Love After Life

For the past few days Irene is putting this song in my head several times a day. I wake up with it playing in my head and I'll find myself very happily humming along or singing it. Yesterday Joy Collins posted music her husband on the other side played for her, and it was this song: Perfect song for people with loved ones on the other side, but at the 1:25 mark it got personal to me as they began using the word "Always".  Irene and I would always sign notes and cards to each other with the world "Always".  On September 8th of last year she brought my attention to a new "our song" by Shania Twain - "Forever and For Always".  I was writing a reply to Joy when I remembered that "Always" was also the  name of the very first movie I ever took Irene out to see, starring Richard Dreyfuss and Holly Hunter.  I remember I wanted to take her to it because it had Holly Hunter in it and I told Irene she reminded me of her.  I went to Wik...

Yesterday I went out around 5:30 to smoke my 2nd cigarette of the day.  The air was really warm - I think it got up around 95 during the day, but weirdly I actually enjoyed it.  Maybe it's because I have the AC in the house set at 70.  Usually, though, that just makes me dislike the warm air all the more. It felt great, though.  I lit up and started talking to Irene and when I drew in the last of the cigarette, I realized something about restraint and moderation ; controlling how much you do a thing has a great impact on how much you can enjoy it and how that enjoyment is incorporated into your life.  I used to smoke many years ago and gave it up entirely until a couple of weeks ago when I started and then began enforcing a two-a-day strict limit.  Back then, I was a chain smoker, smoking sometimes up to four packs of ultra-lights  a day .  I got into the habit of smoking while I worked on the computer and then while I played games on the comput...

Irene plays music a lot in my head now and I love it. I wake up to it, and every now and then I realize I'm listening to one of "our" songs in my mind, or some other song. I woke up this morning to "Forever and For Always" by Shania Twain, and that put me in quite a happy place.  Imagine that - five months later and I can listen to "our" songs without always breaking down in sorrow missing her, but rather smile with happiness. That's not an accomplishment to be taken lightly.  I also realized I had stopped leaving the televisions on for her to watch (I figure they probably get TV in Heaven if they want to watch it).  I also can turn off all the lights now. I still feel a lump at times when I feel she's near (not every time, but sometimes), but we're working on that.  I want to feel delight and joy whenever she's near and zero pain or sorrow. That's part of our "fun and light-hearted" plan going forward - to "normal...

I was originally writing this in the Afterlife Topics Facebook group in response to someone asking if people had ever had the departed use music to contact them, but then what happened while I was writing it makes it something I need to document here. As readers of this blog know, Irene often uses music to let me know how she's here and how she feels about me. I have 200+ songs in my system and let them random play when I listen to music. The first time she used music was after a couple of songs played that I thought were odd because they were both songs she liked to listen to with me, so I said "Okay, babe, if that's you, play our Shania Twain song next" , and it was the next song that played: "You're Still The One". The next time a song just popped into my head I really had no reason to think of - "I Can't Wait," by Nu Shooz. It kept playing like a soundtrack in my head every morning when I woke up. That started a whole chain of ev...