Five years ago—almost to the minute—I crumpled to the ground after a phone call that knocked the breath out of me. There are a few times in each of our lives when we surrender the pretext of civility—when we go off script and operate from a part of us that never sees the light of day—usually because we have to, not because we want to. We have, literally, reached the end of our rope.
I discovered that place of pure instinct when I was giving birth to my children and found myself there again when I fell to the ground that day, trying to understand that my sister Angie who I had talked to that morning, had died suddenly in an accident. I wasn’t cognitively trying to understand what had happened. I was sinking deep into a reality beyond my control without a shred of intellectualizing.
For once, I was not worrying about what I should do. I just let go and fell.
In the days that followed, I moved through life feeling like I had a foot on both sides of the veil. Goddess was close and Angie was too. They helped me navigate life’s most mundane tasks. For several nights, a cloud hung over my bed. When I couldn’t stop the tears or the migraine barreling close behind them, the cloud would descend and put my right to sleep. The fact that a magic cloud was putting me to sleep seemed no more absurd than the rest of the reality I’d been plunged into.
Two days after her death, I needed to perform Tooth Fairy duties for my son. After several minutes of groping around in the dark for the tooth, I was in tears, bereft that I could not perform this one duty. Then something brushed my hair and hit the floor with a clunk. Reaching toward the sound, I found a bolt had landed on the floor right beside the elusive tooth that had escaped its spot under the pillow. We used to call Angie MacGyver because her creatively scientific brain could make something out of nothing. Apparently, in her new form, she can make bolts fall from thin air.
I thanked her. Like she was really there. Because she was. As excruciating as those early days without her were, I miss the thinness of the veil that allowed me to glimpse her and Goddess and a different way of being, one that was much more in tune with eternal truth than earthly reality propelled by schedules, tasks and productivity. I lived there with her by my side for a few magical days.
Then I started to forget. Not to forget her, but to forget the mystical way back to her. She reminded me sometimes. Occasionally with the magnificent splendor of a falling star. But more often with a dinged up metal nut or washer that would appear in my path as I went about my day—the match to the original bolt. Some people hear from their loved ones through red birds or butterflies. Angie’s language was hardware.
A few months ago, I found the last one. I held the dingy metal disc in my hand, relieved to have heard from her after a period of silence. Then, our dog lunged at a squirrel, yanking the leash in my hand and sending the nut flying into the grass. I searched and I searched. Falling to the ground on my hands and knees, not unlike the day I lost her. It was gone, and I knew that this was the end of this conversation. I was weeping over the lost hunk of metal as if it were a treasure. Because it was.
Today, I went to see a medium because it seemed like the best way I could think of to spend this impossible day. I wanted to open up the conversation with Angie again. If she was done leaving me signs, I would track her down. There are many things the medium told me that I am still processing, but the last things she said stuck with me. “Stop looking for me in the obscure.” Is there any more obscure way to encounter one’s sister than in a nut and bolt?
Part of me will always be looking for her. But now I will l look for her where she is. Right there. Out in the open. The opposite of obscurity. By my side.