Ayrie’s a chewah

Posted by in letters to the boys

I haven’t written in my blog for a while.  Things are happening so quickly that I feel like I am moving through the day, going through the motions, and moving forward to the best of my ability.  But really?  Part of me is somewhere else.  There is a part of me searching the universe, looking for the thin spots.  There is something open to me right now, another world, and I am the clumsiest, most blunt tool trying to get into a beautiful and delicate portal.

What am I talking about… This is all so new to me that I don’t even have words.  And to be very honest, if I was listening to someone else tell this story I wouldn’t even believe them.  It goes against everything that I believed before.  But enough with the disclaimers.

Ayrie has been talking to me, to Shiya and to other loved ones in our life.  In every vision that people tell me about he is bathed in light, he is joyous, and he’s telling us that he is still here.  It’s loud and clear and in typical Ayrie fashion he is being persistent and creative in helping us to understand what he is saying.

He’s talking to Shiya.  No doubt about it.  The other night Shiya was upset.  He wanted emily.  He wanted Ian.  Ian’s in California so we called him on the phone.  That wasn’t satisfying either and he wanted Emily and I to walk him through the cold dark house to see the large tree fallen in our yard, tangled up with power lines.  Shiya looked at the tree and was obviously distraught so I at him down in the counter so we were eye level and tried to talk to him to understand why he was so upset.

And then he looked at me and Emily and said, “Who died? ”

“Ayrie died, sweetie,” I said.

“Who miss?” he asked, which is his two year old way of asking, “Who do we miss?”

Emily and I both hugged him and solemnly told him that we missed Ayrie.

And then Shiya started to say, “Ayrie’s a chewah.  Ayrie’s a chewah.”  At first I thought it was nonsense.  But it was so repetitive and without variation so I repeated it back to him as a question.

“Ayrie’s a chewah?”

“Yes,” said Shiya.  And then he reached out to me, his whole demeanor changed.  I took him into my arms and he said, “I’m happy now.  I want to go to bed to cuddle.”

I was blown away.  What had just happened?  So while we were in bed I asked him again, “Ayrie is a chewah?”  Yes, he said again, although with less interest and intensity and more of a matter-of-fact tone.  So I pulled out my ipad and typed in chewah.  What came up was the “Chewah Cherokee Nation.”  Apparently it’s a Cherokee tribe that isn’t recognized as an official Cherokee nation but that left the south on the trail of tears and traveled up through New York and into Canada.  One website I read said that chewah means mixed and that while in New York the Cherokees mixed with the Mohawk people that were there.

My heart was racing.  I knew that Shawn’s mom had Native American ancestry but I wasn’t sure what kind… I thought Cherokee… So even though it was almost 11pm ion Pittsburgh I picked up the phone and called Lillie Mae  Jones, Shawn’s mom.  She confirmed that yes indeed, the boys were part Cherokee.  Mrs. Jones mother’s mother was Cherokee.  When I told her about the Chewah she said that she did have relatives that moved up to New York and that she was still in touch with one of them today.  I had chills.  I asked question after question but there were few answers.

It doesn’t feel like a coincidence.  I feel like there is something that I am supposed to learn.   Is it about Cherokee history?  About Cherokee spiritual beliefs?  About who Ayrie was in his past life?  I’m not sure.  But  I am listening and I am going to read and research and try to follow my intuition to the message that he is trying to share with me.

It’s crazy how intense things are at night.  Last night I was so filled with a sense of peace, and so sad at the same time, that I literally couldn’t stand the feelings in my own body and needed to have an abrupt mental and energy shift.  So I called a friend. Honestly, the person I wanted to talk to the most was Shawn, Ayrie’s father.  But his phone is out of service so I couldn’t.  And it’s probably better that I didn’t.  I don’t think I would have found the comfort and connection that I was craving.