As a follow-up to last Saturday's post about my grandfather and the buds forming on our cherry tree (the earliest I've seen them in seven years), here's a picture from this morning. They survived the current cold snap, which I didn't expect.

​May your day be sunny and bright.

One-hundred and ten years ago today, my maternal grandfather came into this world as a thirteen-pound bundle of baby boy. This morning I noticed our cherry tree starting to bud, the earliest I’ve seen in the past seven years of living in this house. I love the cherry tree that grows outside the window of our meditation space. I had a harder time learning to love my grandpa.
​
A complicated man, my grandfather was a fervent televangelist to whom I felt no connection. He and my grandmother bickered incessantly. As a highly loyal child who fiercely loved her grandma, I felt any slight against her as a personal affront. So Grandpa didn’t earn my love or loyalty, shaping the relationship I would have with him for the rest of his life…and beyond it. He passed from his human form in 1994.

Several years ago a car drove up to my house and stopped at the mailbox. I walked outside and up to the driver’s window to see what the person inside wanted. Behind the wheel sat Grandpa Culp, smiling at me and glowing like an angel. I felt slapped, stunned. How dare he come to my home, my energetic space, showing himself to me as though I didn’t resent his presence. Yes, that was my reaction. Not “wait a minute. You’re dead and can’t drive.” I woke from this dream, this vision (I’m not sure I was really asleep), feeling my world had to shift.

Grandpa became a companion and teacher after this dream-vision. I saw the true angelic beauty within him, no longer masked by the human life he led. He worked with me as I forgave the aspects within my own life that corresponded to his (hoarding is one of those genetic traits that I have brutally and intentionally culled from my life). While it’s now rare for Grandpa to visit me, he still comes around a couple times a year, usually in the presence of one of my other grandparents. Yes, I can communicate with the non-corporeal.

After all my grandparents passed from this life and into their truer forms, I learned that the one I believed “the least among us” was a brilliant, incredibly beautiful light that shines brighter than the rest.
​
Thank you for the gift of budding cherry blossoms, my special teacher and friend. Happy birthday wherever you are, Grandpa.

Years you’ve held my hand, balancing the steps on my chosen rocky path
Years you’ve seen the beauty inside, as blindness shackled me in self-made chains 
Years you’ve believed in the woman hidden within

Thank you for spending twenty-six years as my husband. Happy anniversary, Matt.