Tom’s Angels: Samhain Tarot Blog Hop

Now that the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest, and we go from more light to more darkness, more heat to more cold (in this Northern Hemisphere), it’s time to feel into that mutable mirror and push over to take a look at the land on the other side of our soul’s looking-glass.

Great observatories of the universe with their multi-spectrum eyes give us wonderful and sometimes disturbingly familiar patterns to match to our lives and deaths here on Earth. The Death card from the Cosmic Whispers Deck doesn’t mince imagery.

But death is just a movement, a line to cross, dressed in pain and fear on one side and love on the other. This is my knowing. I have felt this love, if only briefly (and not when I was “in love”). It’s not like the love we feel in life. It’s not happy or sad, it just is, and it fills every single cell of your being and beyond.

So, we move beyond Death to Rebirth (the Judgement card in traditional decks), and more literally than the symbolic shapes and colors of beings seeming to rise to the “heavens” would indicate. We get to be all of that, mainly because we already are. But that’s not much consolation here on the pain side. I know.

We begin with loss, we end with loss, and then we find. I’ve sunk into that loss, feeling only the pain of this side. This is also very real. Both sides are real, and it’s always hardest to be left behind.

My hubby and I watch and wait now as our parents move slowly into the last struggle before that push through the veil. We live in limbo not knowing where to be, what to do. Waiting. That’s one way.

I experienced another way a very long time ago when I was twenty-one. I received a phone call that my boyfriend’s small plane had gone down, and he was gone. His name was Tom. He wanted to fly airplanes for a living, but he came to ground too quickly in the forested mountains of New Hampshire in the summer of 1978. There’s no waiting in these cases. For those of us left behind: me, his parents, brother, it’s just the pain of loss, the meaning of the Death card (it’s about the living, of course, and not the dead).

After a period of grief, there’s a kind of rebirth, but always incomplete, for we do not go there permanently for a much longer time. We wait. We live instead.

But at times like these in the cycle of Earth’s seasons, the veil thins between dimensions, and I can feel the Other side, the love that is there, the presence of the ones I’ve lost, the ones everyone has lost.

They are only lost to us, not to the universe, of course. Einstein’s equation sees to that. We are all immortal star stuff. So, I can feel him sometimes. And it’s a good feeling, sliding up next to the veil and feeling the love and hearing the laughter over there.

Hard to tell if the tears now are sad ones or happy ones. Maybe both. For Tom, I decided this year to lay out three cards (my deck’s not finished, so I’m using the Golden Tarot from Kat Black) just to ask how he’s doing. Here are my questions so if you’d like to try this, you can:

1. How are you feeling over there?
2. Have you re-entered here to try again?
3. What’s your message for me on this side?

Two eights, I notice. Sense of movement all around, numerological and with the Knight of Swords (Tom was always a very curious scientist). Looks like the beauty of being on the other side is the ability to totally let go of emotional attachments. He’s definitely moved on in that respect. The Knight of Swords, though, indicates he may have reincarnated in order to finish playing out his chosen warrior role. When he died, he was taking private flying lessons and was about to enter the United States Air Force as a pilot. So, slaying dragons was definitely in his spiritual DNA. 🙂 His message for me: know my own gentle power to connect with the infinite and deal with the forces flowing around me.

Thanks, Tom. Here’s to your own infinite power.

Tommy

Tommy, what skies do you find out there?
Are you flying formation with angels?
Banking and rolling, touching wingtips.
You were just too alive to stay.

I still feel the squeeze of your arms
enfolding me with your love,
the shelter from my inner storms,
just the place to feel safe and warm.

Wondered when you would fall.
Your flights brushed so many cliffs.
I was always waiting for that call.
You were just too alive to stay.

I loved you so fiercely,
feared so to lose you.
Then the call I feared, I found.
The one that rocked my world, tore it down.

I wish I could have been there,
to hold you in that final night,
as the last light left your eyes.
You were just too alive to stay.

I wanted to hold you in my arms
and tell you that it would be fine.
That the angels you didn’t believe in
would fly you to the other side.

Tommy, what skies do you find out there?
Go tickle an angel for me.
I still love you, but I’m glad you’re free.
You were just too alive to stay.