The Living and the Dead

Written by Tayria Ward on December 8, 2010

A friend is visiting me whose husband of 30 years, a man who was also a close friend to me and my dream analyst, died 3 months ago. We have been talking non-stop as if outside of time and space for more than 24 hours, with a little tiny bit of sleep in there somewhere. During this time visitations from not only her dear husband and my friend have been obvious and root shaking, but also those of others we have known who are now on the other side. It has been as if we were hosting a dialogue with the living and the dead, having us both in tears, awe and laughter much of the time. The veil that seems to separate the worlds is very thin. It seems so thick to those of us who are living mostly, but it is not.

We had spoken about the ancestors of this land and of our own lineages in a conversation, and delighted ourselves by inviting them to be with us and play in our space freely. Knowing that they only come to where they are welcome and invited, we asked them to join us here. We called them by name, including those whose names we don’t know, hoping that the very core of their inner selves would be with us here, not just the personas that they had had to live in the world. In the next two or three hours of time, thunderbolts of experience came into this space that we could never have anticipated, which uprooted us emotionally. We had no idea the tricks that we were invoking, or how deeply their truthfulness would invade us.