Death is one of the few constant things in this world. Everything and everyone, anything that experiences birth will eventually experience death. And as I’ve constantly been told over the last few weeks, we all react and grieve differently when someone we love dies.

Personally, I believe in an afterlife. I believe our soul departs our body here on the Third Plane, and we transition into the Fourth Plane, the Spirit World. There we connect and meet with those from our lives who have gone before us. There we reflect upon the life we have just lived, and we consider what it is we need to experience and learn in the next life. When we are ready, we return and are reborn.

Time in the Spirit Plane/Spirit World is different to everyone. I’m convinced someone connected to my maternal line spent little time there, only a few years having gone at a young age, and has been reborn into the family they were taken from.

I have said this before, but I don’t grieve like most people do. Because I am a Spirit Medium, because I have an idea of what happens next, because I can still speak to my family who have passed on, death is not an ending for me. It may be an ending to their body, to their physicality within this realm, but I am lucky enough to continue to have a relationship with them.

On February 10, my grandmother finally let go. Gosh, that does sound awful, but after being trapped in a body that was slowly and progressively turning against her, and after being separated from her soul mate/husband for almost two years, the time came for them to finally be together again. At the age of 86, I believe she entered a dream where she was with Poppy, and as her heart gave out, she peacefully transitioned.

Sometimes I feel that grieving is slightly selfish, or at least that is how I felt shortly after being told the news of my grabdmothers’s transition. I felt selfish for wondering “I’ve been sent home from work, what do I do now?” and “I was at work at the time she transitioned, why didn’t I know this happened?” before “damnit Cara, it’s not about you!” came into play. There is a reason why I felt selfish, and I’m getting to it.

I was on the phone to my father about six hours after she passed as my worry turned to him and how he was coping. I was sent home from work, it was bloody hot in the house, we don’t have air conditioning, so I was cooling myself down in front of the fan … and I felt her come into the bedroom where I was. I felt her, saw her, walk through the door way. She made her fake shocked face, made one of her hilariously witty comments, laughed then walked out.

Fuck I needed that.

I felt – feel – selfish because I know that I am going to continue to have an amazing relationship with my grandmother because of my ability to connect to the Spirit world. In my mind any grief I am feeling is nonsense for two main reasons:

• My grandparents are finally reunited. Married for over 60 years, completely inseparable with my grandfather more concerned for my grandmother’s welfare while HE was in palliative care, are finally together again.
• She is no longer being held back by her body that was keeping her, in a sense, trapped.

I have allowed myself to cry over not being able to physically give her a hug, a kiss, or to physically communicate with her. As on the day of her passing after that initial visit, she came back again and I got my hug, I got my kiss from her, I got to see her smile and say “see you later”. Because I will – I will pick up the “spirit phone” (how I reference me tuning into Spirit) and I will be able to talk to her whenever she’s able to answer.

My selfishness came through in that period of time between her passing and her initial visit to me – I wasn’t taking into account her need to become accustomed to her new surroundings, her new plane of existence, and didn’t know how to react or deal because there was no answer on the other end of the “spirit phone”.

I took three days off work in the lead up to the funeral. I had a 920km/570 mile drive to undertake, a day to recover and view Nanna physically one more time, and the day of her returning to Mother Earth. It hit me once I got home from work the day before the drive, then majorly the morning of.

While 2017 version of me is fine and “deals with death differently”, my inner child is sobbing under the covers in her childhood bedroom because she just lost her Nanna and she isn’t coping…not in the slightest.