It has been one year since I began writing this blog. I have, over the course of the year, written about a lot of things, mostly the vicissitudes and the challenges of living day to day. On this, the blog’s first anniversary, I decided it was time to remember why I started writing it in the first place. It was to introduce my book, The Messenger: The Improbable Story of a Grieving Mother and a Spirit Guide.  Writing this book, which is about the death of my son Eddie and the discovery of Spirit, my own and that of a loving Guide, simply saved my life. The Messenger, whose name is Lukhamen, lived in Egypt a long time ago, some two hundred years after the death of Christ. His story, as he imparted it to me, is a glimpse of life as it was under the brutal occupation of Rome. But it wasn’t until I went to Egypt – quite by chance – and the places I had seen only in my mind’s eye became a reality, that I understood who he was, and why he came into my life at its darkest hour.  The book – his gift to me – is a message of hope for anyone who has lost someone they loved, but especially parents who have lost a child.  The Messenger has found its way into the hands of precious people who have known the awful pain of grief. They have told me that the book was a comfort to them. That is its purpose. I plan to spend this next year seeking out others like them, and asking them to talk with me and to each other, so that we might share our experiences, strength, and hope.  Thank you to all who have stayed with me during this year, and to all who have joined our journey along the way. Your encouragement has lifted me out of many a dark day. Here is how it all started one year ago:

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Welcome to my blog, Nobody’s Gone for Good. I never dreamed I would write a blog. Blogs were not invented by my generation. My granddaughters are in their twenties. A blog? Why? And why now? For the most part, I have led an ordinary life. But something happened to me that was not at all ordinary. It was, to say the least, improbable. It began a long time ago, and it took me a long time to write it down. I didn’t fully understand it until I had finished. It’s all in a book now, and it is time to let it go – to wherever it is supposed to go, to wherever it may do the most good. I have been told by this generation that a blog is its first step into the world. I am nothing if not obedient.

The title of my blog, Nobody’s Gone for Good, is borrowed. I was sitting in a movie theater when I heard those words sung onscreen. A woman who had passed on was sitting by her husband; her song was meant to console him, a man so lost in grief that he could neither see her nor hear her. My daughter, who was sitting next to me, touched my arm and said, “That’s it. That’s your line.” I had been looking for one simple sentence that would describe the book I had just finished, one simple sentence to describe the long journey that began with the death of my child.

Do our dead sing to us? Do they love us still? Where are they? Are they gone forever? Or does something live on, and do they whisper to us, saying, Don’t cry. Nobody’s gone for good.

Shakespeare said it so well: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Something happened to me that happens to many, many souls. At the darkest moment, in the deepest throes of anguish, at the point in time when all seems lost, a gift is imparted; a pinpoint of light shines in the night, the glimmer of a small star reaches a spirit in despair, and gives it hope.

Look for The Messenger: The Improbable Story of a Grieving Mother and a Spirit Guide by Helen Delaney at www.Amazon.com