My cousin died suddenly last week. He was only 52 years old. His funeral took place yesterday in Cork, Ireland. His name was Donal - Dómhnall in Irish and means world ruler.
Since I couldn't be there in person, I was glad it was livestreamed on YouTube. So I got busy yesterday morning creating a sacred space on my kitchen table with candles, crystals and a photo of my dad. My laptop in the central position of this impromptu viewing altar, I clicked on the livestream to join the funeral just in time to see my mum and sister at the top pews giving their condolences to my aunt, uncle and cousins.
How I wished I could be there in person amongst my aunts, uncles, many cousins and family to celebrate, grieve, hug and share stories. Yet, at home by my kitchen table is where I was meant to be evidently.
I held it together as six men carried his sizable coffin up the aisle of the church and positioned it in front of the altar, all the while serenaded by a beautiful solo singer whose divine masculine frequency resonated through my laptop and into my kitchen to me.
But when my cousin stood up at the pulpit to share the eulogy, hearing his voice speaking the life stories of his eldest brother caused the bottled up grief within me to rise up and release through my salty tears with such a force that I was glad I was at home alone at my kitchen table. I felt like the Bean Caointe; the Keening Woman whose sobs and tears were melting away eons of stuck grief through my Cork lineage and rippling out to the collective like a quantum healing balm of deep love and reverence for this moment.
You see I remember my cousin when we visited on our holidays to my father's home of county Cork as a child. But I didn't know him as a person in the way that I knew my other 34 cousins. He was born with profound hearing loss and with a condition called aphasia meaning in his case, he was unable to speak. In the eulogy it was explained that he found it difficult to accept that he couldn't hear or speak; that he couldn't communicate with people.
More tears flowed when my father was mentioned. With my father's line of work in the Department of Education in Dublin at the time, he made sure that a special class was setup for my cousin in Cork and for aphasic children in school. My father, always the family man and first to step in to help. I felt the warmth of his presence at this funeral.
And so my late cousin quickly learnt other ways of communicating at school and at home through lip reading, sign language, reading and writing.
"His reading and writing skills were second to none and he became a master communicator."
He became a master communicator.
These words stopped me in my tracks. He couldn't hear. He couldn't speak, and because of this, he found new and alternative ways to communicate. Over time, he became a master communicator.
The high mastery of becoming the master communicator felt so beautiful and poignant to me that I had to let this sink in.
He used to go on long cycles, and always found his way home. Like a homing pigeon. And he had an incredible ability with numbers, remembering everyone's date of birth and date of death as well as their age. He loved water and the sea.
Today I invite you to remember my cousin Donal who lived life to the fullest. Who brought joy and cheeky laughter, amidst the anguish, pain and frustration, to life and who brought everyone together in love in the end.
Is the purpose of life preparing for our death?
Is it to feel loss, grief, pain and suffering?
Is it to know love and be love?
Is it to have an experience to educate and inform the soul?
Is it to save humanity and build a new kind of earth that needs master communicators?
Is it to heal and/or break the bondage of karmic loops?
Is it to experience pure joy and belly laughter; the sun on your face and wind in your hair; to smell the smells of spring?
Being stationed by my kitchen table yesterday allowed me to witness death in a new way, helping me to feel the grief within me. To release the heaviness down into earth; into the air or the fire or water. To transmute and thereby transform through alchemical tears.
There is immense power in being present to all of this in every moment.
My cousin's coffin was carried slowly by the same six men back down the aisle and on by hearse to the graveyard where he has returned to the warm embrace of earth, near his family home in Cork. He is at peace now and welcomed home by the outstretched arms of his ancestors. I know he'll be having a great laugh with my dad, uncles, aunt and cousin who too have passed on from our family circle. I'm sure they are all enjoying enlightened conversations now and supporting us from a new space.
The livestream ended and the congregation disappeared off camera. I carried my laptop into my front room to return to my workspace. I gasped and stopped in my tracks again. There was a pigeon staring sideways in the window at me! Perched on the wooden bench that sits in front of our window. We call it the birthing bench since it was a gift from my family after the birth of our son.
From death to birth. We rise up in resurrection.
The sacred spiral continues.
If you need alchemical support to release, transmute and birth your projects into the world, checkout my one to one Sacred Storytelling Sessions where I hold deep space for you to transform from the inside out with soul based coaching. Click here to find out more about these powerful packages. You'll be amazed by what unfolds in each session uniquely for you!
Also, the early bird price ends on 1st May 2024 for the Sacred Storytelling Ireland In-Person Retreat. Petra Carroll and I invite you onto the sacred lands of Eamain Macha, Navan Fort Armagh to heal the rift within and return to divine truth from 2 - 4 August 2024. Click here to find out more. I met with Petra last Friday to walk with horse Goddess Macha upon these magical lands and to make our preparations to welcome you home to Ireland. It is going to be a very special weekend.
Let me know how this email resonates for you.
Lots of love to you on your journey in navigating these times.
Eimear xx
Eimear Stassin Sacred Storyteller
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