As my father-in-law lay dying a number of years ago, I went to visit him in the hospital. We had always been close, and were probably closer since my husband’s death several years before. I knew I was going to miss him terribly (and I was certainly right about that).
Cancer had dug its way into Dad’s brain, and he suffered some rages and fits, but I was fortunate to see him only at times when he was lucid. When I walked into his hospital room, I introduced myself to be sure he knew who I was. “Dad? Hi, it’s Suzi. Do you know who I am?”
“Yes,” he croaked, as there was a tumor pressing on the nerve to his vocal folds. “You’re Suzi. Of course, I know you.”
I sat with him a few minutes and then I asked, “Have you seen Tim [my late husband, and his late son]?”
I don’t know why I was surprised to hear him rasp, “Yes.” He went on to say, “He came and sat in that chair right there. He told me everything would be all right and I should just do what I want to do.”
Even though that was the answer I had hoped for–or something like it–I was stunned for a moment. I knew Tim was nearby at that moment, with Dad and me in the hospital room, waiting to help and support Dad’s transition.
My father-in-law has been gone 10 years this month. I dedicate this post to him, and I am grateful he has love and peace–and Tim–on the Other Side.
Just had a call from a long-time client, Jill. Well, actually, I haven’t read for her in years, but she had something important to tell me.
Back in 2006, I held a Home Event at my own house. I had about 25 people in attendance, and I turned my living room into an auditorium, where I regaled people with Spirit Communication for about three hours.
Jill was in the audience and her reading was very interesting. We had a lot of her late loved ones come through and there was information about her family names, and I remember a story about her grandfather stomping around on the roof on Christmas Eve, pretending there were reindeer up there. Another guest had a similar story, and it turned out they were actually related! So that was pretty cool.
But what Jill called to tell me, and what I didn’t remember, was this: I told her that either her maternal grandmother or maternal grandfather had died after hitting her/his head in the bathroom. Jill didn’t recognize this incident, and no one in her family could corroborate the story later. As usual, I told her at the time to remember this information because it would eventually be useful.
Fast-forward about six years… Jill called me to say that she was having dinner with some co-workers the night before, and her boss suddenly asked if any of them had ever been to a medium.
Jill said, “Yes, I have! I have a friend who is a medium.” And she proceeded to tell them the story of the Home Event at my house. She added, “The only thing that never fit was what she said about one of my mother’s parents hitting their head and dying in the bathroom.”
Jill’s boss turned white as a sheet. “Jill. Your mother died in the bathroom.”
Jill had never made the connection. Her mother died in 2010, four years after the reading I gave her, of a heart attack. She was found in the bathtub and had hit her head when she fell.
I was so glad that I didn’t recognize that scenario as a premonition and instead thought it to be a past event. But then it became so significant to Jill. And to me. I had the strong feeling that her mother had set the entire thing up so that Jill could understand that her mother’s death happened as it was meant to happen.
[This is an excerpt from one of my books, Dead On: Spirited Stories from a Medium’s Diary.It is still available here in its original edition, and I am working on the second.]
During my pre-reading meditation, I saw a high-school boy in a football uniform, in a photo like the ones that all boys in sports take, posed on one knee with his helmet nearby.
Then I saw images of myself in front of an audience, then on the stage in the play “Oklahoma!” which I was in my senior year in high school. One of the songs from “Oklahoma!” got stuck in my head. It was “Many a New Day Will Dawn before I Do,” not one of the songs I usually sing from the show. In it, a girl sings about having been jilted, saying it doesn’t bother her and that another boy will come along soon.
As soon as Andrew, arrived, I asked him if there was someone who played football who had died. This was one of my many lessons about putting my interpretations on the images I see. As I learned, the picture I saw was either Andrew or his brother, who played football in high school. Both were alive and well, so I made a mental note: a picture is not necessarily the spirit! As it turned out, his grandpa was showing me something about Andrew’s life, that he had played football.
I told Andrew about my “Oklahoma!” references and asked if anyone had been on stage or in that play. Or was there someone in Oklahoma or from Oklahoma? What didOklahoma mean? Andrew said, “Well, I had a potential client in Oklahoma. The deal just fell through.”
Aha! I asked him, “Are you telling yourself that it’s okay, it doesn’t bother you, and another better deal will come along?” Of course, he was.
Another mental note—in bold italics—to tell the client exactly what I see and hear without running it through my filters first.
The person giving me the images was Andrew’s grandfather. He was a pleasant and friendly man, but he kept interjecting into my chakra analysis. The root chakra, rather than being a variation on a sphere (the way I see them), looked like an ocean wave, an image from the grandpa telling us about the family vacations he and Andrew took at the beach. The navel chakra looked like a little girl pulling up her dress in front. This baffled me—and made me giggle—until Andrew said that, when he was very little, his neighbors dressed him up in a dress. Grandpa thought that was pretty darned funny.
I wondered aloud if I should stop the chakra reading, if Grandpa wanted the time, but he quieted down and let me finish that part of the reading. Later, we had some more images of Andrew’s childhood. This was one of the few readings in which I didn’t see the spirit, but only had images and feelings from him. He was a genuinely kind and funny person and he let that come through clearly.
This one comes from one of my Home Events and it was one of those when I wondered if the whole evening was for this one person. Almost every one of the 10 guests had a reading, but one of them, Eve, got a doozie.
Eve is a young woman, in her 20s, and was a stranger to me. Earlier in the day, the hostess had had a private reading with me and the name “Gladys” came up. Didn’t mean anything to her, but she reminded me of it at the Home Event. So I mentioned “Gladys” and two guests raised their hands to say that they had a Gladys in the family. One of them was sitting next to Eve and I focused on her first.
“Now that I say ‘Gladys’, I am getting ‘gladiolas’. Does that flower mean anything to you? I am also getting little angels.” I held up my fingers to indicate small angel figures. No, that guest didn’t get those references.
The other Gladys-related guest spoke up. She had an angel reference, but the reading didn’t go anywhere from there… Suddenly, I got the famous image of Gov. Ann Richards in the white leather jacket, sitting on a motorcycle, that was featured on the cover of Texas Monthly some years back.
I said, “I don’t know if this is someone in your family with a reference to this, or if it’s actually Ann Richards, but this is what I am seeing.”
Finally, Eve spoke up. “Okay, I have to say something,” she said hesitantly. “Gladiolas were my grandmother’s favorite flower, she always wore an angel pin, and she had a leather jacket. One time, we were in Luckenbach, and she sat on a motorcycle and said, ‘Look at me!’ She was just like that.”
Now I knew we were onto something. Eve’s grandmother had been trying to come through all day! At that point, her images started flooding in. I had never had such clear communication with a spirit before. Grandmother showed me every material thing she had left to Eve, how many people had split her belongings, even the lace curtains that were in her bedroom that she would have preferred to keep in the family.
One of the more touching moments was when I told Eve that she had something lacy, like a veil, that had belonged to her grandmother that Eve would wear in her wedding. Eve confirmed that her mother has the grandmother’s veil and wore it in her wedding and someday, Eve would too.
The information was coming in so fast I could hardly keep up. And Eve was overwhelmed. Finally, she said through copious tears, “We have to stop. I can’t handle this!” Her grandmother had a few more things before we did finish, and Eve made it through.
As it turned out, Eve had started out as one of the most skeptical people in the room. And she said later that her beloved grandmother had only been gone a year—to the date!
Merrill was in his 20’s when he passed away from complications from AIDS. During his mother Dee’s reading, he came through easily and we talked quite a bit about his passing, because Dee had some question marks around the timing and the exact events of Merrill’s death.
Then Merrill had something for his sister. He wouldn’t leave me alone until I told Dee, “Merrill is saying to tell his sister Susan to go ahead and make the Hamburger Helper.” I explained that he seemed to be teasing and I asked if this meant anything to Dee.
She looked a bit puzzled. “I don’t think they eat Hamburger Helper, maybe they used to when the kids were little, but I will tell her.”
About a week later, Dee called with the surprising event about “Hamburger Helper”. It seemed that Susan and her husband were gourmet cooks and enjoyed food as an art more than simple sustenance. Thus, the idea that Hamburger Helper would enter into their lives was at the very least a little unlikely.
When Dee talked to Susan after her reading with me, she said she felt that Merrill was urging her, “Tell her, Mama, tell her about the Hamburger Helper!” So Dee gave Susan the message I had given her from her brother.
Susan said, “I have no idea what that means. We haven’t even had that in the house for years!”
That evening, when Susan arrived home from work, she saw that her husband had been to the grocery store. Sitting on the counter was a box of—you guessed it—Hamburger Helper!
And Susan’s husband didn’t even know why he had bought it. “I don’t know, I just saw it and I bought it!”
Happily, Merrill has since become a familiar friend from the Other Side. When I received a reading from a fellow medium, she said that many people from the Other Side were grateful to me, but there was one young man in particular who expressed gratitude for how I had helped his mother.
