Spirituality is in my Genes...

Today's entry deals with spirituality rather than energy healing, but it does go a long way towards explaining why I am so completely open and receptive to belief in things which we cannot readily perceive with our normal senses.

Although my mom would never have wanted to admit it, having been raised in a devout Roman Catholic family in the 1930's and 40's, she was without a doubt the most spiritual person I have ever known. I have either personally been a part of, or born witness to, numerous experiences involving my Mom which provide more evidence than I will ever need on which to base my unshakeable faith in things unseen, including the continuation of the spirit from this existence to the next, and the ability for souls in either realm to communicate with each other.

Today I'd like to share just one of those "Mom stories".

Anna Marie Green McGrath (aka Mom) was widowed suddenly after nearly a half century of marriage on Easter Sunday in 1995 when my Dad, John Fones McGrath, was stricken by a brain stem aneurysm. (The spiritual experience of that particular night is a story in and of itself for another day.)

Showing amazing strength and resilience despite having her world torn apart, Mom did not give in to self-pity but rather fought her way courageously through the incredible grief and loneliness, going on to live another 13 years. Unfortunately, for the last five or six of those years, Mom had to live with multiple myeloma, an incurable form of bone marrow cancer.

Now I have both an older brother (Jeff) and a younger sister (Susan) and in no way, shape or form do I intend in this article to minimize their compassionate caring for Mom during her illness. They both were there for Mom every step of the way, and as you'll see later, had to pick up a lot of my slack as well. It's just that the relevance of this article is to my personal relationship with Mom.

We each had our own roles that developed as co-caregivers for Mom, and mine largely dealt with taking her to all of her doctors' appointments including her regular intravenous infusions of a bone strengthening supplement. She told me many times that, outside of my Dad, I was the only driver she could relax with. Since we grew up in an urban setting and driving was not really a necessity, my sister got her license very late in life so my mother kind of viewed her skills as lacking experience. My brother, on the other hand, carries his high-energy rapid-fire personality into his driving which would make Mom a nervous passenger.

While I also have a lot of faults (and my daughters would add this one to the list), I drive like an old man. I am never in a hurry to get anywhere and just putter along at my own pace. I enjoy being behind the wheel and I think my passengers can pick up on that relaxed confidence and draw a sense of security from it...I know Mom did. I used to have an Oldsmobile SUV with a digital computer that displayed, among other things, the driver's average speed since it was last reset. I used it to torment my daughters while teaching them to drive, but they would get back at me by pulling my stats and laughing openly at my average speeds of 15 or 20 MPH. (Not quite as bad as it sounds....my commute to work is largely on city streets!).

Anyway...that's how I became Mom's driver. Mom actually did possess a valid New York State driver's license but I don't believe it had been used since around 1960, and then only a couple of times. She hated driving. Kind of scary that she could still do so legally!

About 4 years into Mom's illness...on the Friday before Mother's Day in 2007 to be precise, my wife of 25 years, Paula, was diagnosed with lung cancer. Without going into a lot of detail on Paula's battle, it was a very painful cancer that had grown into her chest wall and caused a constant hard pinching sensation preventing her from ever being able to get comfortable, and the cancer had also metastasized to her brain, as lung cancer is prone to do, worsening her condition with seizures and other debilitating symptoms. How I wish I had known Reiki at that time in my life...I could have helped both my wife and my mother so much more than I did!

So now, it became quite a balancing act as I assumed the primary caregiver role for my wife (with a lot of help from my daughters), and still tried to provide the support I know my Mom needed. Obviously I could not be there for Mom as much during this time, and often had to defer my responsibilities to my brother or sister (remember what I said earlier about them picking up my slack!).

Mom never complained and was very loving and supportive of my struggles, but it still broke my heart to not be able to give her 100%. Towards the end of Mom's battle, which came on January 22, 2008, she was in the Hospice wing of St. Peter's Hospital in Albany, NY, which is probably the most beautiful in-patient hospice unit anywhere. It's done up like a fancy hotel, and has kitchen and day room facilities for family and visitors, and the most caring staff you could ever imagine. Between the care hospice provided for my Mom, and the care they later provided for my wife, daughters and myself, I have learned what a beautiful organization hospice is, and I volunteer for them today as a nursing home and vigil volunteer, for bereavement support, and of course, as a Reiki practitioner for patients and caregivers.

Anyway, while Mom was in Hospice for the last six weeks of her life, my days would typically consist of sleeping in two hour increments (Paula needed pain meds every two hours and could not track them herself due to the damage done by the brain mets), going to work (still had to pay the bills and keep the health insurance going!), coming home to relieve my daughter and share a meal with my dying wife, then most nights driving the 30 minutes to Albany to sit bedside with Mom for a couple of hours. Then it was back home and the cycle started again. Of course, there were nights I just couldn't get to the hospital, and it absolutely tore me up.

On one of my visits to Mom, she gave me a nice little piece of ring-like religious jewelry called a "finger rosary", a small representation of a single decade of the rosary beads which Catholics use to meditate on the divine mysteries and pray to Mary, the Mother of Jesus. The hospice chaplain had given Mom a handful of these and it would make her feel like a benevolent queen giving them out to her visitors from her bed. Although I personally never wore any sort of jewelry (Paula often got annoyed that I would often not even wear my wedding ring - I just did not like jewelry), this piece had obvious special significance for me so I took to wearing it all the time on a silver chain around my neck. It was not for show but for personal comfort. No one could see it anyway since at that time, I would go to work with a shirt and tie buttoned up to the neck, and a T-shirt underneath, and the chain was always secured behind all that.

Well...late afternoon on January 22, 2008, I came home to eat supper with Paula between work and a trip to see Mom in the hospital. We were sitting at the kitchen table and Paula looked at me and said: "Why are you wearing the chain with your Mom's ring OUTSIDE your shirt?" (I still had my necktie on from work and was still buttoned up to the neck...no way it could have fallen out, but I looked down and sure enough, the finger rosary was dangling on my chest in front of my heart!)

Without even taking a second to think about it, the following came out of my mouth: "Mom just died, and she stopped by on her way out to let me know it was OK that I couldn't be there."

I had, at that time, NO IDEA where this thought or these words came from, but I knew they were true. Of course, as my spiritual journey has evolved since then, the clairsentient ability I inherited from Mom has become second nature and I no longer wonder about the source of such knowledge.

Maybe ten seconds then passed in silence...it might not have been that long but certainly was no longer than that...and the phone rang. My sister Susan was on the line and simply said: "We're at the hospital, and Mom just died."

We are NEVER alone!

Just for today, be grateful...

Bob McGrath
Master Practitioner/Teacher
Pathways to Harmony