EPILOGUE

Wonderful and Secret Messages

THE JOURNEY WITH BRIO, PAST AND PRESENT, has awoken me in so many ways. My perspective has become a larger one, a more compassionate one, one that is open to possibility, to transformation, to hope for a new way of being in the world alongside our fellow beings. I hasten to add that I am no angel and surely never will be! But I know that I hold within me those seeds Brio planted, and they are sprouting.

Some would say (and some did say) that I had turned Brio into God. I now see that he is part of God, or Spirit. The essence of Brio was—and is—his clear and pure connection to that source. That was the power of his presence in physical life. Through him, I came to feel, at least at moments, the same connection in myself, in that core within me. I believe it lies within all beings, linking us, when we are open to it. I have now experienced enough of what cannot be explained by our five senses or empirical reasoning to know, in the deepest part of me, that this essence within endures—call it consciousness or spirit or soul.

Once when I was talking to Dawn on the phone some years after Brio had physically left this Earth, she stopped talking suddenly and remarked that a beautiful large black and gold butterfly had landed on her window screen. “It's just sitting there,” she said. “They don't usually do that.” The butterfly remained on the screen as we continued to talk. We both felt that perhaps it was some sign from Brio.

Silvia Rossi, the medium, had told me that sometimes people or other creatures who are close to us will use “different ways to communicate. They use what we think is a coincidence. A butterfly may come and rest on your hand or shoulder or nearby. That may be a sign. A lot of odd things may seem coincidental on our side, but a loved one is trying to reach out on their end—and because they don't have vocal cords or physical presence, they use their energy. The energy can penetrate our mind or enter a small being like a butterfly or a bird, which will manifest.” I remember too that the day my father died, my mother left the hospital and was driving home alone. She told me that a butterfly had come and landed on the windshield—and stayed there.

I thought back to the day before Brio left, to the hummingbird that hovered at the door screen, to the frog that sat for a long time on the entry path to the house. I thought of the four-leaf clovers that so often appeared when I was with Brio—and the one I found on his flank just hours before he left. According to legend, those four leaves represent faith, hope, love, and luck.

When I decided to get a dog, I had not wanted to walk alone any longer. I know that even though I may not have Brio physically by my side, I am no longer walking alone. When I am most depressed and upset, Brio's image comes to me. I feel his presence. I'm reminded of a statement from the poet William Butler Yeats. He is said to have repeated a quote he himself had heard somewhere and never forgot. “Things reveal themselves passing away.”¹ Brio continues to reveal himself to me.

When I now lie in my imagination on Brio's flank and hear and feel his heartbeat, the tightness around my own heart—perhaps fear or sadness or anger or guilt—eases. The clenched fist opens; I feel release, an opening up.

I'd set out on my exploration to try to connect with Brio. I became curious about this new dimension of connection and communication that I'd begun to experience. I wanted to understand it—to explain it by some means. I felt, at that time, that if I could not do that, then I could not believe in the truth of interspecies communication by some extrasensory means. I could not fully trust, then, that the messages from Brio translated by psychics and mediums were absolutely real.

And yet I could not deny the growing knowledge of my intuition and heart, the truth of Brio's spirit and his soul. In the deepest part of me, I found no argument from the world of the visible, the world of reason, and the methods of empirical science that could trump Brio. I see him running down the beach, breathing the wind of the ocean. I see him drawing four-leaf clovers and hummingbirds to his side. I see him on top of a hill, his physical form perfectly echoing the graceful arc of a tree. Brio was grace embodied.

I am content with the mysteries that lie beyond human understanding. I do know that Brio is an energy, a spirit that I was graced to know in physical form. For me he was, is, and always will be the joy and awe expressed by the fourteenth-century Persian poet Hafiz.

These lines from “Saints Bowing in the Mountains”² always bring Brio close.

Do you know how beautiful you are?

I think not, my dear.

For as you talk of God,

I see great parades with wildly colorful bands

Streaming from your mind and heart,

Carrying wonderful and secret messages to every corner of this world.

HAFIZ