“Peace that passes all understanding.”

Happy Saturday friends!

Before I get started: Women’s Circles: the next circle starts June 18th, contact me if you'd like to join! Wednesday nights, 6-8pm.

All through the week I had ideas on how to start this week’s update but didn’t write them down and now here I am sitting at the keyboard and I’m stuck. My rambling thoughts:

It’s been about 3 weeks since Katy first went into the hospital, it seems forever ago and yesterday. Tomorrow/Sunday she will have been in heaven 2 weeks. My brother and I wondered the other day: do souls grieve? It seems like they must… 

(And then he sent me this, check it out.)

While she was in the hospital and after we knew she didn’t have long, I asked her, “Mom sends us cardinals, what will you send us?”

She said, “I’ll send you buebirds but also, see me in the dappled light coming through the trees.” She loved trees :-)

She came home from the hospital on Friday, May 2nd and my brother Michael drove down to see her. They spent Saturday morning and early afternoon talking, looking at pictures, he read her poetry and then she started slipping further under and for longer. Brad, ManChild, and I went to see her that evening, thinking it was getting close. When we arrived, her eyes popped open and she smiled. I told her ManChild was there too and she opened her eyes again, smiled and said his name. Then back to sleep. She was very peaceful. My brother said that while they were talking earlier, she actually said she felt peaceful. 

My brother and I went back to see her Sunday morning. Uncle Chris’s family came to support him as well, I was so happy to know they were there for him. I don’t know them very well but they were all lovely.

Often during those hours we were there, it would be just my brother and me sitting in there with Katy. I did some Reiki with her. When anyone was holding her hand verbally talking or telepathically talking, Katy would squeeze our hands, just a tiny squeeze, or raise her eyebrows, or smile a tiny fleeting smile. At first I thought it was all involuntary but as time went on, I realized she only did that when I was verbally or telepathically talking to her. I told Michael and he started paying attention and said the same. Hospice always tells you that your loved one can hear everything until the very end. 

At one point as I was sitting there alone with her, I told her, “Katy, I know you said you’d send us bluebirds and to see you in the dappled light through leaves and I will be looking for those things. But also, you know I can hear the other side. Try hard to let me know you’re okay.” 

On Sunday morning, her best friend since 6th grade, Lee, came to visit. She held her hand and sang her all their favorite Beatles songs. What a gift.

She was only asleep and unable to talk for about 30 hours. So different than Mom’s 6 days. Uncle Chris called Sunday evening at about 9:45pm to say that Katy had crossed. He said after everyone had left, he went to take a shower, and when he went to check on her, she was different. She lifted her hands, placed them on the tops of her legs (she told me years ago that it was where they went when it was time to go to sleep LOL), breathed a few last breaths and crossed over. 

Wow. Who knew it could be like that. Somehow, the way she died, helped to heal some of the trauma around Mom’s death.

We went right over after that phone call. I spent a little bit of time with her alone. I was standing there with my hand on her leg, I turned to go and felt her grab hold of my wrist so firmly that I whipped around to look at her. 

In my mind I heard her say, “Stay.”

I sat down and got quiet, listening.

She said, “I’m with your mom and my mom.”

A couple minutes passed and she said, “Peace that passes all understanding.” And then she was gone.

It was enough for me.

It wasn’t until a week later, talking to a friend that we realized that what she was saying about peace was her experience but that also must have been a blessing she bestowed upon me because I have felt SO peaceful about her crossing. Yes, I’m sad. Yes, I miss her. But there is this peace that really does pass all understanding around all of it.

About a week ago, I was taking a nap here at the rental. I woke up but was so comfy that I decided to stay right where I was. As I was drifting back to sleep and was in that fabulous not asleep, not awake space, Katy came for a quick visit. I was outside of my body, standing in the doorway to my room, looking back at myself in my bed. Katy walked in from the bathroom, stood next to my bed looking down at me for a quick second before looking over at me where I was standing in the doorway. Big, bright smile. She looked healthy and happy. Pink cheeks, blonde hair, pink shirt. 

She’s okay. Imagine the joyous homecoming of seeing your only sister again! Seeing your mom and dad again. Yes I miss her but I feel that joy in her and in them and I can’t only be sad!

Probably my favorite pic of Katy, I took it while she and Uncle Chris were visiting us in Colorado back in…2011 maybe? We were up in Rocky Mountain National Park:

Katy on the left and her friend Lee:

Katy lower left, 14 years old:

My brother Michael took this one at a museum. We come by our artistic ways naturally, everyone in our family is/was artistic:

THE RANCH:

So much has happened since the last time I wrote about the house renovation. The fire was January 2nd and it looks like the pod people 😆 will be unloading the pods back into the house the first week of June. 5 months. Wow. Almost a half a year of not living in our home. I am ready to be back!

This is the color of the main part of the house, not for everyone, but it makes me so happy:

My new bedroom in the bonus room is coming along! The fan is in and B-Rad installed the can lights (although nowadays they aren’t cans, they are flat LED disks), and has the interior of the mini split in place over on the left. This room is hooked up to the central heat and air but it doesn’t do a good job, so he put a mini split unit in. Upstairs carpet goes in on May 28th:

B-Rad’s bedroom, bathroom, closet color, ooooooooo!:

ManChild’s bedroom and bathroom color. They only have one coat on and still have to install the crown molding. You can see the glow of that yellow orange from the hall LOL:

His new bathroom tile went in Thursday and carpet on Friday. On Monday the week-long process of redoing the hardwoods begins! Then the last week of May will be punch list stuff—things that weren’t finished, paint touchups, etc. The first week of June will be move in days. They are expecting it to take several days, depending on how many people are in the crews.

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I gave up trying to find an old washstand that fit the hall half bath (I was going to create a custom vanity) and just painted the base of the old one instead. I used ChatGPT to figure out a color for it. I told it the brand/number/name of the yellow walls, showed it pics of the old black vanity and the color of the soon to be restained floors, and asked it for vanity color options. It gave me several good options that I hadn’t even thought about, including this very basic “accessible beige” that I liked the best. I used cabinet paint, which I haven’t ever used, and boy does that stuff go on like putty, so thick! But it mostly leveled itself out and turned out nice:

I also used ChatGPT to help me figure out the chairs in my big dining room. It’s where I hold Women’s Circles and art classes and all my chairs are mismatched both in style and color (on purpose) but now that everything is changing inside, I think I’d like to paint them all the same color. The intense yellow walls was throwing me off again and so I had it give me some options and a little mockup. It’s kind of a darker “dusty teal” color, I love it!:

If you haven’t tried it yet, check it out! I know people are using it for everything including art and writing but I like to use it for things I’m stuck on like those chairs and vanity, recipes, whether the free head and footboard I found on Facebook Marketplace was worth anything (holy wow, was it ever!) It gives me more time to paint and write, which for me is what makes life happy :-)

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I had the Polar Bear shaved down so she wouldn’t be so hot, she looks like a puppy! Her coat was always so beautiful but it’s too much in this heat!

I had a mobile groomer come to the farm. This is after her bath, during the blowout, and before the big shave. She fell asleep with the little hat on LOL, it keeps the noise down for her:

Her cotton candy undercoat picks up all the pine shavings now!

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A little throwback to 3 year old ManChild playing squirt gun gunslinger with Grandpa, “You lily livered, yellow bellied…DRAW!” 

Found TWO 6 foot long snake skins within a day of each other just outside the pool at the rental! Wow, how cool is that!

I’ve never seen this before and now I want to make a painted floor cloth for the living room with a repeated pattern like this:

Pretty Boy Blu aka Fabio: 
 

This week I started training Jaffee to be loose while we do chores. I talked to him about staying on the barn side of the pond and the barn side of the driveway. Forgot to tell him he couldn’t go off into the forest! Funny that’s the only place he tried ;-)

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The horses and donkeys know about healing grief:

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The pumpkins plants growing in my compost heap are getting so big!:

These thistle flowers remind me of Rayn. I've not seen them here in North Carolina before but we had a ton of them in Colorado. It was her favorite thing to carefully pull them off the spiky stem with her lips and eat them lol:

And while this isn't my flower, I wish it was! OMG! A tiny frog bed! I must plant these!:

THE MEMES:

I had to say it out loud before I got it:

Ohhhhh…that’s why I live in the forest now!:
 

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