What I experience, when I let my mind float to those I love who are dead.

I see white emptiness. It feels like the tickly giggle of a happy, safe, secure child. I feel relaxed, open, protected. Into this space, I imagine those who I love who have gone before. This is their space, this is where they live, where they wait for me to join them.

There are days when seeing them there as they were and longing for them as I do makes living in this world extremely painful. I want to be where I see them being. They are so real to me in my mind's eye, so alive. They are waiting for me to join them. In this knowledge, my heart aches, my throat constricts, my eyes fill and the left side of my head tingles with tears. If they are waiting for me there now, why can I not just leave to be with them again?

I have finally come to the decision that to take my own life prematurely would be a crime. I don't know how that would affect my experience of joining my loved ones. I need to stay here to do my work. Then I will be able to leave.

At the moment, in the forefront of my white emptiness is a little black and white cat, with a cheeky smile on his face, ready to play and to boing about. I lost him at the end of January. He was killed by a car. I left in the morning to go on a course, cuddled him as I always do, told him to keep off the road and that I would see him later. When I got home the vets rang to say he was dead. Killed instantly. They told me not to come and see him as he was hit on the head. I guess he was too much of a mess. "Remember him as he was"

His ashes are in a beautiful box in a drawer of my dresser. I see him everywhere. I miss him. Thankfully I have his mum still. She is a lovely white and tortie, who loves going for walks and purrs at the slightest thing. I am still here thanks to her.

But in my heart, I still have that white emptiness with Little Man in the middle of it, calling me. So I write. I am hoping that writing it down will help.