I had an epiphany today.

The George I have been holding onto is gone.  He is free in the purest sense.  He has no desire or attachment.  Not for any of us, and not for this human life.  He cares for me, but this relationship is largely out of balance.  It’s like the movie Her, except George is not an operating system, he is a soul spirit.  

In my dream he was telling me that it is time for my heart to let him go.  That it is futile for me to continue holding him so near, for he hasn’t the capacity to reciprocate.  Though I have often felt closer to George since his death, it is impossible to determine how much of that is a true deepening of our love, and how much of that I have fabricated to satisfy my longing and disappointment, to cope with the reality that our relationship, as I knew it, is over.  

It makes no sense for me to consider him the way I used to consider him.  I know only a fraction of him now.  Human George loved me, and human George died.  Spirit George is an entirely different entity, and he belongs to no one.

​Tonight George feels more like a man who is leaving me, than my love watching over me.  This is another kind of heartbreak.  It stings.  And it sets me free.

​It’s amazing to me how my mind still, after 15 months, does not understand that George is dead.  He is dead, Jo!  He died.  You saw him dead.  His body without a George inside.  

What is it about Death that is so hard for my mind to grasp?  Is this a human condition, a cultural ineptitude, or my own personal denial?  I do not know how to hold my life with George, and my life after George, in the same hand.  I do not know how to see George’s life, and his death, in the same view.  When one seems real, the other seems illusory.  ​

​But they both exist.  I need to understand this, and my mind does not know how.

Perhaps it is not for my mind to understand.  When I found myself closest to the truth, closest to making sense of it all, I was at Shambhala Mountain Center in the Colorado Rockies and it was not my mind that made the pen move, that brought those words and ideas and understanding into the light.  I simply began writing, not knowing what was going to fall on the page, not using my mind to make the words appear, but simply being present with the moment, allowing whatever needed to move through me, to come forth and be known.  

It was not my mind.  It was something transcendent.  Perhaps it was my soul.  Perhaps it was George’s soul.  Perhaps it was the clear, calm, knowing voice of the universal consciousness that descended upon my human form that evening.  And for a moment in time, I knew.  I understood.  It all made beautiful perfect glorious sense.  

        George is here.  He is not gone, he is not dead.  I miss his beautiful body, but I have so much more of him now.  He, in fact, is so much more than he was when he was alive.  He has evolved and become pure light.  He has become the great Teacher he was always meant to be.  His death was his evolution, and mine.  It was our evolution.  Our awakening.

        George and I have known each other for a very long time.  We have been in love before this lifetime, and we have been separated.  We fundamentally understand the dance between this human existence and the flight of the soul.  The death of his body, this separation we are experiencing, is simply part of the plan, part of our work.  We are helping each other discover the Truth.

There was more, but I’ll spare you, for now.  That voice stayed with me for several weeks.  

I began telling people about it, because it was so consuming that any other answer to the question, “How are you?” would have been inauthentic and pointless.  As I’d hear myself tell our story, my rational mind would judge me and tell me I sounded crazy and delusional.  But I couldn’t hold it in.  It was too powerful.  Simultaneously I experienced abdominal pain, nausea, hot flashes, dizziness, headaches.  It felt like I was having some sort of spiritual awakening.  

I realized that I could continue following this path of spiritual wonderment and embrace the glory of understanding the death of the body and the immortality of the soul and teach of love and its infinite gifts, and how we are not bound to experiencing love in only this human form, but how love continues on, how our relationships continue on, long after we are dead… and I saw myself diving into this intriguing new world, never to return.

But then I made a choice.  I returned to my human experience.  Because I had not yet allowed myself to grieve for George, and I had not yet fallen to pieces, and I had not yet cried my heart out.  I had only been coping with his absence, learning to be a mother, and trying to return to school and resume a life.  I had not yet had the time or space to feel the depths of sadness that come with losing the human being you valued above all others in this life.  

I asked George, and the universe, for some space.  To allow me to be human, to allow me to feel the pain.  I wanted to make sure I’d done it, so I could fully participate in whatever came next.  

So I went, and I grieved.  Then I came back, and asked for George to join me.  
George, I am ready for you now!  Let’s do this!
Silence.

George?  Hey, I’m ready to receive your teachings.  I’m ready to embark on our new relationship.  Please come.
Nothing.
Hmm.
George!!

Day after day, life continues and I plod along on my human experience.  I have big decisions to make about the year ahead, I have my child to care for, and things feel heavy.  This is the point, I think, when I am supposed to start moving forward.  But I can’t find George.  He, in his new enlightened form, is supposed to come with me.  We are supposed to be doing this together.  But right now, I only see him in my past, and I cannot bear to leave him there.

I have wondered if I should not have stepped away from him in the first place.  Why did I feel the need to interfere?  To have my human experience of pain and suffering?  How could that be more appealing?  

But that is what I did, and therefore it had to be done.  

​I know that George will come back to me when he feels I am ready for him.  I know I have not lost him, not really.  But maybe…  I’ll be more careful, the next time I ask for space.  And perhaps my mind will never be able to understand death.  But my soul knows.

I had an epiphany late one night, shortly after George died, when I realized that we had done this before.  This long distance thing, this missing each other thing, this being apart.  Six months after we started dating, I quit my job and left San Francisco to travel the world alone, return date unknown.  And while we acknowledged that it might be impossible to continue our relationship during this time, we wanted to try.  George would reference the lyrics to Joshua Radin's song Everything'll be Alright -- "There's a hole in my pocket that's about your size, and I think everything is gonna be alright."  

​"I'll be peeking from your pocket," he would say cheerfully.  

I remember how real it felt to have him with me on my travel adventures, how it was he who would cheer me on as I hiked to the top of a mountain, or hold my hand on the way down so I wouldn’t fall.  I was away for nine months, and our relationship only grew stronger during that time.  Could we really do this now, like we did back then?  Was this just another phase of our relationship, our connection unbroken, where we would continue to share and grow and learn from each other, even from a distance?  George had always trusted things would work out between us, even at the beginning, even as I anticipated my travels and told him that I needed to be free… what kind of trust did I need now, to know we would still make this work, still do this together?  

Now he is free.  I am free, too.  And yet, we are connected in a way that is untouchable.  Perhaps there is no greater gift than this.

Below is an email exchange from fall 2010, when I was in Cinque Terre, Italy, at the beginning of my travels.  The parallels between then and now are striking.  I also love that he uses the word "celebrated" to describe the names on the graves, and that he finds the connectedness of the playgrounds and cemeteries on the top of the hill "profound and breathtaking".  Reading this, I don't think he was scared to die.  He knew there would be another playground waiting for him, ready for him to explore.

My dear sweet George, you are celebrated.


*******************
From: George Schnakenberg
Date: Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 5:54 PM
To: Joanne Chang

Hi Beautiful!
It was wonderful to chat with you today!  I know the last couple days have been hard.  I miss you so much.  It is such a strange feeling to wake up missing you and know that I will be missing you for a long time.  I am excited that you exist though and I know that we are very very lucky to have this connection in the first place. So I accept and take it on with vigor.  It's beautiful that we can share what we have together and take the time to learn about ourselves.  I think that is rare and I embrace it. I remember being lonely in Cinque Terre too.  It is so beautiful that you want to share it.  I remember that feeling and I'm there with you when you are lonely, or when you are happy, or taking in an amazing view.

I ate at the restaurant in Manarola right by the wall near the edge of the water.  The view is incredible.  If you eat there, or wherever you eat by yourself, know that I am with you, smiling.  

I love the playgrounds in Manarola.  Although I can't put my finger on it exactly, there is something so profound and breathtaking about both the playgrounds and cemeteries feeling like they are up there at the top of the world.  Not to mention, there is something really grounding when the names celebrated on the graves above, are the same as the names on the doors in the town below.

I love you, Joanne. Rawr!
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo!  
George


**************
From: Joanne Chang
Date: Fri, Oct 8, 2010 at 10:42 AM
To: George Schnakenberg

Hi honey, I ate at the restaurant in Manarola by the water, Marina Piccola, and thought of you there.  I've been thinking about you everywhere, it's really nice to have you here with me :)
I also thought of you last night at this really wonderful little restaurant in Corniglia called Mananan.  I snagged the last table, the place was fully booked up but I got lucky.  I wrote something in my journal when I got home and decided I want to share it with you.  I've actually never done this before...it feels crazy and fuzzy to be able to write something so candidly and to be able to share it with someone.

Here it is, completely unedited.
I love you.  xoxoxo.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
10-7-10, Cinque Terre (day 3)
...Night time o'clock.  I just had a fabulous evening at the wine bar in Corniglia, followed by a lucky strike at Mananan, and it was so much fun and I had the biggest smile on my face all night.  Then I came back and missed George and started crying, tears flowing like faucets.  At the restaurant I felt him with me, I really did, it was a little surreal, I could imagine him sitting across from me; I could see him there, I smiled at him and imagined holding his hand, the two of us so happy to be there, enthralled by the liveliness of the owner.  Enraptured with the energy of the place.  I teared up, the feeling of him there was almost so real I was sad knowing that it actually wasn't...that I was sitting across from an empty seat, no place mat, alone.  No George.  When I came home I started going through pictures on the camera and there's this one of him by the crepe stand outside the Gare du Nord; he has this beautiful gaze, not smiling but just being, and I could almost touch him, looking at that picture.  I could feel his face, run my fingers through his hair.  He is so close to me.  I'm crying now, I'm not sure if it's out of sadness or the amazement of what I'm able to feel and experience with this person from thousands of miles away.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**************
From: George Schnakenberg
Date: Fri, Oct 8, 2010 at 11:51 AM
To: Joanne Chang
Joanne,
Wow.  Thank you.  Thank you.  That is so incredible.  It captures the moments we had, the moment I had in Cinque terre, and the feelings I have for you so well too.

It's insane...I'm thinking about when I looked directly into the lens of your camera outside Gare Du Nord, so so happy to just BE there with you, and also literally looking into the lens so you could connect with me later....no joke.  It worked.  I'm speechless.  

I'm tearing up at work....feeling your hand here with mine.  
xoxoxoxo
​George
**************

A few days after George’s death the Medical Examiner’s Office called to tell us that no cause of death could be determined from the autopsy.  They had opened up his entire body, examined it piece by piece, and found everything in perfect order.  There were no occluded blood vessels, so heart attack was ruled out.  There was no internal bleeding, so stroke and aneurysm were ruled out.  There were no signs of trauma, so he didn’t die from hitting the parked car.  His heart.  Just.  Stopped.  Beating.  Just stopped.  They couldn’t tell me why.  How does a healthy man’s 38-year old heart just decide to stop beating one day?  And not just any healthy man, but George.  That was my heart, that was Nova’s heart.  How could there be no explanation?

The thought of George on an examining table, a scalpel slicing neatly through his scalp and frontal midline, his brain and heart and vital organs being removed and held and examined, is horrifying.  It is the most horrifying horror story I can think of.  I have to keep reminding myself that he was dead.  He felt nothing.  But what if he did?  And they didn’t even find anything.  All those horrifying images I now have to live with, and we are no closer to understanding why he dropped dead one day.  It was a Tuesday when he died.  That’s all we know.  

They sent blood and tissue samples to the lab for further testing.  Nothing could be concluded by the naked eye, but perhaps the lab results would provide some answers.  They wrote “Pending” on his death certificate, and told us it could be awhile before the final report was complete.  It took nine months for them to finish that report.  And the labs were inconclusive.  In the end, they assigned “Lethal Cardiac Arrhythmia” as the cause of death, based on no other probable conclusion.  I suppose it was accurate, his heart did stop, he did have an arrhythmia.  But why?

My mind was consumed by all the existential questions.  What is the purpose of George’s death?  What does this mean for him, for me, for Nova?  Why us?  Why was I chosen to go through this?  Why was he chosen to die?  The answer that came to me was both comforting and infuriating:  

George is needed somewhere else.  He has been chosen to do higher work on a higher plane, work that he could not have accomplished in this life, in his body.  You have been chosen because there are things you need to do in this life that will be informed by this experience, and you are strong enough to handle it.  And in the end, it is all about Nova.  She is at the center of it all, for reasons that will not be revealed to you for some time.

Even in my darkest hour, I am being told to believe that everything has a reason that is purposeful and good?  That is so fucking infuriating.  

At the same time, it was comforting to know that something greater than me was at work.  That I couldn’t have done anything to save George from dying.  That everything had happened exactly as it needed to happen, and that no amount of wondering “what if” would change anything.

I was somewhat surprised by my spiritual conviction around something so personally tragic, this inner voice that was spewing intangible esoteric stories about why my life was ruined.  Because no matter what beliefs I’d had about life, death, soul, and non-physical realities, this was now happening to me, and my belief system should have been shattered.  I tried to argue the voice of “this is not fair and there is no good reason for this and I am a victim and I will never be happy again,” but it did not stick.  Nothing made sense to my human mind, but something within me understood that what was happening to us was sacred.  That although this was not at all what I wanted nor expected from my life, it was part of a larger plan, and I needed to trust the Universe.  

But knowing this did not lessen the pain.  The pain was excruciating, and I couldn’t fathom a life without George.  I did not want this reality, no matter what that voice said.  I resisted it with every bone in my body.