Supernatural experiences give Erik Christian and his mother hope for humanity, and life after death.
“Those who leave us behind will stay close within our realm until we let go,” a friend said, as he consoled me after a close friend of mine died. And yes, I spiraled out of control and it was finally a real excuse to drink and pill copious amounts. Spirits are real and they will live around us until our memories fade of themselves. It is a gentle transition, this life to the next, whatever you believe.
It was like two solar systems getting ready to merge.
|
My mom’s dad died when she was seven. It is unclear how he died but alcohol is loosely mentioned. She has forever held an optimism that is almost childlike without the idiocy. Billions of people have died in the history of humans and yet it’s just you and I, and we still laugh, as we laughed in the sand on the beach that day when our shorts rubbed the sand into our skin until we were beet red. Why are people so petty until real traumatic events makes them drop the bullshit and come together? she says reasonably. Look at 9/11. There was a certain silence in all of humanity after that one. Would it take World War III to humble us a little longer … and drop the bullshit?
It was my mother’s dad, I suspect, who appeared in my doorway when I was ten. It was dark in the hallway and my room, but his permeable presence was made out of the orange night light that shone from the bathroom and struck across my bedroom floor. He stood for a second at the door, as if he were asking if he could enter my room. There was no sound, but then he walked towards me and that’s when I screamed. He disappeared and nothing spiritual happened in our family after that, until my mother talked about seeing and hearing things after her mother’s death. I won’t get into details of that, except both she and her sister heard crying at their mother’s funeral, and it was wailing, not weeping, and they looked around and it seemed no one else heard it.
There’s a feeling sometimes, that animals are just waiting for us to catch on. That we all feel the same basic emotions, all need love, and feel sadness and anger. I walked through town one night and was unusually calm and centered. I noticed two foxes playing in a field down the slope of a hill in front of a Victorian house near the water. One was orange, but the other was almost black. I had never heard of a black fox before, and this is not fiction. They noticed me and trotted up closer until they were twenty feet away. We stood and watched each other. It was like two solar systems getting ready to merge. I knelt down and held out my hand. The orange one remained behind, but the black one slowly approached and got to my finger tips and started sniffing. I turned a finger and got to touching its nose, as the fox playfully nibbled at my hand. It was ludicrous and completely real.
They ran off and I got up and walked on, forever endowed with a secret of trust between the animal kingdom and the fucked up humanity I lived in. It didn’t matter if no one believed me. It was as profound as losing virginity with an angel. To this day, I pray with the friend’s name who passed away. It keeps him close to the realm I live in. My mother’s eyes are still blissed out with the promise of an eternal life and the reunion with her father, and I remain enchanted with seeing him in the doorway thirty years ago. We all start together as newborns and branch off into deviations that define us. We’re playing with molecules and worshiping the dust. At the end of the day there is only the sun wicking its flames on the horizon, and some of us won’t be here tomorrow.
Read more Advice & Confessions.
Image of black fox and red fox fighting courtesy of Shutterstock
Hi Erik,
I was very drawn in by this post even before I reached your encounter with the foxes; I had a similar experience (and resulting epiphany) recently, though it didn’t result in physical contact. There are bridges to the animal kingdom and bridges to the spiritual realms, and you seem to be one of those rare people who can find, trust and follow them.