15 hrs ago·edited 11 hrs agoLiked by Margaret Anna Alice
This was fantastically beautiful. All of us who have loved so very deeply and lost can relate to each and every story and expression of emotion you shared here. I listen you your story and am filled with thoughts of situations, events, and circumstances that created the exact emotions you describe. What I feel inside is the same but through different means. Perhaps the human experience can be similar and somehow connected to something bigger. It's so amazing to me so slip back in time and relive those emotions through you. They feel like old friends, strange old friends that awaken something inside that feels familiar. There's some strange comfort in thinking about it in retrospect. It's odd, I can't describe it in any way that can make sense. All I can say is someday you'll understand. There's a little something inside me you've jostled. Thank you. This past week I went down a memory hole as well. The week before I was away for a few days and spent the entire time with a ghost. It was somewhere we had been in the past and it felt ok. It didn't hurt. It felt good to remember and reflect. Thank you for writing this. Having said that, I would be remiss not to say.............I am so sorry you had to write this. I hope you continue to find a sense of peace. Be Well Margaret Anna Alice.
You have a beautiful writing style. I always tear up when reading and thinking about your loss. Michael sounds like an incredible person and truly the love of your life. Rejoice in your memories and treasure the gift of love you two shared. Not many have that deep lasting love to share. May the memories bring comfort and the pain diminished ever so slowly.
Thank you for these beautiful, floating, gentle words. Thank you for taking us by the hand and guiding us through the extreme grief that only the truest of love knows. It hurts, my friend, to know your other half is missing. It hurts to know that you are alone in the chores, tasks and everyday "idiosyncrasies" that once were -in fact- shared and cherished moments in time for you and Michael. Thankfully he taught you to take these moments in as they took place, but it is clear to me that you also "recorded" them much like an ambidextrous artists draws with both hands at once.
Thank you for teaching us how to move forward when we know that you don't really feel like getting out of bed. Your example of courage is contagious for such an injured young man.
Cody and I love the both of you with every inch of our hearts. We could not be more grateful for you and Michael who loved Cody and cared for him when you did not have to. For Cody, just like Gary is "the dad he did not have to be," Michael was the uncle he did not have to be. His spirit and his love remains in our hearts and takes up a space filled with music and nature and the memories of all the little creatures we have loved. Michael lives there and fills us with peace and song.
Thank you for sharing your poignant thoughts and Michael's beautiful music today.
With the greatest of love, Heather, Gary, Jacob and Cody
You, Cody, Gary, and Jacob are beyond friends—you are family, and your selfless support of me during your own tragic challenges is further testament to your heroism and love. I am so grateful for your sisterhood and deeply touched to be aunt to courageous Cody.
Oh, Scott, I am so dearly sorry to hear about your diagnosis, but PLEASE don’t give up. My precious friend Tonika just beat stage 3 cancer within a year by defying her oncologist’s orders and pursuing her own alternative healing path:
Yes, hundreds, all unreleased because he wanted to perfect the mixing and mastering first, which is what he was obsessively studying in the months preceding his death.
I used his music to score all of my videos, as I shared in this piece, which also includes “The Tension of Purpose”:
Mahalo MAA from the Hawaiian Islands. I pray Our Heavenly Father wrap his Powerful and Mighty Arms around You to Maintain a Hedge of Protection to keep you Protected & Safe. May the Healing Blood of His Son Jesus Christ through His very Own Nail Scared Hands be placed upon you for Continued Assurance that Michael although Physically absent is now Constantly and Spirituality with You. He now has no physical limitations.
Like a Massive Wound that feels like it may never Heal, have Faith that God walks near you and is beside You and He still Knows and Orchestrates the time and speed of our Healing. Even while the Healing is taking place there will always be a scare for our remberance.
I too understand because I lost my 22 year old daughter in a hiking accident in Hawaii back in 2016 when she was home for Christmas break while earning her Masters in Criminal Justice in Seattle.
The Pain is Real the Scar is Real as I finish this text through the blurred vision of excess liquid in my eyes. I understand the "Greater the Pain" is only because of the "Greatness of the Love". So I now feel that our Healing actually will come from sharing of the Love we Had and Knew but have Lost. So now we share with others who are in similar situations of Loss...
I have now been Blessed with Four adopted daughters "Hānai". Two whose fathers passed away early in life, one whose parents divorced and the Father kept her Brother and Her Mother kept the three girls and the fourth Hānai daughter lost her Mother to a senseless random shooting when she was just 16 years of age, and is also the same age as my daughter and born only 15 days apart. Only our Heavenly Father can coordinate all of that.
God has helped me with my Healing of losing a daughter by helping to guide and walk with me through this lifes valley and now I'll try to share Love and Blessings with others and also to my Four adopted daughters. It will never be a replacement but it has Helped me in my Healing by sharing and giving of my life, time, energy and resources. Heaven doesn't take Cash, Checks, Charge or Crypto and my Daughter like Michael have unlimited credit. Amen...
Sending You Aloha, Love & Hugs MMA from the Islands, kyle
Sorry for rambling
Yesterday was a gift, from GOD...🤍
Today is an opportunity, allowed by GOD...🤍
Tomorrow never promised, except by the hands of GOD...🤍
I knew about the tragic loss of your daughter, Kyle, but I did not know the uplifting story of your healing adoptions, much less that one was born just fifteen days apart from your daughter. Thank you for modeling how to transform tragic loss into generous, healing love 💗
13 hrs ago·edited 13 hrs agoLiked by Margaret Anna Alice
There is a pool of emotional pain within some of us, those of us who love deeply, that is seemingly bottomless...and for which there is no healing or resolution, as if we cried not only for one lifetime, but for an infinity of lifetimes and for ancient, accumulated, unresolved grief.
Most people do not want to go there, and shut the door close, in order to function and not lose their mind. Many do not open their heart completely to love, for fear of loss.
But for those whose heart has opened, the pain is very real, and always there...suppression does not equate elimination.
I wish I had an answer for it, but no meaningful answers or insights ever come, apart from the usual banalities, such as the one that states that lost ones are in a better place.
Although there is no death, only a transition into another dimension, what was will never be again, and the loss is always permanent.
Is Michael's composition Forgotten Keys meant to be played by a string ensemble of live musicians? I think that might add extra dimension to the piece.
That would be the dream I hope to one day fulfill for this and Michael’s other instrumental compositions. Since composing “Forgotten Keys,” he had gotten more nuanced orchestral libraries and mixing and mastering plugins, and his intention was to replace the original instruments and hand-tweak each one to achieve as close a replica to human performances as possible.
Your writing and Michael's music flow together so naturally, Margaret Anna. Thank you for elucidating your unique yet universal experience of loss. It is clear that his presence is with you still, in so many ways.
I’ve been thinking about you, wondering how you are as I get our home closed up for winter. And then you showed up in my inbox. It’s all so hard and I’m so sorry. I will continue keeping you in my thoughts.
Thank you Margaret, they were many years ago but they are always with you. Shows to me that love never dies and they never die, Love is a force of nature. I take comfort in the memories that I have.
Your writing, Margaret, has become even more exquisite. I hope that someday you collect these into a book, although they'll miss the movie clips I've been enjoying. Thanks you for sharing your and Michael's little jokes-- pseudo-sodey, sleeper agent, Ain't No Sunshine. That lets me picture Michael singing it, such a belt-it-out song for a surely brief parting. You hoarded memories when it mattered, and now you seem fully present with your grief. You and your soggy eye pillow. You're a deep well, my friend. Many will be drawing on your heartfelt experience in the future. And I'm gobsmacked--Godsmacked as Mary's spellcheck cast it--by the quality of your commenters, who are so much a part of your piece that it's hard to tell where you end and they begin. Wishing you a peaceful heart and waves that don't knock you over.
Thank you for your wholly present, heartfull comment, my dear sister Apocaloptimist, Tereza 💓 Your words are always infused with so much wit, wisdom, and wonder.
I love “Godsmacked” and will certainly remember that! And yes, I feel exceptionally blessed to have such brilliant, funny, compassionate, and loving commenters in my karass:
I do plan to collect my Substack writings into books, but you hit on one of the pivotal challenges in that they will be lacking both the multimedia embeds and the hyperlinks (I could include the latter as footnotes, but nearly every word would be footnoted for some of my pieces! It’s likely simplest just to point to the original Substack pieces for the references, but that is risky in case something happens to Substack, and it would be nice to preserve the references in a non-electronic format just in case … perhaps as endnotes so it doesn’t clutter up the text).
Dear Margaret Anna Alice. Your text is extremely moving and so very beautiful. I was spellbound when I read it, couldn´t stop reading, it was like my emotions followed your words or else it was the opposite, I certainly resonated with them. Loss is so hard to overcome yet it does leave you with treasures too, the treasures of the past never go away. A rose that has withered is still a rose.
I noticed anger is absent in your text, that was different for me especially when I lost a friend due to the damned injections. In your text I find a far softer tone, the tone of someone who despite her loss refuses to act in a victim like manner. You are a strong person, Margaret Anna Alice. Even in your deep sorrow you can and do speak to other hearts and you speak about strength. That IS strength. God bless you for this text and God bless your soul. Always.
This was fantastically beautiful. All of us who have loved so very deeply and lost can relate to each and every story and expression of emotion you shared here. I listen you your story and am filled with thoughts of situations, events, and circumstances that created the exact emotions you describe. What I feel inside is the same but through different means. Perhaps the human experience can be similar and somehow connected to something bigger. It's so amazing to me so slip back in time and relive those emotions through you. They feel like old friends, strange old friends that awaken something inside that feels familiar. There's some strange comfort in thinking about it in retrospect. It's odd, I can't describe it in any way that can make sense. All I can say is someday you'll understand. There's a little something inside me you've jostled. Thank you. This past week I went down a memory hole as well. The week before I was away for a few days and spent the entire time with a ghost. It was somewhere we had been in the past and it felt ok. It didn't hurt. It felt good to remember and reflect. Thank you for writing this. Having said that, I would be remiss not to say.............I am so sorry you had to write this. I hope you continue to find a sense of peace. Be Well Margaret Anna Alice.
What you described makes perfect—and poetic and poignant—sense to me, Steve. Thank you for the beautiful balm of your compassionate observations 🦋
You're welcome!! I hope you get a warm kitty on your lap and sunshine in your face today!!
You have a beautiful writing style. I always tear up when reading and thinking about your loss. Michael sounds like an incredible person and truly the love of your life. Rejoice in your memories and treasure the gift of love you two shared. Not many have that deep lasting love to share. May the memories bring comfort and the pain diminished ever so slowly.
Thank you for your touching words and tender heart, dear Ruth 💓
Dearest MAA,
Thank you for these beautiful, floating, gentle words. Thank you for taking us by the hand and guiding us through the extreme grief that only the truest of love knows. It hurts, my friend, to know your other half is missing. It hurts to know that you are alone in the chores, tasks and everyday "idiosyncrasies" that once were -in fact- shared and cherished moments in time for you and Michael. Thankfully he taught you to take these moments in as they took place, but it is clear to me that you also "recorded" them much like an ambidextrous artists draws with both hands at once.
Thank you for teaching us how to move forward when we know that you don't really feel like getting out of bed. Your example of courage is contagious for such an injured young man.
Cody and I love the both of you with every inch of our hearts. We could not be more grateful for you and Michael who loved Cody and cared for him when you did not have to. For Cody, just like Gary is "the dad he did not have to be," Michael was the uncle he did not have to be. His spirit and his love remains in our hearts and takes up a space filled with music and nature and the memories of all the little creatures we have loved. Michael lives there and fills us with peace and song.
Thank you for sharing your poignant thoughts and Michael's beautiful music today.
With the greatest of love, Heather, Gary, Jacob and Cody
Dearest Heather,
You, Cody, Gary, and Jacob are beyond friends—you are family, and your selfless support of me during your own tragic challenges is further testament to your heroism and love. I am so grateful for your sisterhood and deeply touched to be aunt to courageous Cody.
Sending you all the greatest love back 🙏💞🤗
As someone at stage 4 cancer, I worry about the lady I'm likely to leave behind.
May god bless your closest friends that they can give you the support you need.
💗💗💗
Oh, Scott, I am so dearly sorry to hear about your diagnosis, but PLEASE don’t give up. My precious friend Tonika just beat stage 3 cancer within a year by defying her oncologist’s orders and pursuing her own alternative healing path:
• https://visceraladventure.substack.com/p/i-cancer-can-can-denouement
Please look into Coley’s toxins (https://themariachiyears.substack.com/p/coleys-toxins-how-the-most-effective), fasting, low-carb diet, and Gerson therapy for starters. I’m sure Tonika would be happy to share resources if you reach out to her in the comments or via messages. See also these links:
• https://makismd.substack.com/p/breaking-news-first-in-the-world
• https://covid19criticalcare.com/reviews-and-monographs/cancer-care/
• https://unbekoming.substack.com/p/cancer-and-the-new-biology-of-water
• https://markstrainofthought.substack.com/p/cancer-protocol-from-rolandttg
• https://unbekoming.substack.com/p/cancer-care
Thanks for sharing the music! I always wondered who wrote it.
Bless you…
Thank you for appreciating it, Jenny 🤗
Did he write any more songs?
Yes, hundreds, all unreleased because he wanted to perfect the mixing and mastering first, which is what he was obsessively studying in the months preceding his death.
I used his music to score all of my videos, as I shared in this piece, which also includes “The Tension of Purpose”:
• https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/ive-lost-half-of-me-pitched-past
The eulogy post features the piece I played at his service, “Mosquito’s Last Meal”:
• https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/eulogy-for-the-patron-saint-of-insects
Mahalo MAA from the Hawaiian Islands. I pray Our Heavenly Father wrap his Powerful and Mighty Arms around You to Maintain a Hedge of Protection to keep you Protected & Safe. May the Healing Blood of His Son Jesus Christ through His very Own Nail Scared Hands be placed upon you for Continued Assurance that Michael although Physically absent is now Constantly and Spirituality with You. He now has no physical limitations.
Like a Massive Wound that feels like it may never Heal, have Faith that God walks near you and is beside You and He still Knows and Orchestrates the time and speed of our Healing. Even while the Healing is taking place there will always be a scare for our remberance.
I too understand because I lost my 22 year old daughter in a hiking accident in Hawaii back in 2016 when she was home for Christmas break while earning her Masters in Criminal Justice in Seattle.
The Pain is Real the Scar is Real as I finish this text through the blurred vision of excess liquid in my eyes. I understand the "Greater the Pain" is only because of the "Greatness of the Love". So I now feel that our Healing actually will come from sharing of the Love we Had and Knew but have Lost. So now we share with others who are in similar situations of Loss...
I have now been Blessed with Four adopted daughters "Hānai". Two whose fathers passed away early in life, one whose parents divorced and the Father kept her Brother and Her Mother kept the three girls and the fourth Hānai daughter lost her Mother to a senseless random shooting when she was just 16 years of age, and is also the same age as my daughter and born only 15 days apart. Only our Heavenly Father can coordinate all of that.
God has helped me with my Healing of losing a daughter by helping to guide and walk with me through this lifes valley and now I'll try to share Love and Blessings with others and also to my Four adopted daughters. It will never be a replacement but it has Helped me in my Healing by sharing and giving of my life, time, energy and resources. Heaven doesn't take Cash, Checks, Charge or Crypto and my Daughter like Michael have unlimited credit. Amen...
Sending You Aloha, Love & Hugs MMA from the Islands, kyle
Sorry for rambling
Yesterday was a gift, from GOD...🤍
Today is an opportunity, allowed by GOD...🤍
Tomorrow never promised, except by the hands of GOD...🤍
Live Life, Love Others, & Leave no regrets... 💞⚘️
I knew about the tragic loss of your daughter, Kyle, but I did not know the uplifting story of your healing adoptions, much less that one was born just fifteen days apart from your daughter. Thank you for modeling how to transform tragic loss into generous, healing love 💗
There is a pool of emotional pain within some of us, those of us who love deeply, that is seemingly bottomless...and for which there is no healing or resolution, as if we cried not only for one lifetime, but for an infinity of lifetimes and for ancient, accumulated, unresolved grief.
Most people do not want to go there, and shut the door close, in order to function and not lose their mind. Many do not open their heart completely to love, for fear of loss.
But for those whose heart has opened, the pain is very real, and always there...suppression does not equate elimination.
I wish I had an answer for it, but no meaningful answers or insights ever come, apart from the usual banalities, such as the one that states that lost ones are in a better place.
Although there is no death, only a transition into another dimension, what was will never be again, and the loss is always permanent.
Your comments are always bursting with wisdom, empathy, and lyrical beauty, Raphael. Thank you for being here and sharing your spiritual insights.
Thank you Margaret...and thank you for your own wisdom, sensitivity, eloquence and poetic soul.
Is Michael's composition Forgotten Keys meant to be played by a string ensemble of live musicians? I think that might add extra dimension to the piece.
That would be the dream I hope to one day fulfill for this and Michael’s other instrumental compositions. Since composing “Forgotten Keys,” he had gotten more nuanced orchestral libraries and mixing and mastering plugins, and his intention was to replace the original instruments and hand-tweak each one to achieve as close a replica to human performances as possible.
Your writing and Michael's music flow together so naturally, Margaret Anna. Thank you for elucidating your unique yet universal experience of loss. It is clear that his presence is with you still, in so many ways.
Thank you so much for your own cherished presence and support throughout this journey, precious Zen 💕
So beautiful…and how it honors the memory of the man you loved so well. Thank you for sharing your honest, heart-felt words.
Your perceptive comment touched my heart, Regina. Thank you for the gift of your words 💜
Thank you for sharing your writing, your heart and Michael with us.... we are blessed and so shall you be! ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Thank you for your kindness, sweet StellaMaris ❤️❤️❤️
You are welcome.... the best is yet to come.....believe.... 😘
I’ve been thinking about you, wondering how you are as I get our home closed up for winter. And then you showed up in my inbox. It’s all so hard and I’m so sorry. I will continue keeping you in my thoughts.
You are so gracious to continue holding me in your thoughts, Mary Ann 🙏💌
This was so beautiful MAA! God bless you and comfort you as you grieve this tremendous loss! 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
Loved this Margaret, Just done a song about my loses they still leave a big hole in my being. https://dallast59.substack.com/p/see-you-on-the-other-side
That was beautiful, dallas 😭 I’m so sorry about all your losses 💔
Thank you Margaret, they were many years ago but they are always with you. Shows to me that love never dies and they never die, Love is a force of nature. I take comfort in the memories that I have.
Your writing, Margaret, has become even more exquisite. I hope that someday you collect these into a book, although they'll miss the movie clips I've been enjoying. Thanks you for sharing your and Michael's little jokes-- pseudo-sodey, sleeper agent, Ain't No Sunshine. That lets me picture Michael singing it, such a belt-it-out song for a surely brief parting. You hoarded memories when it mattered, and now you seem fully present with your grief. You and your soggy eye pillow. You're a deep well, my friend. Many will be drawing on your heartfelt experience in the future. And I'm gobsmacked--Godsmacked as Mary's spellcheck cast it--by the quality of your commenters, who are so much a part of your piece that it's hard to tell where you end and they begin. Wishing you a peaceful heart and waves that don't knock you over.
Thank you for your wholly present, heartfull comment, my dear sister Apocaloptimist, Tereza 💓 Your words are always infused with so much wit, wisdom, and wonder.
I love “Godsmacked” and will certainly remember that! And yes, I feel exceptionally blessed to have such brilliant, funny, compassionate, and loving commenters in my karass:
• https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-my-karass
I do plan to collect my Substack writings into books, but you hit on one of the pivotal challenges in that they will be lacking both the multimedia embeds and the hyperlinks (I could include the latter as footnotes, but nearly every word would be footnoted for some of my pieces! It’s likely simplest just to point to the original Substack pieces for the references, but that is risky in case something happens to Substack, and it would be nice to preserve the references in a non-electronic format just in case … perhaps as endnotes so it doesn’t clutter up the text).
Dear Margaret Anna Alice. Your text is extremely moving and so very beautiful. I was spellbound when I read it, couldn´t stop reading, it was like my emotions followed your words or else it was the opposite, I certainly resonated with them. Loss is so hard to overcome yet it does leave you with treasures too, the treasures of the past never go away. A rose that has withered is still a rose.
I noticed anger is absent in your text, that was different for me especially when I lost a friend due to the damned injections. In your text I find a far softer tone, the tone of someone who despite her loss refuses to act in a victim like manner. You are a strong person, Margaret Anna Alice. Even in your deep sorrow you can and do speak to other hearts and you speak about strength. That IS strength. God bless you for this text and God bless your soul. Always.
Always.
Thank you, brave Alma, for your deeply moving and inspiring words. I am so sorry about your friend being democided 😭🥀🌹