As promised, here are two excerpts from my new book. Actually, it’s Erik’s since he’s the author and I’m just the transcriptionist. Note that the book has not been proofread yet! The first is his goodbye to me right after his death. It’s poignant and heart-wrenching. I cry every time I read it. The second is Erik’s reaction when he noticed his new spirit body. Enjoy.
His goodbye to me:
Of everyone in my immediate family, I visited my mom last because I had to work up the courage for it. Visiting everyone else in the family first gave me more strength to be in the presence of her grief. I was timid saying good-bye to her in particular because her emotions were so overwhelming. She wasn’t even in her body. She was just a lost shell of herself. That made her completely numb, so I don’t think she could have had any feelings just then. While the cleanup crew was finishing up upstairs, she was in her bedroom, lying on her side. I sat next to her for a while. When I finally mustered up the courage to say good-bye—when I went to embrace her and to show her that I was around and that I was okay—she was too far removed to hear my words or feel my presence. She was deep inside her head trying to understand what the fuck had just happened. See, my mom’s a doctor. Her main calling in life is to help fix, heal, and cure, and for her, it’s like putting the pieces of a puzzle together. She sees her patients as a big puzzle with a lot of pieces, so she doesn’t just try to figure out what’s wrong with them. She wants to know about all other the other pieces of their puzzle, like if there was anything in their personal life that might affect their health: their relationships, their family life, their emotional health, their financial troubles, and things like that. As a doctor, that makes her pretty unique. She’s like the unicorn of doctors.
Once she understands the whole puzzle, my mom tries to make her patients well by helping them put all of their broken pieces together in the right place. She wanted to do the same thing with me, but she wasn’t seeing all my shattered pieces for what they were in those moments after my death—she was just focused on wanting to put me back together again, even though that wasn’t possible. She wanted to put the puzzle of my death together, not take it apart. She thought that putting the pieces together would help her, kind of like sewing the arms, the legs, the eyes, and the mouth back onto on a torn-up doll.
What she really needed to do was take the puzzle apart and get to know each piece instead of immediately try to patch things back together. That’s the only way she’d be able to better understand my death and everything surrounding it. She needed to see that piece that represented the “why,” the piece that represented the fact that my death was my choice, not something she could prevent, the piece that represented the state of mind I needed to be in in order for me to pull the trigger, and the piece that represented her acceptance that death is a transition, not a permanent separation. That’s how she would eventually start the healing process, but she wasn’t there yet. If she had been in that space, it would have been easier for me to get through to her, but it was too early. Every time I tried to get close to her and say my good-bye, it triggered the terror all over again. Terror mixed with numbness. Not a pretty thing. That’s why I couldn’t sit down next to her for very long when she was lying in her bedroom that day.
When you’re human and you’re in tune with what’s going on—call it “centered” or whatever—it’s like you have one pipe that your emotions are flowing through, nice and simple. After my death, it was as if my mom sprouted a dozen leaks in that pipe, and I couldn’t connect to the pipe and stop up those leaks. My mom was trying to use all of these crazy emotions spilling around in her to understand my death, but she didn’t even know where she was going or where she was coming from in order to begin. At the same time, she was trying to deal with the immense grief and pain of being the mom who couldn’t save her own child.
Once I was dead, I got to see all of the struggles she went through from childhood on. I even got to see what struggles she was going to have in the future. Seeing that made me want to figure out how to make her whole again. I knew that I had to wait until she woke up and reached out for answers. I had to wait until she was ready to talk about her experience, and I had to wait until she was ready to see that I’m still living, and I’m okay. I tried to get her to feel that when I was in her room with her, but she wasn’t feeling anything. That’s not to say she didn’t have any emotions, because I already described the ones she was dealing with at that moment, but she was too numb to feel them in a way that made sense to her. See my dilemma? I fucking wanted to wake her up, but I couldn’t touch her. I wanted to tell her I was okay, but she couldn’t hear me. It was beyond frustrating. Times like those are when it really sucks being a spirit. I knew that it sucked even before I really knew I was a spirit.
From my mom, I understood what a soul mate is. I could literally see the core connection we had. It was unbreakable. Still is. From her, I learned that bonds like ours can’t be broken. That’s love. Everyone else I said good-bye to represented a different flavor of love, and she was one of those flavors too. She was my favorite flavor.
His new body:
Eventually, I found the courage to check out my new body. When I did, I realized that I couldn’t find my dick. Ladies, I’m sorry if this doesn’t resonate with you, but I have to say it. If you’re a dude, you get it. That’s the first thing a guy would wonder about—it’s just how we’re wired, and some of that physiological wiring I guess got carried over into the afterlife, at least initially. I noticed that I didn’t have any limbs either. That’s when I recognized that my body was different.
Really different.
Imagine dropping your chin to your chest and looking down at your abdomen, your legs, and your feet. When I did that, I saw this massive collection of energy swirling around a core, almost like a small universe. There was some kind of gravitational pull that kept this energy all collected in and around itself to create whatever shape I wanted at the time, and for some reason, I must have wanted to look like a stick. No arms, no legs, and like a said, no dick. Somehow I knew that this new body was my true, authentic self, though. You might call it my true essence.
My energetic body felt numb, but it wasn’t the same numbness that you’d have in a human body. It’s not like when you sit on your leg or fall asleep on your arm and you get pins and needles—it was more like the way I would feel if I were in a dream, and that “dream self” doesn’t have any feeling. Now I realize that this numbness was because I hadn’t accepted my new form as being real 100 percent yet. It was just something I had to adjust to, like everything else.
Eventually, I tried to move my stick-like energetic body. When I moved through this space I found myself in, it wasn’t like I extended my energy and popped out a leg to put down on the ground and move myself forward. It kind of felt like I was surfing a wave. It was kind of like coasting or gliding like a hovercraft.
I also noticed that all the small things we do unconsciously when we’re alive that I had as a human, like breathing, wiggling my toes, and blinking, no longer seemed necessary. I also wasn’t feeling any craving or needs or desires. I just existed, pure and simple. That’s when my humanness really started to fall away from me, like crumbling ash stuck to my energy. Not all the way, but most of it.
I suggest that, if you like what you just read, you preorder the book because after publication, the price might increase and after the first book’s release, Amazon sold out within a day. Below are your preorder options. It’s available in paperback and Kindle/Nook, and I’m sure it’ll be in audiobook format eventually.
Erik’s first book
Have a great weekend, and for you who are in the path of the stormy weather, be safe.
