Joy & I: A Love-Ever-After Easter Miracle
At noon on Good Friday 2007, my beloved wife, Joy, “graduated” as she liked to say. ln the years since she left her body, I’ve witnessed several miraculous “resurrections.” ~ I. J. Weinstock
The 1st Resurrection
Of all the names in the world — hers was Joy.
Of all the days in the year to die — Good Friday.
I have an Easter story to tell. Some will find it miraculous, others blasphemous. Most will find it hard to believe. I can’t blame them. As a Jew born to Holocaust survivors, I’d have a hard time believing it if it hadn’t happened to me.
On Easter Sunday, 2007, I was still in shock after the Good Friday death of my beloved, wife, Joy. So I wasn’t prepared for the strange voicemail I received from a woman we knew, who matter-of-factly stated that on that Easter morning, as she lay bed listening to the birds outside her bedroom window, she heard a voice say, “And on the third day she rose…”
On the previous Wednesday morning, Joy had woken up from her first night in the hospital bed hospice had brought into our bedroom and on which she would sleep for three nights. She woke up with a poem in her head and asked me for a paper and pen. I propped her up in bed and she proceeded to write. When she finished, she told me to read the poem at her memorial service which she called her “graduation party.”
Beyond my amazement that she was offering to be a “spirit guide” from the Afterlife, I was stunned by what she’d done. I’d recently read about a tradition among Zen masters of writing a “death poem” before dying.
I asked myself, Who is she?
When I met Joy, she had already lived a life filled with enough challenge and loss to have destroyed most people. But rather than crush her, all that pressure had forged a diamond-like jewel.
Here’s how Joy described herself in her memoir, Love Ever After:
I am an unconventional free spirit. As a professional astrologer, I often shock people with my radical ideas. Most of my friends see me as a cross between Doris Day and June Allyson, partly because I’m slender, blue-eyed, and blonde (with a little assistance), and partly because I’m usually happy and smile a lot. However, this innocent facade can be deceiving. On the inside, I’m as outrageous as Madonna and as radical as Shirley MacLaine. I’m fascinated with ideas that I call “progressive” and most people call “preposterous.”
Joy was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, but her family moved to Los Angeles when she was ten months old, where she made her stage debut as Baby Jesus while her mother played Mary. Joy’s mother was on a “spiritual quest” long before people knew what that meant. She had Joy baptized by Ernest Holmes, the founder of Religious Science and the author of The Science of Mind. Based on metaphysical principles, this “New Thought” as it was called at the time, brought together religion, philosophy, and science into the quintessential spirituality which became the basis for much of the human-potential/self-help movement of the past half-century.
I planned to be a singer like my mother, who graduated from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and had a beautiful soprano voice. However, that changed at around 15 when my love of clothes and writing inspired me to fantasize about a career as an editor for a fashion magazine.
Almost nothing turned out the way I expected. I dreamed about graduating from college, launching a brilliant career, marrying my Prince Charming at around 25, having three children and living in a two-story colonial house with a winding staircase and picket fence. The reality wasn’t even close.
Eventually I lived in 28 houses — none of them two-story, much less colonial with a picket fence. I married three times and lost all three husbands. I had four children and lost two, one at a year old and the other at 12. And my only brother drowned at the age of 24.
What helped to prepare me for all those tragedies was the spiritual foundation my mother gave me.
Rather than becoming embittered by these tragedies, Joy used those metaphysical principles she’d been learning from a very early age to find meaning in her profound loss and transform her unimaginable pain into yet another opportunity for growth. In contrast to most parents for whom the loss of a child typically scars them for life, when I encountered Joy decades after her children’s deaths, she was the happiest person I’d ever met. A true embodiment of her name.
By the eve of Good Friday, I hadn’t slept for several nights. I was so sleep deprived, I was afraid I wouldn’t hear Joy if she needed me. So I asked her son and daughter-in-law to sleep in our bedroom and take turns being on watch while I slept on the couch in the living room.
Despite taking two sleeping pills, I couldn’t sleep. Not lying in our bed, not having Joy sleeping next to me, allowed my mind to roam more freely than usual, beyond the immediate emergency of my death-watch.
Joy’s equanimity these past cancer-filled years, these recent terminal months, these past dying days, amazed me. She radiated courage, peace and love throughout it all. She never expressed fear or regret. There was some sadness at times, but on the whole she embraced her destiny.
Who is she?
Neither her aging body nor the mutilation of her mastectomy diminished her confidence. She kept her looks and sexiness well past what was normal. I used to kid her that she must have made a pact with the gods not to grow old, and had a painting hidden in a closet like Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray that showed her looking her real age. She’d just laugh and explain that the secret to her uncannily youthful appearance was happiness.
Who is this woman?
Besides having been a secretary to Groucho Marx and Jack LaLanne, Joy had devoted more than fifty years to being an astrologer, appearing on dozens of radio and TV shows. She’d counseled over 5,000 clients (some of them famous). Among her many accurate astrological forecasts, she’d predicted that her rock star daughter’s song, “Take My Breath Away,” from the movie Top Gun would win an Oscar six months before it was even nominated.
Who is she?
Joy knew of more than a dozen “past lives.” She even investigated one in Colonial Williamsburg where she confirmed that in one past life, she’d been Thomas Jefferson’s unrequited love whom he called “Dear Belinda.”
She once told me that she’d been initiated by a roomful of non-physical beings who had asked her if she was ready to fulfill her mission on earth to teach joy. This Council of Joy, as she referred to them, promised to help her awaken humans to their true spiritual nature.
Whoever Joy was, the echoes of Holy Week were unmistakable, and I felt certain her “passion” would climax during Easter weekend. Before falling into a drug-induced sleep, I scribbled these words on a piece of paper:
A goddess has walked among us!
Her purpose is not Salvation but Celebration!
Hers is not the Path of Sacrifice but the Path of Joy.
At dawn on Good Friday, I woke up in the living room disoriented. The first thing that caught my eye was a framed poster on the wall I’d made for Joy years earlier. In the style of a medieval manuscript, brightly colored illuminated letters read, ”Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God.”
I hurried into the bedroom. Joy wasn’t responding. So began our last Good Friday. It would be filled with extremes — grief and exaltation, the mundane and the miraculous.
Over the next several hours, interspersed with reminiscences that made us laugh and cry, we sang at least a dozen songs, some of which Joy had requested for her memorial service. One of Joy’s favorites was from the Monty Python movie, The Life of Brian. “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” was a hilarious production number sung by a chorus of crucified men in Jesus-era Jerusalem. Joy had always loved the song’s outrageous satire mixed with simple yet profound wisdom.
During our vigil, we received an extraordinary email from a friend who didn’t know about Joy’s critical condition.
“Dear Ones, during my meditation this morning, I encountered Joy in the White Marble Hallway of the BRIDGE between worlds. She was with her 7 Mentors and they were walking together and talking in a circle. Joy made a joke about the timing of this weekend and the idea of resurrection and Jesus’ wonderful demonstration of eternity.”
Incredible. We were seven…in a circle…around Joy. The grace of the moment was palpable.
At one point, I felt myself irresistibly drawn to Joy’s labored breathing. I embraced her, putting my right cheek against hers, so I could be as close as possible. My eyes closed and my breathing immediately synchronized with hers the way it had thousands of times before. The only thing in my world became the rise and fall of her breath. The pauses at the end of each inhalation and exhalation grew longer. I began to experience a blissful state, as if in deep meditation. No words, no thoughts, just riding my beloved’s breath. I could have stayed there forever. I floated on Joy’s last breaths like on the waves of a great ocean. The space between breaths grew longer and longer and longer…until space was all there was.
Someone said it was noon.
Less than forty-eight hours later, on Easter Sunday, I received that startling voicemail: “And on the third day she rose…”
The 2nd Resurrection
Joy may have risen into heaven, but I descended into the hell of grief. To understand the depths of my grief, you have to know that Joy and I were a “match-made-in-heaven.” Literally.
In her memoir, LOVE EVER AFTER: How My Husband Became My Spirit Guide, Joy wrote about her extraordinary conversations with her previous husband, Bob, after he died.
Besides giving her a tour of the Afterlife, he gave her a 12-Step program to find new love. Joy used it for six weeks and found me.
We felt like a “match-made-in-heaven.” I was so fulflled by our love that for the first time in my life I thought, I can die happy.
We were so grateful to have found each other, we wanted to help others find the love of their dreams. So we taught Bob’s program as day-long workshops. 12 Steps to Finding Your Soulmate inspired several love stories that continue to this day
My Resurrection
After the exaltation of Joy’s Good Friday “graduation” came the devastation. Every day I discovered new ways I missed Joy. I soon felt such despair that I didn’t want to get out of bed. Why go on living?
In the depths of my grief, I called out to Joy for help. After all, she’d offered to be a spirit guide. If anybody needed one now, it was me. And then a remarkable thing happened — Joy’s spirit began to communicate with me. Through words, visions and dreams, she led me on an incredible journey to heal my grief.
And throughout it all, I wondered if I was possibly losing my mind. Perhaps, in my grief-stricken state, I’d created a fantasy to console myself.
Despite receiving repeated confirmations of the reality of Joy’s continuing presence in my life, I continued to doubt. And then the most incredible thing happened.
Like the final scene in the movie Ghost — when Patrick Swayze uses Whoopi Goldberg’s body to kiss Demi Moore — Joy found someone, a willing medium, through whom she literally loved me back to life.
By the following Easter — one year after losing Joy — I had returned from exile on Planet Grief. Through the miracle of Joy’s love, I’d been resurrected.
My experience was so out-of-this-world—especially those sacred, sexual, supernatural encounters I call the Rites of Joy—that I hesitated sharing it. I was afraid I’d be ridiculed and thought completely out of my mind. But Joy kept pushing me to publish my memoir because our love story, she kept saying, wasn’t solely for us alone. No matter how unbelievable it might be, I had to “welcome the controversy” and testify that death is an illusion, that love never dies, and that our souls continue beyond our earthly demise.
In 2011, I published JOYride: How My Late Wife Loved Me Back To Life. Ultimately, Joy was right and my fears were unfounded. The memoir won an eLit Award — silver medal for Best Inspirational/Spiritual Digital Book of 2011.
Our “Love Story” Continues —
On December 31st 2011, while celebrating New Year’s Eve at a drum circle, I heard Joy ask me a question that changed my life — “What do you love?”
As if in reply, with each drumbeat I silently answered:
— I love ceremony and celebration.
— I love being among kindred spirits.
— I love banging a drum!
By the end of the drum circle, I’d made a New Year’s resolution to “beat the drum for love” all year. On January 1st, I began to declare a few new loves every day. By February, I’d developed a habit and felt strange not declaring a new love every day.
— I love wearing a red clown nose to make children happy.
— I love the word “and” because it’s the most hopeful word in the English language.
— I love LOSING myself in the dance & FINDING myself in the stillness of meditation.
I collected loves like beautiful shells on a beach. And the more loves I found, the more I saw. The more I saw, the better I felt. Something was happening. So I did some research, hoping to understand what I was experiencing.
I kept my New Year’s resolution (for the first time ever!) and declared more than a 1001 loves that year. I also discovered many reasons — both scientific & spiritual — why asking & answering Joy’s question made me feel so good. In January 2017, I published a memoir called, The LoveSpell Experiment: My Year Exploring Love & Discovering a Secret To Happiness.
It’s been more than a decade and I’m still beating the drum for love and casting a daily “LoveSpell.” I don’t see myself stopping. Why would I when it feels so good and is so good for me!
The product (my particular “loves”) isn’t as important as the process of continually asking Joy’s question — What do I love about this? What can I love about that? The answers help me occupy my heart.
Joy’s question gave me a key to open the treasure chest of my life.
The LoveSpell Challenge
To see if this simple daily practice — answering the question “What do I love?” — would be as beneficial for others as it had been for me, I created in the Spring of 2017 I created the LoveSpell Challenge Facebook group. After five years of doing it alone, I invited people to join me.
“Declare something you love every day to become happier & healthier. Answer the question WHAT DO I LOVE? for a year and it will change your life.”
Today people from all over the world are taking the LoveSpell Challenge. LoveSpellers (that’s how the nearly 1000 group members refer to themselves) claim that this simple daily practice is having an overwhelmingly positive impact on their lives. Incredibly, they suggest that a LoveSpell a day is not only a Vitamin L but also makes the blues go away!
“I’ve been taking the Challenge for several months and it’s made a huge difference in my life!”
“I can’t imagine where I would be without my LoveSpelling every day. I may well have succumbed to my depression. The practice has been a treasure, a gift and a possible life saver.”
“It’s been life-changing!”
“I have had some rough days, but after doing LoveSpell for a few months what has transpired has been wondrous because, as I walk through my day, I automatically look for things to love and it’s now a habit. It just flows through me.”
“It makes me grateful, it lifts my spirits, it makes me happy, and it continues to change me as a person. It changes my world.”
“I LOVE yesterdays experience, as I stood 20 minutes in the line up at the post office to mail Christmas parcels. I ‘decided’ to LOVE it. I loved looking at each individual ornament on display, I loved admiring the various hair styles and colors, I loved the patience of the 10 year old boy with his father and how loving the father was to him, I loved how the post office was trying to expedite things, I loved that I had this ‘practice’ to enjoy…how love truly changes the world.”
“Why do I LoveSpell? It is for me finding that daily dose of happiness. What we (in India) call ANANDA. The eternal blissful happiness.”
“I LOVE how every day starts with discovering something I love…I LOVE how the list seems endless some days…I LOVE how, when I declare something I love, the memory seems to stay with me longer throughout the day…I LOVE how declaring something shines a light on it and brings it to my awareness…I LOVE how there are so many things I love that I don’t really think about consciously…sooooo many things…I LOVE that…I LOVE this practice…I LOVE how it has changed my perspective on life.”
A Love-❤-lution?
I have not left you,
I did not die.
I will speak to you in the sacred silences
Of your days and nights.
The promise of Joy’s poem (written two days before her Good Friday “graduation”), offering to be a “spirit guide,” has been fulfilled by these remarkable resurrections.
I can’t wait to see what the next resurrection might be?
Beating the drum for love every day feels like a chant, an incantation, even a prayer… What greater praise can we give the Creator than to discover all the things we love? What more fitting act of worship than to love more and more of our life? Perhaps our ultimate goal during our brief time on this blue jewel of a planet is to love everything in our lives. Maybe that’s the reason why we’re here.
— The LoveSpell Experiment
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I. J. Weinstock is the author of many books, most recently THE SECRET SEX LIFE OF ANGELS series — an epic quest exploring the mystery that we call “sex.” His recent nonfiction book, OUR SECRET SEX LIFE: The Key to Humanity’s Destiny, reveals the secrets we all carry between our legs and the hidden connection between sex, society, and survival.
dreamasterbooks@gmail.com