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I hope you find something here to comfort your grieving heart. Please visit any time.
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SOULFUL SIGNS
The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague.
Who shall say where one ends and the other begins? Edgar Allan Poe
On this page
A True Story of Redbirds
Final Wish
Harbingers
Merlin's Gift
After-Death Communication
Recommended Reading
Caution: You Are Vulnerable Right Now
Links
Before you begin...
I have concluded that we are not human beings attempting to be spiritual, but spiritual beings trying to be human. We are uncomfortable with our bodies and fascinated by ghost stories. The author C.S. Lewis believed that these two facts proved we were spirits in human form. If I accept the idea of an afterlife, and I do, how can I not believe in after-death communication?
My experience of redbirds is true, but let's face it, it was a subjective event. Just as no one can convince me that the cardinals were not a gift from Mom, I cannot persuade anyone that they were. Whether you believe my story, or not, is your decision. Please stay open to the possibility of mystery as you arrive at your own conclusions.
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A TRUE STORY OF REDBIRDS
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My mother's death is a deep personal heartache. Mom left a folder labeled, "To be opened by my daughters after my funeral." In it, she had prepared two sympathy cards with personal messages for my sister and me. Yes, my mother gave sympathy cards to her daughters for her own death. She wanted her last message to us to be one of comfort and love.
Mom liked songbirds and especially cardinals. She called them "redbirds." She often wore a cardinal pin on her coat collar and gave my sister and me beautiful cardinal figurines surrounded with carnations, the State of Ohio bird and flower.
On the night after the funeral, my sister wanted me to take a flower arrangement home, but they were all loaded in her van. It was dark in the van, so I asked Mom to choose one for me and pulled out a small arrangement without getting a good look at it.
When I got it home I was disappointed that it was not pink because pink was Mom's favorite color. Instead it was a planter of red carnations with a little teddy bear wearing a red hat. I placed the planter next to the cardinal figurine that Mom had given me and marveled at how well they complemented each other. Pink would not have looked as striking with the cardinal.
I have back yard bird feeders that I enjoy watching from the kitchen. The next morning, after feeding the birds, I had the courage to open Mom's final card to me. I was overwhelmed that she would prepare a sympathy card for me to mourn her own death and I sank to the floor in tears.
As I pulled myself up by the kitchen counter, I looked out the back door window and saw a flock of cardinals surrounding my feeders. Cardinals are independent birds and do not fly in large groups. You will not see more than two or four together, but there were 50 to 100 "redbirds" in my back yard. I have never seen so many cardinals in one place. They were beautiful, like red jewels sparkling through a gray winter day, and I know they were a gift from Mom.
POST SCRIPT: I continue to have cardinals in my daily life since I wrote the redbird story in 2006, althogh nothing matches the splendor of the original display. Now, whenever I see a cardinal, I smile and think of her. If all this is in my imagination, well, God gave us imaginations, too. All I know is that seeing a redbird eases my pain and I am grateful for a beautiful reminder of my mother's love.
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FINAL WISH
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Mom loved teddy bears and had about 200 bears in her collection. She was also a planner and, true to her nature, she left my sister Alice and me detailed instructions for her memorial service. Mom made it clear she wanted to be laid to rest with the one teddy bear that Dad had given her.
Since Dad preceded Mom in death by twelve years, only my sister and I were left to identify the special bear. We didn’t have a clue. My sister went to our mother’s home in search of the bear. The room was overflowing with bears of all types. How could she find the bear in a sea of bears? After looking for a while with no luck, Alice said out loud, “OK, Mom, you’re going to have to help me find the bear Dad gave you because I don’t know which one it is.”
My sister’s attention was then drawn to a small brown bear set slightly away from the others. Alice reached out to pick it up and the bear was warm to the touch, almost glowing. She turned it over and there was a tiny tag in our mother’s handwriting: From Jim. Alice had found the one teddy bear that Dad had given Mom and we were able to fulfill Mom’s final wish.
Was the teddy bear’s warmth a coincidence or a form of after-death communication?
You decide.
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HARBINGERS
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According to ghost hunter and author Joshua P. Warren, a harbinger is a spirit from the future that carries a message to inform the observer of future events. In How To Hunt Ghosts (Simon and Schuster, 2003), Warren discusses nursing home harbingers that appear around a dying person when death is near. In my work as an RN on the night shift, I sensed the presence of harbingers and I will tell anyone that we never die alone.
Warren’s book validated my own experience with another kind of harbinger: one that prevents death or serious injury. My father taught me to ride horses. He stressed that if I were ever thrown from a horse, to take my feet out of the stirrups, let go of the reins and try to fall away from the horse. Being dragged, tangled or trampled is how most people are killed (or paralyzed) in horse-riding accidents. Dad died in 1994.
A few summers ago I went to a friend's farm to ride a new quarter horse. I didn’t get to know the horse well enough before I took her for a run, and I was thrown from her at full speed. In the split-second before I knew I was going off, I heard Dad’s voice shout, “Get your feet out of the stirrups, let go of the reins, and fall away from the horse, Christine!”
I did as ordered and off I flew, dislocating my shoulder. I had surgery and physical therapy and made a full recovery, but I know Dad’s voice saved me from being dragged to death. I am convinced that my dead father was a harbinger: he warned me, and saved me, from potential disaster.
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MERLIN'S GIFT
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I believe that animals are spiritual perfection and I have no doubt that I will be reunited with my pets when I get to the other side. Merlin was a large majestic golden cat with a roaring purr. I found him when he was three weeks old and bottle-fed him through infancy.
A feral tom attacked him a few years later and I found him unconscious in the back yard. I held together his open bleeding neck while I waited on the kitchen floor for a home veterinary service to arrive. He had surgery and made a full recovery. We had a strong bond—not many people bottle-feed their pets, or have to put pressure on their pet’s jugular vein to keep him from bleeding to death.
Merlin slept with me every night of his life. He waited until I had settled in, and then jumped on the bed to position himself against my legs. He usually purred us to sleep. Years passed and he finally succumbed to renal disease at the age of sixteen.
On the night after his death, I got into bed thinking how much I would miss my dear Merlin. Soon I felt something jump on the bed and settle against my legs. I looked but saw nothing. And then I heard his booming purr. As I drifted towards sleep, I knew that Merlin had come back to let me know that he was OK. Not only was he OK—-he would also be waiting for me to come Home.
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AFTER-DEATH COMMUNICATION
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Much has been written about communicating with deceased loved ones, and I am not going to try to cover the topic in any detail on this page. Either refer to the books in Recommended Reading for suggested authors, or click on After-Death Communication from the Grief Healing link at the bottom of this page.
Briefly, communication with deceased loved ones cannot be forced. Obsession will only block your attempt. Relax and let go. Don't complicate the process. Soulful signs from our deceased loved ones are all around us if we look for them. Messages will come in simple forms, like a familiar smell or a loving thought, and little things do mean something. There are no coincidences.
You may have to wait until the powerful emotions of acute grief subside for your loved one to get through, but welcome their presence when they do.
From Healing After Loss by Martha Whitmore Hickman,
Perennial Press, 1994, December 12 entry:
...as we dwell in memory on our experiences with the one who is physically gone, his or her psychic presence, rather than being confined to the body we knew and loved, seems somehow to expand and surround us with its gentle understanding, its compassion and love.
So we enter upon different kinds of conversations, often exchanges without words. We seem to come to a mutual understanding and appreciation for the goodness and the difficulty we were in each other's life. We're able to smile...at all the flurry, and to relish, instead, the deep love and peace. Dear One, continue to be with me, as I will with you.
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CAUTION:
YOU ARE VULNERABLE RIGHT NOW
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The death of a loved one makes us vulnerable to others because we are experiencing the powerful raw emotions of grief. Our defenses are down and we may not be thinking straight. Because we want the lonelienss and pain to stop, we may turn to the services of psychics or mediums in our search for answers from the other side.
I offer a word of caution here: Not all psychics can communicate with souls on the other side, and not all people who call themselves psychics or mediums are on spiritual paths. Some just want your money. To be fair, most psychics and mediums sincerely want to help you, but just as there are skilled and unskilled doctors, there are skilled and unskilled spirit communicators.
Please go to a psychic or medium for spirit communication only if that person has been recommended to you by someone you know. If you are grieving the death of a loved one, you are fragile, and sadly, there are people who will prey upon your vulnerability. Please use caution and take care of yourself.
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RECOMMENDED READING
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I am sharing with you the books that helped me. My intention is to comfort you in your sorrow, but if the books increase your sense of loss, or they offend you, please scroll past them and know that we all grieve in our own way and in our own time. What helps me may not help you; or, the timing just isn't right.
Start with the works of Allison DuBois, James Van Praagh or John Edward. Some of their books carry recommended reading lists that will enlarge the scope of your search until you find the information that rings true with you.
Note: You will not find books by Sylvia Browne listed here because she charges $750.00 for a half-hour reading and the waiting list for her reading is over a year. I personally cannot justify her fee. I value some of what she writes, but her descriptions of ghostly ectoplasm are too much for me. She has written many books about after-death communication. Since we are all unique in our search for answers, only you can know if Sylvia Browne is right for you.
CJ's LIST:
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Belanger, Jeff. Communicating with the Dead. Franklin Lakes, NJ: Career Press New Page Books, 2005. Explores various methods people use to communicate with the other side by interviewing experts in each field of interest. Well-written and detailed, this book is a good overview of the many ways people approach after-death communicaton.
DuBois, Allison. We Are Their Heaven: Why the Dead Never Leave Us. New York: Fireside Books Simon and Schuster, 2006.
From the woman who inspired the NBC TV show Medium. Those who have crossed over continue to provide us with love, guidance, comfort and support, but the dead have a language of their own. The author teaches us how to recognize, read and interpret signs from our loved ones on the other side. The book is about life, death and the unbreakable connection of love. I found it comforting and believable. I most liked the author's humility about her psychic gifts.
Edward, John. One Last Time: A Psychic Medium Speaks to Those We Have Loved and Lost. Berkley Trade, 1999.
FROM THE PUBLISHER: It's easy to distrust those who claim to communicate with the dead, to dismiss them as charlatans who take advantage of the bereaved. Psychic medium Edward himself urges readers to "be skeptical, though not cynical." But it is not so easy to reject Edward's compelling tale of gradually accepting his psychic abilities and acting as a messenger between spirits who have passed over to "the Other Side" and their loved ones left behind.
With a college degree in public health and administration, and "rising within the ranks" of a large hospital, he finally gave in to the "constant yanking feeling" he had experienced since he was a boy. In several poignant stories of connecting people with their deceased family members, Edward tries "to demystify spirit communication" by explaining exactly what he sees, hears and feels during a "reading."
The spirits, he says, speak to him in voices, sounds, images, sensations, smells, tastes and feelings, mostly in symbolic form. Usually, beyond identifying the senders in verifiable ways, the messages are simply that those who have passed on are all right and that "they're still with us."
The author is a combination of James Van Praagh (Talking to Heaven) tempered with the down-to-earth appeal of Caroline Myss. Edward offers an intriguing collection of anecdotes that may not convince the cynical but that can both comfort and fascinate the merely skeptical.
ALSO BY JOHN EDWARD:
Crossing Over. Jodere Group, 2001.
FROM THE PUBLISHER: In Crossing Over—the book—John brings his readers with him on the extraordinary journey that has been his life since his New York Times bestseller One Last Time was published in 1998.
In the style of his TV show and personal appearances—poignant, funny, and remarkably candid—John deals head-on with the controversial issues he has confronted on his voyage as a psychic medium. Readers might be surprised to learn that it hasn’t always been smooth sailing. On the way to becoming an internationally celebrated medium, John has had to learn his own lessons about the meaning of his work and about the motivations of some of the people he has met on his path.
Afterlife: Answers from the Other Side. Princess Press, 2003.
FROM THE PUBLISHER: In his fourth book, John Edward demonstrates once again that grief, healing, and hope are eternally intertwined and universal. John answers your most often-asked questions about how the mediumship process works on the “other side,” while taking you on the inside of his own personal life as a husband and new father. He shares what he’s learned through his own recent, personal losses and demonstrates that you’re never too late to forgive—and never too far away to love.
Van Praagh, James. Healing Grief: Reclaiming Life After Any Loss. New York: New American Library, 2000.
James Van Praagh is a well-known medium and author of the best-selling book Talking to Heaven. Here he shares spiritual messages from deceased loved ones, who shed new light on grief and loss. The stories, along with his personal experiences of grief, help us view loss as part of our soul's evolving spiritual journey--one that will move us beyond the devastating sorrow of grief to a life of renewed purpose.
Besides the death of loved ones, the author looks at all types of loss, including divorce, aging, losing a home or job, catastrophic illness, prenatal death, pet loss and mental illness. There is a question and answer section and a chapter on how to heal after any loss with practical advice, activities and meditations. The writing is heartfelt, wise and compassionate.
I have one criticism of Mr. Van Praagh's writing: He can be too in love with his own abilities at times and is very much a celebrity name-dropper. Still, his writing comforts me and isn't that the greatest gift I can receive from anyone who writes about grief?
One final thought about finding books: Use any large online bookstore as a research tool. Type in key words such as afterlife, medium, spirits, after-death communication or an author's name and see what turns up. Read descriptions and reviews. Search libraries. After-death communication is usally found in the paranormal or "New Age" section. Trust that you will find what you need.
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LINKS
Links open new windows.
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My E-mail: TheGrievingHeart@aol.com
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The most profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical.
Albert Einstein
© Copyright 2008 Christine Jette. All rights reserved.
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