Lost and Found

I found her in 1978. Elizabeth Diane Humphrey. I knew the instant we crossed paths that I needed to be friends with this remarkable woman, even before I had any concrete evidence that she was remarkable. When we met, Liz and I were both in our early 20’s and both expecting babies at about the same time. The babies were born and as they grew so did our friendship.

We ate out together once a week without fail. We talked about kids, husbands, diets, exercise and our love affairs, some real, others fantasized. Nearly thirty years of connecting—coffee, champagne, fine red wine, good food, junk food, muffins, fine dining, Shape Magazine, Jazzercise and chocolate cake slightly warmed with whipped cream on the side.

At our best, we hiked the La Luz Trail to the top of the Sandia Mountains and rewarded ourselves with a trip to Vegas. We were as different as we were alike. She was blonde. I was brunette. She was slightly built while I was a bit more round. She obeyed the rules while I pushed the envelope every time. I was a strict parent. She was more lenient. I was a gourmet cook. She lived on take-out. Life brought us experiences that we would rejoice and agonize over, cry through and sometimes, when we put our heads together, even made sense of—suicide, divorce, The Road Less Traveled, Ram Dass, Tai Chi Chih and grandchildren. Then, after 26 years, it was time to talk about cancer. It was time to try to make sense of her diagnosis—Stage IV Glioblastoma Multiforme—a ferocious form of brain cancer.

She called to tell me. I was there for her surgery. When they wouldn’t let me into the intensive care unit to visit, I lied and told them that I was her sister. She heard me tell them. We both cried, knowing I hadn’t lied at all. We were beginning to remember more of a past life we had lived together. After her surgery, I went home and painted my house. Not that it didn’t need a good coat of paint, but in truth, I needed to make something right—to make some big mess clean again. With every stroke of the brush, I begged God to let me take on some of this horrible suffering for her. I was willing to take it all. I wasn’t being righteous or selfless. I was just being what we were to one another. Gradually, it became clear that this was her journey and I would be allowed to accompany her just so far.

The prognosis was for one year. We had three. As time went on, we ate out less and I brought food in more. We hugged and kissed more. We said I Love You more. We expressed our gratitude to one another. As she lost more of her sight, we held hands wherever we went. She let me take her to the health food store and to the hat shop and once, to her chemo. I held her hand and helped her navigate through her failing sight. She trusted me.

“When all this is over, let’s hold hands even when we don’t have to anymore,” Liz suggested. I told her I liked that idea.

Once Liz was receiving hospice care at home, I clipped her fingernails and put lotion on her feet. And when she lost the use of her left arm and leg, I fed her, just as I had a lifetime ago when she was my little sister. I was so grateful that she let me help her. She did that for me. She knew how desperately I needed to help her.

We sang together. We spent a lot of time On Top of the World and Somewhere Over the Rainbow. During the entire experience, when her body could only fail her, Liz remained kind, grateful, and completely fearless. She always kept a calendar and clock within view. Then, one day when I casually suggested it was time for a song, she told me that I would have to sing for both of us from now on. So, reluctantly, I did.

Liz expressed few regrets in those final weeks. But she did regret that she and I had never made the road trip that we had planned. We had talked about driving together from Albuquerque, New Mexico, through Durango, Colorado, taking what they call the Million Dollar Highway to Ouray, Colorado, cited as one of the most scenic byways in the United States. So, when Liz told me that she was sorry we missed out on that, I offered a solution.

“Let’s go today,” I suggested.

She seemed shocked and a little apprehensive at my suggestion. She was so frail and could no longer get around without help. I explained to her that I thought we could travel together in a different way now, if she was willing to try it with me. She was.

We both closed our eyes. We were cuddled on the sofa together. I wrapped my arms around her and slowly described the drive which I had taken so many times. This would be her first time to make the trip. I described the view. The sun on the river. The beautiful buck with antlers stretching as wide as a Volkswagen. His antlers were fuzzy with brand new growth. He was drinking from the river. He spotted us and lifted his head. He looked up and directly into our eyes. Liz saw him, too. He was real. Liz was tired by the time we returned from our drive. I tucked her in on the sofa with her favorite blanket. Her eyes sparkled before she drifted off to sleep.

“What a trip, huh Miss Sandy.”

During those last weeks, Liz became a guru in a five-foot frame. She propped her barely size five feet on the coffee table in the living room and received guests. She encouraged them all to come. She welcomed them gladly. She told every single one of them about our recent trip to Colorado. They all shook their heads in agreement, humoring her, attributing her story to a brain that was no longer able to function. But Liz didn’t seem to mind. In spite of the physical deterioration, her thinking remained quite clear. It was their learning now, she knew. It was the only reason she was still here, so that others could learn from her. In some ways, she was pleased to discover that she still had gifts to offer. But there was another part of her that was ready to be done.

Liz worried about her husband. She knew her son and grandson would be OK. It pained me when she told me that she knew that I would be OK, too. How could she think that I would be OK? I would most certainly not be OK. But, of course, I couldn’t tell her that. So, I lied. I had never lied to Liz, ever before. But this time, for my friend, I lied.

“Yes, Sissie,” I told her. “I will be OK.”

I told her that I would miss her, but I promised to find her even though I had no idea how I would go about doing that.

I was at home when the call came that Liz had passed away. I was shocked. How could I not know that she was gone? Why had her spirit not come to me to say good-bye one last time? Why didn’t she wait for me to be there with her? She had walked away to a beautiful paradise and just left me here. Suddenly life itself seemed like such nonsense. I didn’t want to be here anymore. My world made no sense without her in it. I wanted to go with Lizzie.

But since I was destined to remain behind, my only hope was to keep my promise. I had to find Liz. It was agony looking for her and coming up empty. Over the years, I had gained a great deal of experience with self-hypnosis and astral travel. In my work, I had guided others in enhancing their own intuitive gifts. Still, at that time in my life, my gifts were useless. As far as I could see, my Lizzie was nowhere to be found.

At the point that I thought the grief would kill me and at times I wished it would, I cried out for help. I opened myself completely, and only then did a window between the worlds open wide enough for me to slip thorough it.

At first, as I came through the other side of my own grief, I found myself in many a conversation with other spirits who were no longer in body. This is often the first step to perceiving other dimensions more clearly. Some of these earthbound spirits asked me for guidance. Many of them were children. I provided help the best I could. At the time, it seemed as though I managed to find every earthbound spirit walking the Rio Grande Bosque Trail—but still no Lizzie.

Then, one afternoon, out there in the misty rain, along the Rio Grande Bosque, Liz found me. I had anticipated that our reunion would arrive as some monumental sort of happening. Yet nothing could have felt more ordinary. I had so many questions. She answered patiently. She had been there with me all along, she explained. I was just too sad to see.

But that day, I could see, hear, and feel her clearly. We held hands. She came in the body that she was living in just before she got sick. During her last weeks, Liz had been unashamed, even proud of the baldness that had resulted from her aggressive chemotherapy treatment. But when she came to me on that day, Liz had hair again. I asked her why. She explained that her baldness had made others very uncomfortable, so she decided to go back to a simple hair style. I wanted to know if she was OK, but selfishly, too, I wanted to know how often we might be able to spend more time like this together.

“It’s just like when I moved to Mississippi that year, Miss Sandy, and you were still in Albuquerque. We didn’t see each other all the time and we didn’t even talk that much on the phone. But we always knew just when to check in. We just learned to be together in a different way. We learned all that back then, so we’d know what to do now. Isn’t it wonderful, Miss Sandy!? And now we don’t even need those damn cell phones anymore, huh Miss Sandy?

We relaxed together for a while, perching ourselves on a downed tree that was lying there in the dry desert woods. The rush of the Rio Grande River played in the background. Liz explained she was busy learning right now and so she might not be back for a while. She said she had missed me, too, and sometimes she misses the way things used to be. She talked about times that she has checked in on her family, too, but so far only her grandson knows that she is there. She said that she misses oatmeal and our favorite dessert—chocolate cake, slightly warmed with whipped cream—on the side.

We didn’t need to talk about how we get from there to here—from devastating loss to the discovery that nothing is ever really lost at all. As human beings, we are reaching now, more than ever, for a new world. In order to find that peaceful, oneness existence, we must recognize that the world and the circumstances around us are not going to change. It is only our perception of the world and the circumstances around us that can and must change. That shift is, indeed, what will change and heal the world for all of us. Liz and I experienced the beginning of a shift in perception that day when we reunited—knowing that, as sisters, our ferocious new leaning had just begun.

There was no good-bye that day on the Bosque. Instead, slowly, the clear image of this beautiful woman, now more a part of me than she had ever been, my Lizzie, slowly faded into a gentle mist. I watched as the mist drifted off through the trees and down toward the river.

I sat for a few moments, my hand outstretched as if still holding hers. My mind lay blissfully empty, my soul delightfully full. Then, on the walk home, I sang–for both of us.