I recently spent 6 weeks with my father in a hospice in Philadelphia. Early one morning, I was by his side as he passed peacefully in his sleep. The time of bonding, grieving and celebrating with my father and family, left me with a precious gift. This gift is the profound experience of touching the world we come from, also known as “the afterlife”, and knowing this 3D world to be the dream.

I have “mid-wifed” many people from this world to the next. I have helped others to release their regrets, fears, and attachments so that they may transition with ease into graceful surrender, either by staying in this world or leaving. However, being present for my own father’s death took me to new heights and depths with this experience.

Sitting with him in his final days, my dad talked openly to “others” in the room. In one moment he was with us, the next his eyes shifted into an other-dimensional gaze and he talked outwardly to the other side of the room, addressing old, previously deceased friends. My father had always been a skeptic. So when he so apparently moved from one realm to the next, my siblings, with their own doubts, were deeply moved and shocked into questioning their beliefs. The whole house of cards began falling as my family circle shifted and quaked, and little by little, let go and sought renewal.

When the goodbyes felt complete, and the reunion of souls became my father’s reality, his breathing slowed and our hearts broke. Grief washed through me, for the beloved parent who held me as baby and taught me to tie my shoes and the confidant of my later years. Preverbal feelings and images came to the surface and the full meaning of our lifetime together opened up as I held him and cared for him in the end.

The day he was preparing to leave us, I felt him everywhere around me. He was finding his expansive identity as a soul once again, feeling the freedom of releasing his diseased body. There was more of him accessible to me then ever before. Through the bond of our hearts, the other side was revealed and became crystal clear. What had once been temporary glimpses and feelings about where we return, became a full picture, a complete experience.

This river of life ends as a return to wholeness. Limited perception, and a small, conditioned identity return to a complete version of Self expanded in love and joy.   Life is an opportunity to ‘know thyself’, remember who we are before death, making this world an extension of the other, or, what some may call “heaven on earth’.

In moments I miss him. I long to pick up the phone and talk to him. Then I open and extend my heart to him, feel his soul ..and my heart sings.