The Ascension of Billie Jean

“The acceptance of loss and allowing yourself to mourn the past (even if only for a minute
or two) can move you past the past and into the future.  As unknown as it can be, it at least
promises that what is in front of you can be different from what is behind you.” ~ Lynda Hill

Johnny and Jan Mirehiel

.Ms. Billie Jean Keene

On Monday, July 21st, my beloved 86 year-old Mother-In-Law, Billie Jean Morris-Shotwell, made the transition to the next phase of her journey to Ascension.   Born Billie Jean Keene in rural Southern Mississippi, “BJ,” as she became known to family and friends alike, was a child of the Depression whose personal experience of those dark days shaped her life-long focus on the needs of others.

An elegant woman with great verve, energy and drive, she eventually settled into a life of service to others.   She came to personify the gracious Southern Lady, who would dedicate her adult life to that service, always dressed in lovely feminine attire.  Nevertheless, she led a full and adventurous life which, at one point in 1972, saw her smuggling Bibles into Russia and, a scant few years later, living, working and driving in the treacherous streets of Tehran in the months just prior to the Iranian Revolution and overthrow of the Shah.

She spent her final years in the low-desert city of Rancho Mirage in Southern California, fairly close at hand to us.  On this past July 4th she took a fall and hit her head, ending up in Eisenhower Medical Center, a World Class local hospital.  She never really recovered from that experience.  Ultimately we moved her onto a hospital bed in our living room for her final week in that wafer thin body, where we kept watch as she slowly but inexorably shuffled off this mortal coil.

Although the body of the Soul that we knew as “Mother” is no longer animated, Jan and I, and I suspect most of you reading this, are dead solid certain that she has only just shifted her focus to another plane of existence.   We prefer to see that new experience as part and parcel of her Ascension.

As Le’Velle Zimmerman pointed out in his article, All Is last week, personal Ascension is a process.   It is the same Ascensional path of continual growth, change and evolution that is applicable to the whole of the Multiverse.  In the lexicon of the Spiritually inclined, that path of continual growth, change and evolution is played out over the course of our reincarnational lives, with the specific purpose of illuminating the path to knowing the whole of Who We really are.  Each piece, each rôle, each life, whether we recognize it or not, is but one element of the Ascended Self.  And this is true for every being existing throughout space and time.   Every individual life is a valuable learning experience.

And so it was for Mom, whose passing has been marked by no less than three “messages” which we received through the agency of a few of our friends.

Bill and Robbie Spransy, also contributors to this Harmonic Concordance Blog, were very close to her, often speaking of their deeply felt connection to her as their “Surrogate Mother.”  The evening before she passed, while out on one of their regular nightly rambles, they both saw a bright, “cinder of light” drop straight down from sky to earth, in the direction of our home where she lay dying.  Further, as part of their chosen service to others, Bill and Robbie offer what they call a “Post Death Flower Essence Process” in which they communicate with departed souls to determine how many drops of Flower Essences* the soul needs to balance the shock of transition.  In BJ’s case, she needed only a scant 5 drops of one specific essence, an unusually small amount in comparison to the amount and quality of what they had administered to other “passed Souls.”  They attributed this to the “State of Light” in which they saw Billie now dwelling.

A second message comes from another friend of ours, the always tuned in Bill Pratt.  Bill P. tells us that, on her way out, Mom “stopped by” to give him the message for us that we had handled her final days perfectly.  Additionally, he was to tell us that we were to write this piece while these events are still fresh in our minds.

And then there was another dear friend, Carol B., who was given the message that Jan was to read through the stack of “love letters” that Billie had accumulated over the years.   Mom, who was loved by many, buried a son and three husbands and, though she was 76 when the last of theses were interred, she still continued having “fellas” courting her to the end.  She seems to be letting us know that she was in the good and affable company of many of the men that had been in her life this time.

Our Ascending Mother

We have been given to understand that the circumstances of our multiple lives have largely been chosen for and by us so that a multitude of characteristics, attributes and behaviors which comprise that which we might call the “Whole Person” might eventually be revealed to and mastered by us.

Mother’s life, as noted above, was one very much devoted to the service of others.  But the choice of a life of service is certainly not exclusive of many others who have chosen to follow it.  Nor is it even necessary that one knows that such “service” is a significant element of an Ascensional Life, or even that there is such a thing as Ascension, a position that Mother might surely have been in, even if this is the standard by which we, Jan and I, live.  Taken in this context, we certainly are of the opinion that Mother was on the same track to Ascension as the rest of us.  She has only departed from this station a brief moment before the rest of us.

One attribute that she and Jan shared is that they both had a passion for throwing parties.  Undoubtedly this is one of the reasons that we will have no fewer than three Memorial Services; one out here in Rancho Mirage, one in the Fort Walton Beach, Florida community that she was so fond of and one at the family plot in Mississippi.

In honor of BJ’s life, they will all be joyous occasions.

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* Please see Star Riparetti’s excellent piece on Vibrational Essences for more details on flower and gemstone essences.