One thing I hear over and over is the guilt and extra grief some people experience when their loved one dies in the hospital and they are not there to say a last goodbye. You may have stayed with your husband, or wife, or child, day in and day out. You’ve talked to them, read to them, gone without meals, without rest, without showering. Then, it seems, the moment you left for a break is when your loved one passed away.
I understand how this can seem like you were falling down on the job, as if you didn’t care quite enough, weren’t quite strong enough, were too self-absorbed. But please know this is not the case.
This happens to so many people. I know. It happened to me.
At the end of his life, my father was in the hospital. I had been visiting him, and he looked perfectly fine. He was going to be moved to a different room the next day. As I was leaving, planning to return the next day, he said to me, “I never want to be a burden to your mother or to the family.” It was heartbreaking because I knew he was saying farewell. But because he looked well, I didn’t see any reason to worry that he was going to die. The next day, before I could return, he was gone.
Think back to when you were a little kid and you were about to be left with a babysitter. Your parents would always try to distract you with something so that you wouldn’t notice that they’d slipped out the back door. They didn’t want to upset you. It’s like that when it’s time to cross. Many souls who are really ready to go hang on while their living loved ones are near and seem to need them not to go yet. Again, they don’t want to upset you. So they wait until you are not there to cross. The biggest gift you can give someone you truly care about who needs to cross is your permission and your blessing. Tell them it’s okay to go. Tell them that you love them. Tell them you will see them again. (You will!) Over and over in readings, I will hear from spirits that they heard and appreciated that their loved ones here told them that they understood and wanted them to do what was best for them. That it was okay to go. There is absolutely no reason to feel shame or blame for missing the moment your loved one crosses. They are honestly trying to spare you.
Some months back, I did a reading for a woman at my home. She was recently widowed, and, when her husband died, she became a single mother to four children, so it was very sad. Her husband had been very sick and was in the hospital. She’d been sitting with him for long stretches at a time but had gone home to take a shower and change her clothes before going right back.
As she was getting dressed after her shower, a blue jay landed on her bedroom windowsill and looked directly at her. The window was closed, so she wasn’t sure it could actually see her, since there was probably a glare on the pane. But even if the bird could not actually see her, it could certainly see a motion inside, and a bird will usually fly away if someone approaches it. Nevertheless, as she moved toward the window, the bird did not budge. She was able to get right up close and exchange a long look with the bird. Then she felt a light breeze blow over her as she stood there in the house, with the window still closed, and suddenly had a premonition that her husband had passed.
At that moment her phone rang—it was the hospital telling her that her husband had indeed passed away. It was very quick. No one had told her that her husband was near to dying, even though she knew he was really sick.
Through tears, she asked me if I thought that bird had come to prepare her for the news. I said yes, that was her husband’s way of telling her that he was free and was not going to be restricted any more. She already believed that, but she wanted “expert” confirmation. It didn’t make her loss easier—this was her life partner and the father of her children—but through her grief, she had that moment to hold onto and remember.
I had a client who had a six-year-old daughter. When her mother—the little girl’s grandmother—passed away, my client missed her very much and for a long time was consumed by grief. Her mother had been a big part of their lives and had enjoyed a special bond with her granddaughter, calling her “my little princess.” And the little girl had absorbed some of her grandmother’s examples of strength. When her mother was crying, the little girl would say, “Don’t cry, Mother! We’re warriors, not worriers,” an expression she had heard her grandmother use often. But still my client couldn’t seem to get over her grief.
From time to time, her daughter would say that she’d seen her grandmother. My client would ask, “Where was she? Where did you see her?”
And her daughter would say, “Oh, she was in the yard,” or, “I saw her in the car.” But my client believed her daughter was just trying to cheer her up—she never thought her daughter had actually seen her mother, so when she asked her those questions, she was just “playing along.”
Finally she took hold of herself. She told me, “I realized, I had to get a grip. It wasn’t fair, what I was doing to my family. My own daughter, just six years old, is trying to keep me—her mother—together. I’m the adult here; I need to act like it.” She reached out to her mother, as she had often during her grieving, to talk to her. She told her she was going to try to stop her crying and move forward with her life. She said, “All I ask is that you watch over my daughter, your little princess, and keep her safe.”
A short time later, she drove her daughter to a birthday party for one of her little friends and collected her afterward to go home. She cleared the back seat of the car of the toys and party favors her daughter had brought home, giving it a thorough sweep.
The next day, as she situated her daughter in the back seat so that they could go grocery shopping, the mother found a child’s plastic tiara. She had no idea where it could have come from, as she knew she hadn’t left anything in the car. When she picked it up, she saw written on the front, “Little Princess.” Immediately she was swept with a feeling of love and gratitude, knowing that her mother was not gone and that her spirit would be looking after her granddaughter, just as she’d asked.
Sometimes our struggle on this side of the veil can be just getting along with a problematic family member. Most of us have an ideal in mind of the perfect family relationship, siblings who have each other’s backs, parents who care for and support their children, always looking out for their best interests. We might even know families that seem, at least from the outside, to be perfect in these ways. But many of us have family relationships that fall far short of that. I’ve had my own in-law dramas, to the point where my mother-in-law is more of a Mother Outlaw (at least to me). Until we get to the other side, it can be a total mystery why we have the relationships we do, but each of us can try to make things better.
A woman about my age came to see me one time, a few years ago. She apparently had had difficulty with her sister their entire lives. The two just never got along. This woman seemed to me to be caring and nice, but she described her sister as rough and disagreeable and said they were polar opposites. I don’t recall the whole story or what, if any, involvement there was from their mother, but she said that it was their father who was always trying to make peace between them. That may have worked to a degree while he was still alive, but after their father passed, the sisters had a big falling-out. The sister had even insulted my client’s children, which really crossed a line for her. But after this incident, she’d had a dream in which her father was again encouraging her to try to make peace with her sister. She knew this was the right thing to do but was torn because it just seemed hopeless. They’d never been on the same page. So even though the dream was compelling, she got up the next morning and went downstairs feeling unconvinced. Maybe her father was wrong and she should just write off her sister for good.
While she was sipping her coffee, she absent-mindedly went over and turned on the TV, without having any idea of what she wanted to watch. The channel that came on was broadcasting classic sitcoms, and what should she see but Father Knows Best. She smiled, realizing that it was a sign, and resolved to make yet another go with her sister.
The fol
ks on the other side can’t totally clue you in and can’t give you a free pass, so you won’t have to experience these painful karmic situations. This is all between you and the big guy upstairs, and you work through it with your fellow “cast members,” here in your own reality show. But know that the spirits are here to look out for you and give you comfort and help in any way that presents itself, even if it’s only to let you know that they are nearby.
Many times I’ve seen someone who has crossed desperately wanting to reach out to those left here, especially when they are aware that their loved ones won’t understand something about their crossing, or might feel in some way at fault. They never want us to be sad, but to live our lives fully and find joy, even when we miss them terribly. In the case of suicide, a very common worry for those left here is that their loved one will somehow be punished on the other side. I want everyone to know, that’s not how God operates. While the soul in question may be disappointed for themselves if, upon reflection, they know they could have made another choice, God is all-forgiving. That soul will have another chance to come back and wrestle again with their karma on this side, but while on the other side they experience total love, total acceptance, total peace.
At one of my shows, I did a reading for a woman whose son had committed suicide. She was devastated, fearing he might not be in heaven. I told her that he certainly was in heaven, and I was able to give her enough validating information that she was confident she was really hearing from him, and that he was, in fact, well on the other side. Among the messages he gave me for his mother was a sign he kept showing me that said, “Thank you, please come again.” I asked the mother what this sign could possibly mean. She had been very upset, but suddenly she laughed. She told me she had said to a friend when she was coming to the show that, if she got information she felt was legitimate from this evening, she would certainly come again—but only if she got information from me that let her know for sure it was really her son. Apparently she was convinced, and her son was aware of her earlier comment. He also must have had a sense of humor. I said to her, “ ‘Thank you, please come again.’ ” She cracked up. It was so cute.
As a medium, I’m aware that many people think I know everything that’s going to happen. They may even expect that I can prevent something bad from happening, or at least sound an alarm. I’m not God—not even close—so the power to prevent bad things (which should almost always be read as “karmic” things) from happening is not in my hands. And many times, I don’t know enough even to give a heads-up. I think of 9/11 as a good example. For sure, before the terrible attacks happened back in 2001, I was aware that there was something truly awful coming. I could feel the energy, as if the very air was thickening, but I honestly did not know what was on its way. And no, there was nothing I could do about it. I was as torn-up in the aftermath as everyone else was. That’s one of the hardest things about having this ability, not to be able to help when I truly want to. As much as I feel blessed with this life, that is a real downside.
Living with this ability as a child, I recall having friends in school that I knew were not going to make it in life, or who had stuff going on at home, but couldn’t talk about it. I would be aware of souls around them, and hear…“little secrets,” you might call them. I remember not knowing how to deal with that, how to handle it. I didn’t even tell my mother and father about this, because I had enough issues of my own when I was an adolescent without bringing up these other things I knew.
When I was in third grade, our class put on a play. I was, as usual, making myself the center of attention, organizing everything, deciding who was going to be what, and arranging for costumes. A boy from our class came up to me and said, “I can help you get costumes—I have costumes at home.” The minute he said this to me, I looked at him. I never got attention from boys at eight or nine years old, so this was all new to me. But it wasn’t that. It was that when I looked at him, I felt a great energy of sadness around him, a tremendous sadness. If I had to say it today, I would say that I knew he wasn’t going to live long. But at that age, I couldn’t put my finger on it; I just knew there was something tragic about him. Long story short, a few years went by, we were in eighth grade, junior high. This boy became a football player. He was going out with a girl and she broke up with him, and he went home and shot himself in the head. I will never forget this as one of the first times I knew something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, but still knew it. Today I live in a town right next to where I lived as a kid, and every time I drive down the street where he used to live, I always think of that poor boy and say a silent prayer for him.
Back in those days, we were really less aware about the emotional states of our peers. There is still a terrible problem with young people and suicide, and I think that the bullying that kids do on social media has exacerbated this to a degree. But if I was a kid today and had such a bad feeling about someone I knew, I might have the presence of mind to let a teacher know of my concerns, or he might have known to call a suicide hotline. I don’t think those even existed when I was in school. So maybe we have made a little progress, at least.
A lot of times when we think of terrible loss, especially when talking about psychically connecting with spirits, the only kind of loss we think of is someone who has crossed to the other side. But the loss of someone who is still “here” can be just as painful, sometimes more so, and is often something we experience well before we lose someone close to us through death. The strong connections we make here almost always have a karmic component—that’s what makes them matter; it’s like karma is a kind of glue that binds us. This can take all different kinds of shapes. I’ve had girlfriends who, when they break up with a guy, literally hate his guts and never want to see him again. I’ve had girlfriends who tend to stay friendly with their past lovers. But all these relationships supposedly started out of a strong attraction and included love at some point. Whatever went down, some kind of karmic debt was discharged in the relationship. And because of the importance of the bond, there can be very strong feelings of loss when a love relationship ends, equal even to that person dying. In some cases, it can almost be more crushing to know that the person you lost or let go of is still here, forming other relationships that you are not part of. It can hurt like hell!
One of my girlfriends told me that the day she signed her divorce papers was the saddest day of her entire life. There were very good, insurmountable reasons why she and her husband were breaking up. But they were karmically bound, and she believed she would be with him again in another life. Meanwhile, she’d have to see him enjoying another marriage, having children, raising them, and so forth, all without her.
Earlier I talked about my first true love, Sam, and how we eventually broke up, in spite of sharing a deep and passionate love. I can honestly say this was one of the most painful experiences of my life. Any time I ever heard a song like Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” I would feel a pang for what could have been. The Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford movie The Way We Were came out when we were dating and we saw it together. I knew even then that someday we’d be having a version of that sad ending. And of course, afterward, any time I saw any reference to that movie, I couldn’t help but remember the way we were. It was like a tattoo on my heart. It was a pain that went to the depths of my soul and lasted for many years. Like a death, it was something that I just had to find a way, somehow, to live with.
I want you to know that, as hard as it is, you can live with these kinds of losses. You can go forward and survive, and even eventually thrive, after a broken heart. Barbra Streisand’s character was completely heartbroken losing that relationship, even though she could see that it was never going to work. But in its wake, she became who she was supposed to be.
Around the world, there are endless tragedies—fires, hurricanes, epidemics, starvation. Nobody gets away without experiencing pain in some form. But, whenever possible, we can try t
o meet these experiences with a willingness to comfort and soothe one another, to spread our wings of compassion, and maybe even be inspired by another’s resilience or courage. Fred Guttenberg, who lost his daughter, Jaime, in the Parkland school shooting, has made it his mission to fight for gun control to honor his daughter and prevent this tragedy happening to another family. The mother who lost her daughter to drugs might remember her daughter’s generous soul, the girl who had decided she wanted to be an organ donor, and maybe she will decide to do something that will honor her memory of her daughter.
Through all our trials, we need to take time for some tears, and then rise to the occasion. Pull strength from within and from your own God Squad on the other side. You can do it. You can burn the whole frickin’ house down. But as long as you come out of the ashes, you will be all right. Just call on the angels for the strength you need—they are there waiting for you to ask them.
Chapter 8
How May I Help You?
The spirits of our loved ones on the other side love to assist us any way they can. They just love to help out—they really get a kick out of it. I always tell people to ask for help—ask for anything. It can be something important or something trivial; it doesn’t matter. They can protect you from danger, locate a missing document, or make you a baloney sandwich. Okay, maybe not the baloney sandwich, but…you just never know.
One thing in dealing with the dead is that you have to be clear about your intentions. You can’t leave them guessing. You can’t say, “I’d like a baloney sandwich,” and then go, “but I probably should just have a salad,” and then, “No, what I’d really like is a bowl of ice cream—how many points is that?” Yes, the dead have an eternity, but they don’t have time for that! You need to be sure you want that baloney sandwich and then clearly ask for just that.
I Kissed a Ghost (and I Liked It) Page 9
