Chapter 19 - Ouija Just Hear Me Out?

Chapter 19 - Ouija Just Hear Me Out?

I am back home after spending Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in Wisconsin with my family. I came out of it again wondering how I can share my true self with my family. Or, if I just go off and join a commune and don't try.

There are five kids in our family. There are the three oldest: Kevin, Denise and Margie; they are a year apart from each other. Five years after Margie comes me, another five years later, Brian is born. Growing up, when Mom would refer to us to friends and family, we were, "Kevin, The Girls, Ann, and Brian."

My Mom died in February 2005 in a car accident due to slippery road conditions. She was 64, my dad was 65, and us kids were 40, 38, 37, 32 and 27 respectively. While we were hit hard by the sudden loss of our Mom, I was relieved that no one else was hurt, and no one else caused her death. To me, it was the cleanest way for her to go, that her work here was done, and for whatever reason, all of us were to now move forward in our lives without her.

Before her death, I know that I was blaming Mom for a lot of things that I felt should have been done differently while raising us. Dad was so fun - and Mom was always the killjoy. It has been amazing for me to see how blinding family dynamics can be. Now that Mom is gone, I see how much of an anchor she was for my dad, as well as for us kids. But who over gives much thought to the anchor? You think about The Ship, Where It Can Take You, and Full Steam Ahead. But you never really think much about how the importance of the anchor. Not until, I suppose, you have been out a sea for a while.

***


I have always been interested in the metaphysical and occult, in the effects that religion has on people, in ghosts and Stephen King books and The Day of the Dead - I find all of it interesting; however, per the name of this blog, I like to test things and see if there is validity or just hype.

In high school, I happened to have been cast in a play as a medium. A oiuja board was one of my props. My friend Traci and I decided to use it one night in an effort to summon her boyfriend, who had recently died (also in a car accident).

She and I prepare for the ouija summoning of the spirit world. We place the board in the center of her Mom's white-carpeted living room floor. We get out the little pointer so we can receive her boyfriend's message. We place each of our hands on the little pointer, begin swirling the pointer across the board in a figure eight pattern, close our eyes, and ready ourselves for his communication.

I don't remember what question we asked it. What I do remember is that the pointer moved almost instantly across the board to one of the answer positions.

I pull my hands away and look at Traci. "Come on!" I say. "Could you be anymore obvious? You are totally pulling it!"

Traci looks back at me, visibly shaken. "I'm not pulling it," she says, her eyes wide with fear. "I was going to accuse you of the same thing."

Traci and I both look down at the board. Both of our hands were now off the pointer, and in fists close to our bodies. The pointer was now still - but we were not. I was given the job of removing the board from her home, going out into the dark of the night to put it in my car. I remember feeling bad as I walked out to the car - had I corrupted their house with ghosts? What had we opened up? What had we done?

I never attempted summoning another spirit with the ouija board. However, now I felt I was stuck with it - I had seen the movie Witchboard, I knew you couldn't just throw a ouija board away. I did end up taking my chances a few years later though. My college roommates and I were all sitting in the living room of our newly aquired off-campus house, when we heard something clatter and fall upstairs. It was the middle of the afternoon on a bright sunny fall day. We went up stairs to check it out, only to find the ouija board, which had been displayed upright like a plate in a china cabinet on the top of a bookshelf I had, now laying in the middle of the floor. We looked to see if a window was open, to blame it's fall on a sudden, sharp breeze. All the windows were closed. There was even an iron sitting in front of the ouija board, that had been placed there to cool. So the ouija board would have had to leap up and over the iron to land where it landed on the floor. Maybe somebody had a friend come over and play this trick in order to get me to get rid of it. If they did - it worked. I immediately took it outside, asked it please not to bother me, and put it in the trash. I don't think I have heard from it since.

***

But to get back to the story of my family. I shared with my sister and Dad - and planned to tell the whole family but then didn't - an experience I had that was along the same lines of the ouija board story. I recently went to a known and respected clairvoyant to see how Mom was. However, unlike the ouija story, this experience made me feel very safe and cared for by the spirit realm. My sister was into it and enjoyed it - until I told her that I told my Dad about it too. I think I am trying to justify telling my Dad something that the clairvoyant said, which is what made Denise mad.

The clairvoyant told me that Mom loves me, that she's fine, and to stop being sad about her death. She also said that she loves my Dad, but she admits she's not entirely happy with his behavior. Not because the behavior is neccesarily bad, she said it's his business, but because, "It's hurting you kids." My dad is dating another woman, which would be OK if he had been crying and sobbing and not able to move past my mom's death. However, he seemed to move past my mom's death pretty quickly. That's what I've been having a hard time with. While all of us kids seem to be reeling from my Mom's death, my farmer Dad is now jet-setting all over the place with his new lady friend. Mom and Dad were married for 40 years. Now he and his new girlfriend, who was just widowed the year prior to Mom's death, are together all the time doing all these social things he and Mom never did. Mom's fault or Dad's fault - I'll never know, but I suppose it's a bit of both.

As usual with my Dad, he does what he wants with no explanation or concern for us. We are to just accept it. I can accept it - there is a part of me that feels it's good for both of them, that they could go through the grief together. I just don't feel I've seen much grieving.

But it's not my place to judge, right? And that's basically what the clairvoyant and Mom said during the session. That I need to just work on my own healing, and to not worry about Dad.

So I shared this with Dad - he knows that I have not been dealing well with his dating of this woman. Primarily because I ask questions the other kids won't ask. But this was covered in the session with Mom and the clairvoyant, too - do your own healing, stop trying to save everyone else. Just work on your own stuff.

I thought I was letting Dad know that I was moving on. No, I'll admit it - it was kind of a warning. As in, watch yourself, buddy. Also, I felt validated - I am not the only kid upset by Dad's actions. And, talk about great credibility - Mom's not too happy with them, either!

However, clairvoyants aren't really considered credible sources in our world, are they? So, I am relegated to relating kooky information and being kooky enough to believe it.

Introduction

Hi! So, I've decided I need to blog on the journey of mental and spiritual growth.

Here's where we'll start: I'm 37 year old white girl. I have never been married, although I always feel very compelled to follow that up with the qualifier that I have had two marriage proposals. I used to be proud of that, that I had men desire me enough to propose. Now I just see it as my own inability to break off relationships when I know I do not feel satisfied in them. So, saying "No," is one of the psychological things I need to work on.

We're going to see how this blog goes. I might regret making this public. But for now, I feel like I have things that happy on a daily basis that to me are mini "wins" in my psychological growth. I think that a healthier mental outlook contributes to a better platform for our higher selves to work out of. My goal is to give myself a good bedrock of emotional capabilities to operate from. I'll get into this more as we go. I just know that I have things that happen each day that to me are AMAZING; but when I try sharing them with another person, they don't seem to understand why. For example, saying no to a co-worker's request to eat her treat that she brought in to work was a huge win for me! I didn't want to eat it, and I as gracefully and politely as possible told her no thank you. And she didn't push it. HUGE!

So, my point is, this is going to be a pretty boring blog. Luckily, no one has to read it. It can exist in cyber space, and if anyone does benefit, I will be so glad. But for now, it just allows me to express my joy and pain in a non-invasive format. I hope you enjoy reading it. I will talk with you soon.