A Bitter Sweet Symphony

In Loving Memory of Julie Cathryn Stine Bruen, 1983-2024

Trigger Warning: This post contains topics including drug addiction, drug overdose, and death. Take care of yourself, and skip this one if these topics aren’t right for you.

Greetings and blessed be!

As I mentioned in my previous letter, I’m a part of the first cohort of the Center for Action and Contemplation’s reboot of The Living School. This week, as part of our Deep Reading, we were gifted with a piece by Mike Petrow, the director of CAC's Department of Formation Strategy, Faculty Relations, and Theological and Philosophical Foundation (is that a title or what?). Mike’s piece is entitled Mything the Point of “My Story.” In it, Mike reflects on the importance of personal stories and how they shape our understanding of ourselves, others, and the Divine. He discusses the complexity of myths, the plurality of selves, and the circular nature of storytelling. Ultimately, he provides us with the fundamental wisdom that embracing contradictions and multiple perspectives enriches our lives and deepens our understanding.

If that brief summary was your only takeaway from Mike’s piece, that would have been well worth the price of admission. But I was given a greater gift. Permission to tell a story that, in some ways, has been evolving for the last forty years, but in others, has only just begun. A story that has dominated my heart for days. And while Mike didn’t know he was extending that permission with these words, the Divine did¹:

Myths are not mortal: Eleven years after my brother died, he came to visit me. On the 7th day of an 8-day silent Zen retreat, in which there was no speaking, no reading, no journaling, and no eye contact—even with yourself, requiring all mirrors to be covered—my brother showed up to look me in my mind’s eye. We spent the day together, walking and talking and working out quite a bit that was unreconciled between us. Was this a projection? A psychological fiction? A hallucination? An elucidation, or a visitation? Yes, I think it was all of the above. Myths move beyond the boundaries of space and time, connecting us beyond distance, discord, or even death.

And now, we can begin my story.

My sister, Julie, died on Sunday, two weeks after her second drug overdose in as many years. Most of her nearly 41 years on this planet (her birthday is March 29) were tumultuous. She has four children. Her oldest, Gabriel, is a remarkable 19-year-old man who's now studying Computer Science at Union University. She has three younger boys, two of whom (Jace, 10, and Kylar, 9) live with their father's parents, and her youngest (Noah, 3) has lived with my folks since birth. I have mostly watched my sister’s battle with opioids and other drugs from afar, as I've had plenty of my own mental health issues to sort out, and her frequent episodes of paranoia were so triggering to me that I wouldn't allow her to have my phone number. Many times over the past weeks, I’ve questioned that decision, but it’s one that can’t be reversed now.

Julie Cathryn Stine Bruen - 1983-2024 - Rest in Power

I was blessed with one last opportunity to spend time with her in a Mt. Pleasant, Tennessee hospital on February 4th, 2024. She was in good spirits, but she was also clearly not herself. I've reflected on both that day and the joyful young woman I knew her to be before two men who at one time claimed to love her dragged her down with them to some of the darkest places imaginable.

During this visit, I also had the pleasure of meeting Dedra.

Dedra, among many of her responsibilities, runs the recovery community where my sister was living at the time. I did not realize that day just how meaningful her presence was in my sister’s life. Perhaps the fact that Dedra was spending her nights sleeping on a not-very-comfortable-looking hospital couch at my sister’s bedside should have tipped me off.

Her story will continue in a bit.

The Cards Never Lie

I knew the end was coming.

On February 12, 2024, during my daily divination practice, I pulled the Death card. Death evokes the idea of metamorphosis - transformative and enduring change. In her classic work, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness, Rachel Pollack tells us that “Contrary to (belief)…Death does not actually refer to transformation. Rather, it shows us the precise moment at which we give up the old masks and allow the transformation to take place.”

Death is not the metamorphosis itself; it is the moment we surrender and walk through the door. And while this card rarely points to the death of an individual, the transition from life to death is clearly the ultimate example of metamorphosis.

XIII - DEATH

This Death card is drawn from the Universal Celtic Tarot deck by Lo Scarabeo. It depicts The Morrigan, the Celtic Goddess of the Dead, who is known, among many other things, as a foreteller of death, riding upon a raven surveying a battlefield’s carnage.

The number of The Morrigan is THREE.

Three days later, on February 15th, my ex-wife's stepfather died.

Three days later, on February 18th, my sister died.

When I realized the pattern, I actually got a bit nervous about February 21st. Three deaths, each three days apart? And yet, my intuition told me the pattern was complete. The 21st came and went with nothing worse than the most intense sinus pressure I can remember having. But we won't count that as death, even though for a hot minute, death seemed preferable to the pain!

Meeting The Morrigan

Now, I have a different mental model from most in how I think about deities. I believe that the various named deities that have been described by cultures throughout history are aspects or archetypes of an infinite divine essence that Hermetic Philosophy would call, THE ALL. What this means to me practically is that no matter what “named deity” I interact with, I'm ultimately interacting with an inseparable part of a unified whole, presenting themselves as a persona from our collective mythology. My adoption of this mental model naturally led me to wonder what deities I want to work with in my practice.

The Morrigan has appeared in multiple readings, online classes, and conversations throughout my journey into paganism and witchcraft. And now, here she is acting in her natural capacity as a foreteller of death during my daily cartomancy practice. My ancestry is Scots-Irish and Bavarian, so I'm quite drawn to the Celtic pantheon, as well as all things Druidry. So I can’t help but start wondering - is The Morrigan stalking me a bit?

Fast forward to an active meditation session during which I got what I felt to be a very clear intuitive hit that The Morrigan had been calling me to work with her.

And so, I spoke these words aloud:

OK. I'm listening.

Immediately I heard these words audibly in my mind’s ear from the ethereal voice of a Goddess:

I have your sister.

She is safe.

I was immediately overcome by a flood of energy that I very quickly grounded, as it was simply too much to bear. But in that moment, I knew that not only was my sister still alive in a different realm, but also that I would talk to her again.

Completing Julie’s Symphony

The story continued several days later, on Friday, February 23, 2024, as we gathered in Jackson, Tennessee (my hometown) to celebrate her life. This was the day that I was given a beautiful picture of the life my sister led from afar, a picture I am so grateful to add to the mental album that represents her life.

We invited Dedra to conduct Julie’s memorial service. When my Mom asked about this idea, I didn’t hesitate to say, “ABSOLUTELY!” It was clear to me that Dedra knew Julie, and why wouldn’t I want someone who’s known my little sister during the years of our estrangement to share her story? Little did I know exactly how much I would learn from her on that day.

Dedra had known Julie for nearly three years. Dedra spent countless hours talking with her, and Julie had so many questions:

Why do I keep getting in my own way?

Why do I keep pulling myself down with my own decisions?

Why can’t I overcome these demons that have plagued me for so long?

And yet, in the midst of her questions, Julie was an overflowing chalice full of love for the people around her. She struggled to love herself while she continued to pour out love for others. Her smile (and this I can confirm) would light up any room. Julie would do whatever silly thing she could imagine would lighten the mood of the person in her sights. And if nothing else worked, she would simply smile. And with that smile, she brought hope into hopeless places.

Dedra had earlier in the service played for us what I learned was Julie’s favorite song, Symphony, by the band Switch. This is its chorus:

'Cause even in the madness
There is peace
Drowning out the voices all around me
Through all of this chaos
You are writing a symphony
A symphony

Dedra told us it’s very easy to think that Julie’s symphony was cut short. But she did not believe that it was:

“I believe that Julie’s symphony was written with perfection and fully completed.”

Dedra went on to describe her finding a letter that my sister was assigned to write as part of her treatment. She shared it with us, a letter to her loved ones written in 2022 in the event her addiction resulted in her death:

To all my loved ones and my four children - I loved you more than life itself. I am so sorry for any pain that I caused you. Please forgive me for what I am putting you through. Remember our best and loved memories. Death is not the end. One day, we will reunite in Heaven.

She knew death was not the end; it was only the beginning for her.

A Heart of Gold

Dedra closed her eulogy with another story I’d never heard:

When Gabriel was in elementary school, he had a small heart he carried to school with him. Julie would give it to him each morning, telling him, “I’m giving you my heart so you can carry my heart with you.” His teacher would often find him rubbing that heart.

This story is a complete picture of Julie’s legacy: to love unconditionally. For her heart to be carried by each and every one of us. To love how she loved. To show compassion how she showed compassion. To forgive, and be forgiven, the way she forgave, and was forgiven. And Dedra commissioned us as ambassadors of that legacy, carrying that love into the world, and giving our hearts to those we love, those who struggle, and those who hurt.

Dedra gifted each of us with a golden heart, which now sits upon my altar, as a remembrance of her and of this sacred commission.

There are many, many more things that I could say, but I feel like this story is complete. For now.

You can find my sister's obituary here: https://www.arringtonfuneraldirectors.com/obituaries/julie-cathryn-bruen. If you’d like to honor her with a gift, I’d love for you to plant a tree (via the Arrington Funeral Directors site) or send a contribution to:

Fresh Start Columbia
404 South Main Street
Mt. Pleasant, TN 38474.

Brightest blessings to you all.

1. Reproduced by permission from Mike Petrow and the Center for Action and Contemplation.