myself from my own fears and triggers, I’m learning to learn from them. When I feel a wave of anxiety, or the sting of anger, I’ll stop and observe it. I’ll question where it comes from. I’ll focus on letting it leave my body rather than giving it meaning. That’s where freedom lies.

If we stop labelling people and putting them in boxes we free ourselves.

We aren’t victims or bullies or heroes. We’re all just people having a human experience and trying to make sense of it the only way we know how. The key to removing our layers of protection is recognizing they aren’t keeping us safe. They are only keeping us separate.

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I have a 15 pound grief belly. Though it may be heavier than that now. I stopped weighing myself weeks ago. My bathroom scale, which for decades was used daily, now collects dust under a book shelf. My belly grew, seemingly overnight, a couple months after my son died last June. It won’t go away. So now I have conversations with it. I think it’s here to teach me something. Something about the physical manifestation of grief, yes. But also about something more.

Throughout my adult life, when I was most stressed, most anxious, when life was in a tailspin, I shed weight. The worse life got the skinner I became. I’d look in the mirror and think: I feel like shit but I look amazing! (I probably didn’t look amazing but I loved being skinny.)

In the first weeks after losing my son I did drop weight. Then at some point things reversed. It took me a while to realize what was happening. Everything in my life felt upside-down and I hadn’t been weighing myself daily. But when my pants got tighter and my arms felt thicker, I stepped on the scale and saw a number I hadn’t seen since I was last pregnant 21 years earlier. I ran to the doctor. I wanted a diagnosis. A reason for my body getting bigger. I had blood tests and ultrasounds, but nothing abnormal showed up.

I started eating more cleanly. I exercised more. I meditated about it. But nothing made a difference. The old rules about how my body gains and loses weight no longer apply. My body is doing what it wants. I can only assume the shock of losing my son remains in my body (hello cortisol) even with all the work I’ve put into finding peace with my new reality.

My days are finding a more comfortable rhythm, yet my body still feels foreign to me. It’s not behaving like it used to. My once little tummy pooch is now a full-on belly and boy I sure don’t like it. Some days I’m disgusted by it. But I don’t want to live in a body I’m disgusted by, so I’m learning a new way to deal with those attack thoughts. You know, it’s those things we say to ourselves to make us feel bad. Thoughts like:

You’re fat.

You’re lazy.

You should be able to do this.

Why aren’t you better, thinner, happier, sadder, richer, calmer, stronger, smarter….

We attack ourselves all the time, I know I’m not the only one. At the center of all those attack thoughts is a single idea: I am not worthy of love.

Since my grief belly has chosen to stick around I’ve been trying to change my perspective about it. I don’t want to believe I am less worthy of love because my belly is bigger. It seems obvious as I write that, but the ways we attack ourselves aren’t logical. They are emotional, old and deeply rooted. They are all about fear, whether we realize it or not. Fear of being less than. Fear of being unlovable. Fear of being hurt. Fear of being rejected.

Not attacking myself about my growing belly is a big mountain to climb for me. The truth is I’ve always tied my inherent value to my body shape. Fat = Bad. Thin = Good. I have never held other people to that standard. That harsh judgement I reserved for me alone. One of my closest friends has never tied her body shape to her worth or her sense of self. When she told me that I gaped at her, mouth open, in awe. Imagine that! I didn’t even know it was possible.

When I meditate I ask for guidance related to my body shape. I want to stop attacking myself. I want to allow my body to just be what it needs to be. To do that I need to unlearn some deeply entrenched beliefs about my own self-worth. I need to stop my obsession with the size of my belly.

In meditation I’ll say: Please release me from these thoughts.

One time the message I received was this: Your beauty is not in your body. It never was.

When I heard those words I almost cried. My body is strong, it’s capable, it holds a sharp mind, but in my heart I believed it needed to be slim for me to be valued. It’s almost embarrassing to share that, but in truth I really did believe my beauty was in my body. Yet, until I received those words in meditation I wasn’t really aware of that. At least not as clearly as I was at that moment. The message was a revelation. A turning point.

I don’t know why my belly is here or if it will ever go away. But rather than attacking myself about it, or beating myself up because I don’t have the willingness to exercise like a demon or dramatically change my eating to get rid of it, I’m welcoming it in. At least I’m trying to. I say hello to it each morning when I wake up. I rub it like I did when I was pregnant, when my growing belly was filled with amniotic fluid and love. I remember that this remarkable belly housed, nourished and grew three tiny humans.

We define ourselves in multitude ways. But what happens when those ways take a dramatic turn? Then we have to define ourselves differently.

I ask myself:

Who am I without my slim body? Who am I without one of my sons? Who am I as an unmarried woman? Who am I now that I’m 60?

I’m learning this: I’m not my body. I’m not my story. I’m not my history.

I am enough. And my grief belly is perfect.

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When I say ‘ohmygod,’ ‘god help me,’ or ‘god forbid,’ it’s always with a small g unconnected to divinity. But these days I see and hear capital ‘G’ God all the time as I learn about and explore the universe in a new way. Apparently God is unavoidable when searching behind the veil. The veil that separates this place from where my son’s consciousness now resides. So I have opened up to it, in my own way.

I meet every Tuesday on Zoom with my spiritual teacher Divi and seven or eight other group members. Attendees move in and out of these groups so even though I am a fairly new member, some of the people had been working with Divi for months, even years. In one of my first classes Divi shared a well-known poem by Marianne Williamson called Our Deepest Fear. In this poem Williamson writes:

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.

THUNK. There it was, the God word. It stopped me in my tracks. I wrote in the chat box that I loved everything Williamson says in the poem except the God part. That part I don’t get. It makes me uncomfortable.

I wasn’t raised with God having any significance or weight. I grew up in a Christian-dominated country (Canada), and as I understood it the God most religious people looked to or spoke about was a singular entity that created and oversaw everything and everybody. That made no sense to me because if there is only one so-called God why were there so many religions claiming ‘him?’ (It drives me nuts that God is almost always referred to in the masculine.)

The Hebrew word for God is Adonai (ah-doe-nye). I’ve said Adonai thousands of times when reciting Jewish blessings. Baruch ata Adonai Eloheinu (Blessed are you, Lord our God) begins most of those blessings. In Hebrew the words sound pretty and roll off my tongue with ease. But when I read the English translation I always shudder. Why am I acknowledging a God (described as King of the Universe…again, a male) I don’t believe in? I’ve come to learn that in Judaism God is neither male nor female, but Hebrew doesn’t have a gender neutral term so God is always a he. A king. Sigh. When I read ‘King of the Universe’ I picture a white dude sporting a jaunty crown. It never engendered awe. Quite the opposite.

Years ago a friend told me about a conversation she had with a guy she knew from high school who was on his way to South America on a religious mission. In the course of their conversation he stated his belief that anyone who doesn’t accept Jesus as their Lord and Saviour will be sent to Hell when they die. My friend asked him something like: The world is filled with good people who do good things throughout their lives but aren’t Christian. Are you saying that even good people will go to Hell if they don’t accept Jesus?

His reply: A shame, isn’t it?

I laughed at the gall of it. Such self-important nonsense! Yet another reason for me to discount this notion of one God as defined by Christianity or any other doctrine. And what about the religions that worship multiple Gods like Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism? Or indigenous cultures that worship many Gods and Spirits? Am I supposed to believe that one of these is right and all the others are wrong? Sounds like a carnival game to me. Pick a God, any God! When you die you’ll find out if you won.

Getting back to my Divi group, after seeing what I wrote in the chat box Divi acknowledged that she also had an issue with the word God for a long time. A show of hands indicated others in the group had, too. The people in my Tuesday group come from various backgrounds and upbringings: Christian, Catholic, Jewish, Hindu yet the word God is often uncomfortable for many of us.

Divi then confirmed that when she uses the word God she is not talking about a white man in the sky. I pictured those words in all caps: GOD IS NOT A WHITE MAN IN THE SKY. Phew! What a relief. She advised me/us to not worry about using the word God if it didn’t resonate. We could replace that word with ‘the creator’ or ‘creator energy’ or ‘God consciousness’ or ‘the Divine.’ It didn’t really matter what we labeled it. The point is to understand what role God consciousness (which is neither male nor female) holds in our universe.

I’m about to dive into deeper spiritual stuff so I hope you’ll stick with me.

I’ve been learning about a beautiful hierarchy that exists for all of us. Even if we aren’t aware of it or believe it’s there, it is. The hierarchy goes like this:

Human: The form our spirit/soul/consciousness takes as we experience life on Earth

Spirit Guides: Our own personal support team comprising departed loved ones, ancestors and other spiritual entities who are here to guide and protect us throughout our lives. Some might call them our guardian angels. If you’ve ever had an inkling that there is something watching over you, you’re right.

Divine Mother and Father: Divine Mother and Father represent the dual aspects of God—unconditional love and wisdom—often conceptualized as Shakti (energy/creation) and Shiva (consciousness/witness). Divine Mother and Father take many forms. They aren’t singular entities.

God Consciousness: The ultimate Source or Creator. God transcends all labels, representing the highest truth, compassion and infinite unconditional love.

Still with me? I hope so.

Learning to accept a concept of God that isn’t a judge, punisher or king is becoming easier. I don’t use the word God in regular conversation, but in my head it no longer gives me the heebie jeebies. Progress!

When it comes to my Spirit Guides I’ve had many wonderful and wondrous experiences. Ethan is now one of my Guides. That fact is not in dispute. He shows up for me all the time to guide and support me. A couple months after Ethan died I was on my way to give a presentation to a group of business owners. (I thought I was ready to go back to work. I was wrong, but on that day I didn’t know it.) As I was driving to the location I felt my grief welling up. Tears started to fall and I didn’t know if I’d be able to make it through my presentation without breaking down. Then I felt Ethan nearby. He was sitting beside me in the car.

I spoke out loud to him and told him I didn’t think I could do this. Then he answered. Once again I heard him in my heart, his voice crystal clear. He gave me a pep talk! I can’t recall what he said but whatever it was allowed me to shut the door on my grief and show up for the presentation wearing my business hat without sadness or emotional wobbles.

Ethan again showed up for me when I was trying to figure out where to focus my writing on Substack. Did I want to keep writing about grief? Motherhood? Woman-ness? Spirituality? I really didn’t know. That day I sat for a while at my laptop plunking the keyboard, but nothing I wrote felt right. There was no flow. That night I went out to my back deck. I tried to read but after a couple sentences I had to shut the book. I was being called to meditate. I sat back and shut my eyes. I thought of Ethan and asked the question that had been plaguing me all day: Where should I focus my writing?

I told him, ‘Divi has seen the image of a fire hose more than once when it comes to my writing.’ I asked Ethan where I should point the hose.

His answer was immediate, clear and unequivocal. ‘Mom, you need to write about your spiritual journey. You need to write about the stuff that you’re learning that intrigues you. You already know how many people are interested in this because of how many of your friends want to hear more about it. Almost every single one.’

He continued. ‘It was hilarious watching you try to figure out what to write about next. I saw in your mind what you wanted to write about and I saw you avoid avoid avoid. You’re meant to write about this Mom. So just write about it.’

Message received.

While I often find Ethan when I meditate, he’s not the only one I’ve met there. There is another Spirit Guide who shows up regularly. She appears to me as a woman in her mid 70s. She dresses like the well put together Jewish ladies I’d see at synagogue during High Holy Days - the only time my family went to synagogue when I was growing up. She wears a burgundy coloured wool skirt and matching collar-less blazer with three gold buttons. She has a gold chain around her neck and gold brooch over heart. The first time I met her she was casually holding a pair of dice that she would toss across the kitchen table in front of her. She calls me Bubbeleh, a Yiddish term of endearment meaning ‘darling’ or ‘sweetheart’ and is often used by grandmothers with their grandchildren. I never had a grandmother call me Bubbeleh, but my Spirit Guide does which makes me happy.

I asked Divi about the significance of the dice my Guide kept rolling on the table. Divi said that the rolling of the dice signifies that life is a crap shoot. A roll of the dice. There are no guarantees. As I wrote in a previous essay: Life is. Things happen. All we can control is how we respond to what life brings us. That’s where our power lies.

While I don’t fully understand the concept or presence of God consciousness, I’m working at it.

I know one of the reasons it’s resonating for me is that I’m learning about God through the lens of spirituality rather than any specific religious dogma. It’s not the Christian God, Jewish God, Muslim God or any other monotheistic religion’s God. It’s God. God energy. God consciousness.

The truth is, I have too many entrenched biases against organized religion to trust what they have to say about God. That’s my shit, not anyone else’s. But it’s true. So that being the case, I’m not surprised that my spiritual awakening happened outside those spaces. My resistance would be too strong if my entry point was through organized religion rather than spirituality. I wouldn’t be as open as I am.

Going back to the hierarchy: I know what it is to be Human. I have connected with some of my Spirit Guides. I have even connected with Divine Mother and Father but I’ll save those stories for another time. So it must follow that there is God.

God is. I am.

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Here is the full text of Marianne Williamson’s poem. It’s really quite wonderful and life affirming.

Our Deepest Fear

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,

talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.

There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other

people won’t feel insecure around you.

We were born to make manifest the glory of

God that is within us.

It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine,

we unconsciously give other people

permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear,

Our presence automatically liberates others.

Ethan was alive for

8,861 days or

212,664 hours or

12,759,840 minutes

That kind of counting can get a girl in trouble.

So I consider time differently.

I think about the future when someone studying the 1900s to 2000s will count my children and me as existing at the same time.

And I pull the lens back further.

It’s then I see that I have always existed with all the people I have ever existed with.

It’s when we start counting days and hours and minutes and seconds and moments that we miss the big picture. We miss the forest because we’re looking at each individual leaf. From the moment it buds to the day it falls to the ground that first autumn. If that’s all we see, we are missing most of it.

Science tells us we are an insignificant speck in the vastness of the universe. We know this but we don’t live like we know this.

We know this yet we celebrate ourselves every 365 rotations and fret the tiny and the mundane. How short to cut my hair, should I order one piece of sushi or two, do I start my next text with hey or hi?

Time is our enemy. Time is on our side. Time waits for no one.

We can say what we want about time because time doesn’t exist. We made it up. Us humans with our primal need to keep a tally on our existence. I look at my watch at the end of each day to see how many steps I’ve walked.

I lived over 50 years before I started counting my steps. Before that kind of counting had meaning or significance. Now I have conversations about my step count because my life no longer requires a lot of movement.

I can lie in bed and complete in one hour what it would have taken my mother an entire day to do. Driving to the bank and standing in line to deposit or withdraw. Going from store to store to store, completing one task after another.

Now we count our steps to make sure we move. To justify our existence over the latest rotation of the Earth.

Even though we remain insignificant specks in the vastness of the universe.

The universe in which I’ve always existed with my children and they’ve always existed with me.

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I never thought I’d be the kind of person to find miracles in tragedy. I grew up in a home where a table was a table. There was no talk of God or spirit or a plane of existence beyond that which we know from our five senses. My parents said when you died you were dead. That’s it. Over. Kaput. I didn’t necessarily believe that myself. I latched onto stories of spirit. I wanted to believe there was more to this life than just this place, but I never investigated that notion. There was never any cause. Then Ethan happened.

My son Ethan was 24 years old when he died. He was strong, fit, healthy and vibrant. Yet he died. It wasn’t from an accident, self-harm, drugs or foul play. The autopsy was inconclusive. His cause of death was ruled ‘undetermined.’ He simply left. Slipped away while nobody was watching.

On one hand, the way he died left no room for regret. No room for blame. No room for torturing myself with ‘what ifs.’ On the other hand, he’s gone and will never be back. I won’t hear him walk in the door and say, ‘Hi Mom.’ I won’t be able to make him another double cheeseburger on my new barbecue and watch him enjoy eating it. I won’t stand on the sidelines under my umbrella watching him throw hard tackles on the rugby pitch, covered in mud with a huge smile on his face.

Parents tell me they can’t imagine what I’m going through. I tell them to not try. Who wants to imagine what it feels like to lose a child? If it happens, they’ll find out. But I hope they never do.

From howling pain to endless tears, the weight of grief engulfed me. It was an unfathomable time. I wrote a poem called The Tilt where I likened the death of Ethan, my middle son, to the birth of my eldest. The way the world changed in that moment. How everything looked the same but felt completely different. Hyper-realistic, I wrote. Yet false.

The first time I felt Ethan’s spirit was late one Saturday night, nine days after he passed. I was alone in my house. I felt calm in a way I hadn’t since first hearing the news. I took my laptop onto my back deck and started watching a show. It’s then I heard Ethan’s voice. It’s then I felt the weight of something on my chest.

Is that you, Ethan? I asked aloud.

It’s me. I’m here, he answered.

I shut my eyes.

I heard Ethan’s voice in my heart, not my head.

I sensed him on my chest, like the warmth of a newborn baby sleeping on me.

He wasn’t a baby though, he was his full-grown self, miniaturized so he could fit all of himself on me. By my heart.

Tears fell.

I had one hand on either side of my face, moving down with the river of tears.

I had never cried like that. Never placed my hands among my tears quite that way.

When I realized what I was doing I said to Ethan, who was left-handed, You’re crying with me, aren’t you?

He said he was. He said he can’t cry where he is so he is in my left hand crying with me the only way he could.

I kept repeating that I hoped it was him. I hoped it wasn’t only my grief and imagination.

After a time the warmth on my chest lifted. I knew Ethan was moving away from me and I panicked.

I saw in the distance the image of his paternal grandmother, who died a few years earlier.

I said, I see Gran. She wants you with her. But you need to tell her to wait. She can’t have you yet. I still need you here.

After a few seconds passed, I felt the warmth settle on me again.

We talked more. I told him that if this is the only time I ever feel him again it will be okay. I was endlessly grateful. But I hoped it wasn’t.

I opened my eyes and the warm weight on my chest remained. Ethan was still with me. I started watching my show again and eventually I felt coolness on my chest where he had been. He was gone. But it was okay this time.

My friend Joanie* talks to dead people. We first met on the sidelines of local playing fields where our sons were on the same team. Long after our kids stopped playing together Joanie and I became friends. It started with meeting for drinks before our friendship deepened into something more meaningful. It was then I learned about her gift. We’d have long conversations where she’d tell me about her connection with those who had passed. Her stories blew my mind. The messages she delivered from the departed to the living were remarkable. I loved her stories and took comfort in them. I liked hearing firsthand accounts of the spirit world. I loved that she had that connection.

Joanie and I hadn’t been in touch for many months prior to Ethan’s death. She wasn’t on the list of people I called when he died. Somehow she heard the news and came to my house during Shiva. We hugged and cried. I was glad to see her and deeply appreciated her being there.

It was a couple days later when I remembered her gift.

I sent her a text: I hope Ethan finds you in your dreams.

She replied: He already has. In my waking life, too.

Joanie came over the next day carrying the journal in which she writes all the messages she receives from spirit. Written in that journal was a message from Ethan she received the day after he died that said: ‘It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me. I wouldn’t do that to (the name of the person who found his lifeless body).’

There was no way Joanie could have known who found Ethan or where he was exactly positioned when he died. Only the immediate family knew, and we hadn’t been sharing the information. We were all still in shock. The message Joanie heard could only have come from Ethan. There was no other explanation.

Our friendship blossomed again in a new direction. Joanie became not just my conduit to Ethan but a guide who helped me understand this strange yet undeniable connection I felt with my departed son. Every time some notion showed up for me, a message from Ethan I heard in my heart, or a feeling in my body I reached out to Joanie seeking confirmation and explanation. I doubted myself at every turn. Of course I hear Ethan, I’d say to myself, I’m in the deepest possible grief and I have a great imagination. I was sure I was making it all up. Joanie said differently but I had a hard time believing it.

One time when Joanie and I were walking around my neighbourhood and talking about Ethan she suddenly stopped and doubled over, hands on her knees like she’d just finished running a race.

What’s happening? I asked her.

It’s Ethan’s energy, she said. I feel it all the way up my body from my feet to my head. I usually feel tingles in my legs and arms when I connect with spirit, but it’s never been this strong.

She had to stop a few more times on that walk. Ethan was walking with us. She felt him profoundly.

One of the last things Ethan did for me before he passed was put together the patio furniture I bought for my new place. Ethan and my youngest son carried up the boxes, built the furniture then Ethan took the cardboard away for recycling. The next day Ethan left to spend a few days at his Dad’s family cottage on Galiano Island. He never returned. Galiano is where he died.

Every day after I first felt Ethan’s spirit with me, I’d sit on my deck on the furniture he built and talk to him just as we would have done had he lived. I would see Ethan sitting with his legs stretched out, his arms crossed. He’d be wearing shorts and a light summer shirt. I talked to him about missing him. About music. About current events. About anything and everything. I even laughed sometimes. My dead son can make me laugh. What a trip. But even with that I was sad thinking about the years of conversations we never got to have.

One time I said to him, I know if you could come back to us, you would.

Imagine my surprise when the answer I heard was, No.

I heard him say he hated how sad we all are and how much pain we are in, but that he can learn so much more where he is than he ever could have in the physical world. He wanted us to be okay. To heal. To not feel the pain of his loss. But he wouldn’t want to come back.

That one was harder to figure out. Why would I imagine him saying such a thing? The simple answer is that I wouldn’t. But did that mean it really was Ethan? Could I really hear him? I still wasn’t convinced. But it also fit. Ethan was deeply inquisitive. Always curious to know more. He asked the best questions. Even as a young boy Ethan made connections between facts and events I hadn’t ever considered. That he wanted to stay in a place where he could learn more than ever made complete sense.

While the messages I thought I heard from Ethan and confirmations from Joanie were incredible, I needed third-party validation. Joanie had met Ethan and she loved me. I wanted to hear from someone who knew neither of us. The first professional intuitive I met with wasn’t the right person. I could tell Ethan didn’t show up for her. She was intuitive about many things, but there were no messages that sounded like my son. I kept looking.

Through a bouncing ball of referrals starting with a friend of a friend I found Dr. Divi Chandna, a professional intuitive and spiritual teacher in Vancouver. Divi was a family physician for 20 years before pivoting to full-time spiritual teaching, which I find interesting. She has studied and practiced both the physical and the spiritual and chosen to focus her time and energy on the latter. I first met Divi on a video call where I shared my story. I knew two things almost immediately: Firstly, I wanted to work with her. Secondly, Ethan showed up for her.

I knew the messages she shared were from Ethan because I know my son. I know how he talks. The truth of the messages. I know his humour. His cheekiness. During a recent meeting with Divi she commented about how direct Ethan is. Very direct. He doesn’t mince words, she said. Yes, that is my son. She often sees him standing with his hands on his hips as he offers his opinions. Yep, that’s Ethan.

I now meet regularly with Divi-led groups where I’m learning a different way to be present in this life, this place. I’m learning where I attack myself with feelings of being ‘less than.’ I’m understanding why my relationships with friends, partners, family members have strained, and in some cases ended. I’m learning about what exists beyond that which I know with my five senses. The place where Ethan’s soul, his consciousness, now resides.

I don’t just believe there is something beyond this physical place, I know it to be true. During one class, Divi had each of us go into meditation and ask this question: What was the biggest lie I was told as a child? (She then added, When you get your answer you might think you’re making it up but you’re not!)

I dropped into meditation, I asked the question, and I waited. It felt like minutes passed with nothing showing up. Then I heard this:

The biggest lie you were ever told as a child was that there is no spirit world. You were cut off from your spiritual essence and it has harmed you throughout your life. You were untethered because you were never given a rope to hold onto.

Whoa. The truth of those words hit with a wallop, followed by gratitude. Gratitude that I’m now learning a different way of being.

This learning, like grief, isn’t linear. It’s easy to forget the teachings when life takes over. When I feel sad, depressed, hurt or angry. When grief hits like a rogue wave and it feels like day one all over again. But it has been a lifeline helping me accept and adjust to the unimaginable. And I get to hear from Ethan, which is a priceless gift. I’ve learned from Divi that a miracle is a change in perception. It’s as simple as that. Experiencing Ethan in the present even though he died, is a miracle.

2025 was the year I stopped believing in the certainty of the physical world and started believing in the certainty of the spiritual world.

Grief is a singular experience. I don’t understand the grief of those closest to Ethan any more than they can understand mine. While the day Ethan died we all started on the same journey, we are each on a different path. A path of trying to make sense of the senseless. A path through confusion and pain. A feeling of loss that won’t ever go away.

Through my reading, learning, curiosity, conversations and experiences I’ve come to understand more about this place in which I live. The universe in which I exist. Why I am the way I am. Where my hurts come from. Ways I can heal. I’ve only taken a few sips from an ocean’s worth of knowledge, but with each new drop I gain more clarity.

There is no reason in the physical world why Ethan isn’t still here. His death was as clean as a death can be. If he was an old man who died in his sleep people would call it a blessing. When you’re 24 it’s a tragedy. But as I change my perspective and consider the wider truth of our existence, it starts to make more sense. The loss remains. I miss him every single moment of every single day. But the miracle of this new perspective is that it allows me to know Ethan in the now. He is present, just differently. If I was only able to consider Ethan in the past tense it would crush me. Even as I type those words I feel my throat tighten and the tears pool in my eyes.

Ethan was physically here in the past, but he is very much still here in the present. I need only to ask for him and he answers: I’m here, he says. I’m always with you, Mom. He sometimes comes to me unbidden when he has something to say. I heard him while I was out dancing with my friends. He said he was glad to see me having fun. I heard him when I figured out I’d been looking in the wrong place to find a sign in our subway system. He said, ‘Hey Mom, congratulations, you learned to look in the other direction.’ That one still makes me laugh. He often speaks up when I feel myself pulled into the soup of despair. He says, ‘Mom, don’t cry. You can’t hear me when you cry.’

Am I fooling myself? Are all these experiences merely the wishful thinking of a distraught mother? Perhaps. But I doubt it less and less. There have been too many things. Too many messages. Too many other people with their own experiences with Ethan’s spirit. In the early days a friend of Ethan’s woke in the middle of the night with an excruciating calf cramp. He heard Ethan’s voice yell ‘Pickle juice!’ which this friend had never used to relieve a muscle cramp. But he listened to Ethan’s advice, found a jar of pickles in his fridge, drank some of the juice and the cramp went away. Wishful thinking? Again, perhaps. But perhaps not.

When I started sharing my experiences with my mother she told me that her mother, her aunt and her grandmother (none of whom I knew) heard messages from spirit. But, to quote my mother, ‘Nothing magical ever happened for me so I thought the gift wasn’t passed on.’ Now she thinks it just skipped a generation.

I’m grateful my mother is open to hearing my stories and takes comfort from them. She misses Ethan with an ache only a grandmother can feel. I’m heartened to know she will see him again when she passes. I know he will be there to greet her and everyone else who loves and misses him.

Recently when I met with Divi one-on-one we spoke about my feeling of being stuck in the meh of life and feeling unwilling or unworthy of experiencing joy. Meh. Ethan had two questions he insisted Divi share with me (he said them more than once). He said:

Ask my mom what she wants from life.

Ask her what she wants to dream about.

Those are the questions, aren’t they? The ones that matter. Another example of Ethan cutting to the chase and pointing out the clear choice. The answers that will pull me out of my meh and allow me to feel joy.

Joy is hard to imagine when you’re deep in grief. It feels not just out of reach, but galling. How can I possibly feel joy after losing my son? I shouldn’t be allowed. But I can and I should. And occasionally I have. Ethan wants me to feel joy. I know that much for sure.

I started this essay with a list of many big, hard things that happened over a 13-month period. Hard things haven’t disappeared with this new learning. But I see them differently. I give them less weight. I don’t say ‘ugh’ as much as I used to. Life is. Things happen. It will never be easy, but it will be easier. The miracle of this time is I get to make new memories with my departed son. My gratitude for that new awareness makes all my other challenges less important.

Ethan had a huge energy in life. I told him that a couple years ago. I said that when he was in a room it was hard to ignore him. His energy was palpable. He was surprised to hear that, but I think he liked it. Now I know how right I was. His energy is remarkable and it’s around everyone who ever loved him and everyone he ever loved. Endlessly.

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* For privacy reasons I’m not using my friend’s real name.