July 1st 1991

If someone tells you convincingly, their eyes shining with health, that they are not going to die, you believe them. Best ignore the fact that they have a deadly disease, also best ignore the setting from which the speech is being made; a hospital bed.

We believe what we want to believe.

Lupus has two different kinds; the kill you kind and the make you pretty darn miserable kind. Often men get the former, and that’s what he had. But his big smooth forehead (which was pretty wrinkle free for a man of 46); his brilliant white smile despite his life long cigarette habit, along with his clear intention of not dying made me a much calmer, reassured daughter than reasonable in this situation.

Lupus in Latin translates as wolf; named for the mask like face markings that sometimes appear in those suffering from the disease. He’d shrug and ignore any words of despair a doctor might offer. He had a mantra, it was a good one.

“The wolf is not going to get me”.

Cool, I thought, I can go on with my life and trust that his spot on the planet is secure. I could even move across the country by myself in a shiny red car I couldn’t afford. The west offered vastness, potential, it had people who defied gravity by scaling rocks with ropes. I wanted to be with those people.

Two weeks after I drove away from my parents adorably waving from their porch; I found myself 175 feet up wearing a harness and a shit eating grin. Surrounded by handsome climbers I’d met in a bar a few days before; I felt shiny in my manifested desires, cute in my headband, solid in my strong legs ready to ascend again. As I looked up at the next sheer cliff I was meant to climb, I suddenly, inexplicably imagined myself falling to my death.

Slip. Tumble. Silence. The rope reeling unnaturally, a slow motion felt tip pen creating loops and patterns in the air as I fell. Then the terrible thud, my body landing hard on unforgiving ground. Again and again and again the imagery played, my body feeling the imagined shock. I was just about to confess my fears and make a request to abort when a powerhouse of a wind appeared and whipped everyone else’s nerves as well. It was sudden, fierce and a thief, making communication between us impossible. The shouts of’ belay’ and ‘rope!’ And ‘got me?’ were stolen from our lips and ferried high into the haze of the black hills, dropping into the freshwater lake nearby like alphabet soup.

The crew decided to come down from the two pitch climb and chase pizza and beer Instead. Upon returning to my room, I found a note taped to the hollow door.

“Call home, emergency”

Of course I thought of my father, but, I also knew he wasn’t going to be gotten by any bad wolf so as I hurried in the cool mountain air to find a pay phone, instead I worried about my grandmother’s diabetes, my younger brothers recent forays into acid, my mother’s fast driving. Hands shaking, I dropped quarters into a void that found only disconnected lines at my aunt Jane’s house and an endless ring at my parents house.

Finally I got a hold of my grandmother, my fathers mother, and was flooded with pure relief by the sound of her voice. It sounded strong, cheerful almost, so my breath came back. She asked me why I was calling. When I described the note she said, surprised, “Oh, you haven’t heard?” I said ‘No’, Grandma, what’s going on?.
She said, “Oh honey, your father is dead”.

Moments before that, that same mysterious wind brought one of the climbers over to the store where I was standing with a phone in my hand. It was the one I had a crush on. The one who bore a family name, my brothers name, our patriarchs name. Robert. He wasn’t supposed to be there, he later said he just felt like going for a walk. He saw the look on my face and stood quietly by.

As the news crossed the 2500 miles across prairies and cities, across rock formations and swamps, the wire between us went slack, my knees buckling as I finally fell. It was much shorter than I imagined a few hours before, but it was still a long way down. Robert’s strong climber arms caught my crumpled body as well as my endless stream of tears for the next 12 hours. He then lovingly deposited me at the tiny Rapid City airport to fly home to my not-home without my father.

--

We are given information that we may not understand at first. I believe the vacuum created by his death 8 hours before at a hospital in Florida finally reached me on a mountain in South Dakota, sweeping us off of the rock. The angels carried me down the hill to that payphone on steady legs and brought me a Robert with moments to spare when my legs would collapse. Robert and I dated for years after that, our fate forever intertwined by the powerful wind and his kind heart.

My father loved the mountains, he grew up in cities and near beaches, but he loved mountains the most. When I suddenly, inexplicably found myself moving to the island of Kauai on the 30th anniversary of his death, I realized I’d found his perfect place. A beach with gorgeous peaks. The cigarette smell in my new house that I was meant to move into on July 1st was the telltale sign that he was close by, welcoming me home.

Angela

Driving the 134 through Burbank with Forest Lawn on my left, guilt rippled my gut in what felt like hello. The fact that her name has Angel in it was not lost on me.

Have you ever met someone so cool, so smart, so magnetic that you wanted to just crawl right into her skin, speak with her voice, inherit her genius of a smarty pants brain? Like that.

Angela. A gumshoe for the Hollywood Reporter, she ferreted out what was what in the tangle of Hollywood shenanigans. A reporter! She wrote of all of the Hollywood churning's but with the mind of a scientist, the wit of a comedian, the conviction of a politician. Bold, assured, she could even cook beautifully! Shit. I was too impressed to be jealous.

Our friendship was immediate and strong like the espresso we drank before our hikes. I poured my soul into her gorgeous brown eyes and she bounced her brilliance back to me in the LA haze. But, like many friendships forged there; we were fits-and-spurts friends, let’s-circle-up-again-soon friends. 

I was surprised to hear sometime later that she had dumped her job at the Hollywood reporter to go to a spiritual school in Santa Monica. As a gal who talked to angels and regularly went to Shamanic journeying workshops in Eslalen, I understood the charm of that non-world world and got back in touch to hear of her new life. She was overjoyed and I celebrated all of that for her, the only massive exception was that she’d suddenly left her husband, my dear friend.

Only a few months later, I was on my way to the other side of LA and thought to check in on her from the 405. As her voice came on the line, I immediately knew something was off.

She sounded jangled and nonsensical. Manic even. My grounded, opinionated, fierce friend had flown away. Even though she was under the care of a psychiatrist associated with that school, she seemed to be cracking. 

As I heard of all of the conspiracies against her, the people who didn’t understand her important revelations, and all of the money she was owed by famous people, it was all too familiar. These were the same style of words I’d heard as my brother slipped out of our world and into his own, before his schizophrenia diagnosis. Shaking, I hung up and called her ex-husband, he was desperate to help her.

Afraid for her, afraid for him, and afraid to lose another brilliant soul to the depths of psychosis, I didn’t call her from another freeway. I didn’t reach out to her again.

Several months later, I got a text asking me to call. With a sinking heart I dialed her husband to hear the terrible news that she'd found her way back to the spirit world by her own hand. She’d left a dozen suicide notes. I was present when they were read out loud, but I didn't hear her voice in those letters, it wasn't Angela in that cursive ink. The following day we went to the flower market in downtown LA and bought 1000’s of flowers. We cut and arranged them for hours, their joyful color a stark contrast in the sea of black outfits at the funeral and afterward. 100’s of people came to the church in North Hollywood to honor her; the speeches were as beautiful as she.

Many more months later, while driving on the 134, I heard her voice as I passed where she was interred at Forest Lawn.

She said “Jane! Jane! Don’t worry about me, I’m really good.”

I said “Angela! Oh my god! How are you?”

"I’m better than expected. I realized my mistake almost immediately, but I worry about my family.”

“Oh honey!” I said.

“I’m so happy to hear you are well, it’s great to hear your voice!”

But then, my own doubting mind bumped on the line.

As I got off the exit at Vineland, I said to myself, 'Really? Are you really talking with your friend on the other side, and she’s saying things you’d really like to hear?.

But as life would have it, at that very moment my mind was bullying me about whether what this freeway conversation was real, I got off the exit at Vineland and found myself behind a silver Mercedes with a license frame that had a message engraved with cursive writing on the top above the plate.

It said.

"Believe it!"

So I did.

Fear Don't Stop My Eager Soul to Soar

Fear don’t stop my eager soul to soar!

I can't remember who said it, but I quoted it at the graduation from high school speech. Don’t worry, I wasn’t the smarty valedictorian, I auditioned to make a speech cause I loved the idea of talking to a stadium full of people. I spoke of us going forth! and conquering worlds! and trusting ourselves and not losing faith and not ever, ever being driven by fear

But that was before I knew that part of my calling was to talk to dead people. I mean, you can commit to no fear when you think your calling is environmental law. You can make speeches about not denying the call when you think you’re going to save the oceans or fight gas lobbies. You can already feel that smart Ann Taylor suit on your thin frame (it’s my fantasy, go with me) as you pace the court staring down the evil, greedy pollution loving bad guys. However,  when you are informed, no hon, actually, the call is - pick up the phone and listen really, really hard and see if you can hear what dead people are saying through static and sweat and the complete knowledge that you’re probably crazy, your inspiring little high school speech feels like utter bullshit, full respect to your eighteen year old sweet faced self.

God bless the spirits, I mean, sometimes they talk. But. Most times the experience is that they imprint little thoughts that feel like someone barely brushing against your arm but then you  look and they are not there. Or the vague impression of your grandmother's favorite perfume and you don’t know the name of it so that’s useless. Or an image will suddenly appear, followed by another one, duck, typewriter, silver earrings. And these images are just so dang random that saying them would sound like insanity on a plate with toast.

Suddenly a car drives by, what kind of car? You look, it went too fast. How loud was it? Was the driver happy? Or suddenly everyone is playing bridge. I mean, I think that’s the card game. There are 4 of them, isn’t that bridge? And you’re wondering all of these things about, you know, card rules, and your sitter (the person getting a reading) is either sitting there staring at you while your face goes from puzzled to confused back to fear or there is deafening silence on the line so you’re just wondering, waiting, and they are too and mostly you’re sweating just like JESUS can someone just talk to me. Like in a sentence? 

But once that string is pulled it's like an old doll that comes to life and you start sentences like, “I feel like she is happy to see you but comes worried about your Mom, there is some reason she should be worried about your Mom.” Solemn head nod or affirmative murmerings leads to the voice maybe piping up, the creaky voice on the ephemeral line says, “...My daughter is too upset about my death and her life is stopped in an unnatural way.” By now you know you don’t say the word unnatural like ever so you might be onto something, so next it’s  - “By the way, I saw her drive by in a car.” And then you stop time in your image and like pinch zoom with your memory, the car is blue. And she loved the car, you suddenly just know, she loved the car. And you’re like, “OK, she LOVED this car!’ And your person is like, “Oh yes, she had a blue car, she did love it if was a Plymouth”. And then you think upon seeing her wave from the car, ‘Hey, nice scarf~!’ And now you’re cooking with gas, the flowers are raining down, the manna from heaven, words and symbols and yes even deliciously long sentences.

But god. Getting there. That anxious sweat. The fear of massive- cardiologists-calling-heart stopping failure is nauseating. A small animal runs by you. “Did you have a dog?’ And then you think, ‘duh! Everyone has a dog’. So you go through the thing again. Dog, what kind? What size, freeze frame the image. Curly or straight? Tall or short. You take a stab. Tall white dog, curly tail. But then the brain; ‘Shit! That sounds like my childhood dog. Did snowball just walk into this reading uninvited?’ And now they are going to think I have no idea what I’m talking about and I’m going to have to end this meeting in a shame spiral of sputtering and awkwardness. But. You never do that, because there is a dog. It’s white. It’s name is Horse or something funny like that. And your heart might slow down just a beat or two. I got the dog. I got the car. Ok. Ok. What’s the message?

And this is the part that comes through like butter on corn on the cob, like icing on a hot Cinnabon. It slides right into your mind through the warmth in your heart. You say, Your Mom says I love you so much. She says 'I am watching and I hear you. Please know that when you play my favorite song I sit with you in the car and cry too. Please know that when the windshield wipers stop squeaking, I did that. Please know that the cat is staring at my painting because I've asked her too. So when you wonder that, please don’t worry. I love you and I’m asking Oscar the cat to help me love you too.’

And then it's all so dang worth it, right? Like the reading started off slow and you hated your life and your desire to ever do this, but by this point everyone is crying and convinced of unity and grace and other things that have no other place to be outside of like church and orgasm, and even though your shirt is pitted and your stomach is gutted.

You’re in the right place. It’s a weird place, for sure, but it's yours.

A Love Story for Valentines Day

It’s still Valentine's day out here in the middle of the ocean. I want to share a beautiful story of a couple that I met last week. She's in Colorado, he’s on the other side, I’m in Kauai - but the three of us met on a phone call on a Monday morning.

I knew that this call was to connect two people in love.

I knew that they’d been married for 30 years, in love for longer.

I was nervous because I was so hopeful that it would work out, and nerves sometimes prevent me from saying yes to doing the reading. But, thankfully, love won, nerves lost and I said yes.

Her name is Francis, she was looking for her husband Mark*. He's only been gone a little while now, and grief threatens to engulf her sometimes. She saw a poem I wrote about my dad who has been gone 30 years and I think the number helped, she felt the need to reach to me.

30 years is a long time to be married and in love.

So when we jumped on the call at 11am last Monday, we started with the soul to soul of the two of us here on earth.

Frances and I had never met, but our voices found all of those lovely notes.

Those ‘ah, I like you’ notes, those ‘we’ll get along great’ notes.

Not always the case.

But last week there was a lot of warmth on the line.

The next aspect of the equation is how open Frances is to the communication with her people on the other side. The image I have is a highway of sorts; the love is like little cars of light and sweetness, memories and other floating bits. All of these amazing little moments driving up and down between the two sides. Francis was easing up the on-ramp, blinker on.

After that, we figure out how well I’ll do with her people. Sometimes I see them. Sometimes I hear them. Sometimes I feel things in my body. I have to sort on the fly what kind of communication is going to be the best way. Which means the readings usually start off a little slow, maybe I hear little bits of information on the radio, static too. Images appear like billboards that don't make any sense. But, then….it starts to come - and on Monday morning I saw him.

Her husband.

I said: “He’s….Tall.

He’s beaming love.

He’s quietly sending this light ray to you, Frances.

He’s a man of integrity, I can see that running up and down in him.

He has a clarity that’s unique, a quiet beam of love.”

So when I got the next packet of information that downloads into my mind that says

'Boisterous and gregarious, funny, a big voice' I think, ‘Huh, that doesn’t compute. That doesn’t match the previous quiet love beams.’

So I mistakenly say,

“I wouldn’t say he’s like a big personality….” and as those words fall out of my mouth I know that I have it wrong.

She lovingly corrects me.

“Oh no, he has a big personality, a booming voice.”

Dang.

I hate the opposite game - this can be hard to recover from. And points to the problem with my brain getting involved. It was a faulty concept that was running me, that a person cannot be both quiet and loud. Which is, of course, not true. Funnily enough a big personality is my favorite kind of spirit communicator, because they push through words and images with the enthusiasm of a kid having just eaten a bunch of candy.

It’s fun and fast.

So we keep going. She’s generous, saying that the previous words were very accurate, ie: the beams. That was the guy she was married to, she knew him that way as steady and loving. Everyone else knew him as the guy who entered the room laughing and ready to make everyone else laugh. Always wearing a ball cap. All of this information she is offering is nice because I feel like I’ve got a beat on him now. I can see him more clearly.

Next I hear.

'Pennies from heaven'. Frances said he would be a guy who would sing that song. I don’t have the context for the song but her saying that gives me chills. And I hear this phrase a lot, pennies from heaven.

He followed up with a clear line, imprinted into my mind. 'You will see coins and those are me. I am with you then.'

I love this type of message. Such sweet shorthand offering symbolic gestures. Real life signs that spirit can send to us here in this thick gnarly dimension of serious-faced business calls and buying laundry detergent under fluorescent lights. I have no idea why coins are easily pushed around by spirit, but I'm all for it.

Other mediums will tell you this too. Bugs, butterflies, birds are all ways that spirit wanders in as well. Which kind of makes more sense to me since they are lighter and I would assume more easily conjured. It’s a fine collaboration really, spirit showing up as winged, flitting creatures. Coins seem kinda heavy to me, but hey that's the good word, and we like it when there is a good word.

Francis and I talked about having her say just 'yes', 'no' and 'maybe' answers - so that I could keep pulling in information and sort it myself, not relying on her to fill in the gaps.

So I say, I see a daughter - and - he’s a bit worried about her. She’s struggling with his death.

Yes.

I say “This one has a halo of flowers around her.”

She waits.

Next I struggle to see what kind of flowers they are because I don’t know the name of many flowers, not a botanist, not a florist, now I am wishing I was more of a smarty pants medium with a different kind of mind.

Mark begins coaching me from the other side saying ‘reach for it’, kinda teasing and pushing me to figure it out. I mention this and Frances laughs saying, “Yep, that sounds like him!”

“Oh - hay! I see Lily’s!’

“Yes”, Francis says. “That’s her name. Lily.” Sigh of relief. Also I deeply love the name Lily, but that’s another story for another time.

Now he brings in a bunch of key facts about the older daughter, about how Francis brings food to her and her family and he’s very grateful to her for doing that. He's pushing a stream of words and images.

I see the number 4, I say they are a party of 4, 2 kids. Not tall kids, not big kids, these are little kids. I see them doing laps around their parents, scooting around on small bikes and things.

Yes, yes yes.

Oh thank god with the yes’s, you know?

But I’ve been told by wise Medium teacher people, don’t take the No’s personally. There’s tons of good information in the whole stream, and if the brain blows it, just get back on the horse and ask another question. Amble back into the stream of the communication. Or the freeway. Or whatever metaphor you're running with.

The best 'yes' of all came when I saw an umbrella. I realized this umbrella was a mode of transportation. So I said, “Oh! He’s talking about Mary Poppins.”

And she burst into a joyous “Yes!” She filled in some details at this point, letting me know that she is known as Mary Poppins to her family and this is Mark’s nickname for her. In fact when he wrote about his beautiful wife in a book he penned, he titled that chapter ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’. I’d just watched Mary Poppins 2 a few weeks ago, so that umbrella flight pattern was fresh in my mind.

Also, randomly a dog came to the sliding glass door of the room I was sitting in. A super cute little dog, kind of a schnauzer looking thing earnestly looking for something. Likely, looking for my dog to play with, but immediately I knew it was significant.

I said, “There’s a little dog with him on the other side” I suddenly got an image that he holds this dog like a baby, like you would an infant. It’s freakin’ adorable.

So I have a real dog that showed up, but he was pointing to a spirit dog. Frances gasps at this one, this is indeed true, there is a little dog on the other side who is a little schnauzer and that is in fact exactly how he held the dog. She was happy to hear they are now together. It took both of us a little while to recover from this visitation. cause that was some serious magic.

Later we get to the crux of the reading, she has some questions about his death and his experience at the hospital. With COVID happening, it meant she and her family were not able to be with him, she was worried he may have suffered. He showed me a type of meter image that represents that he was only in his body for a small percentage of the time that he was in that hospital.

A couple weeks I say? No, 10 days.

Looking at the meter he shows me, it feels like 20% is all that he endured. “It seems he was only really there-there for like 2 of those days, at the most. Yes, he was looking for you, yes, it was scary. But he also totally understood and he felt you loving him from the kitchen table.”

As I say it, I realize that the kitchen table is significant, and mention it. “Oh, I bought a new one!” she says. “He’s laughing about that. But, he says he likes it”. “Oh good!” she says. “What is most important", I offer, "is that you can feel him around you, he's always around. You know when he comes by, and right now you’re denying that. That’s why we are doing this reading together today, because you keep denying it.”

“That’s true.” She said. “I told my friend that the whole reason for this reading is for me to begin to believe that what I’m getting as little drive by’s from him are really him.”

Emphatically I say “YES to that Ms Francis! That is what he is saying!’

So when the trifecta we have been running can evolve into a beam between two souls, that’s so much better. They can have the conversation and the knowing; their freeway full of love bumper stickers. But, of course it can be hard for us living folks to believe that all of those signs are real. But they are real my friends, they really, really are. One of my favorite things to say, (as informed by folks on the other side), is...If you think that that thing, bird visitor, letter in the mailbox, coin, song on the radio is your loved one - it is.

Trust it.

And they have so much fun with us. Sometimes the signs come with so much flow and whoa, in fact, there is a fun ending to this story. At the end of our time together, Francis walked into another room while we were still on the phone and found a coin on her table. That table we talked about. She said, “Oh the cleaners must have left it here.” Then we both laughed, and said at the same time we said “Or it was Mark!” It was pretty awesome, I pointed to the sky like a football player after a touchdown. Nicely done, dude!

A few days later I heard from Frances about another coincidence. She said one of the kids I saw running circles around their parents had found a coin and brought it to her Mom saying ‘Look Momma, look at this penny’. Which was cool enough, but to make it even more dramatic, this event happened during the very time that Frances and I were on the phone doing the reading.

And for the trifecta? A second after seeing this message about coin #2, still grinning at my phone, I was jumping on a call with Joy. No kidding, my friend's name is Joy. She and I began talking about the current astrology and how maybe it had been a bit more challenging. At that moment I opened my email app on my phone (kind of unconsciously, you know how sometimes hands operate without permission?) and the next email that popped in was from this astrology zone site pictured below. I thought, ‘How nice, I was just looking for some astrology and here it is and…..’ Then, my eyes got very, very big. In fact, my face must have been hilarious. Luckily it was over the zoom so Joy saw it and said, “Holy cow, what was that?”

Take a look at the photo below, the headline read "Pennies from Heaven". Once I recovered, I tipped my hat to Mark on the other side like, ‘Hay! I see you. Nice job. I’ll tell Francis.' And I heard him laugh his boisterous laugh.

--

Edited to add: *I have changed their names.

Also! A week or so after this Mary Poppins reading (as above) I did a reading for a dear friend who I had asked to read this essay as I was looking for some feedback (Ok, actually, encouragement). Immediately his cousin from the other side came through. My friend said, 'But I haven't talked to him in so long!' I laughed. 'Yep! they still care about us - a lot!' THEN that cousin mentioned his Mom, who is named Francis. And I was like 'Huh! That's the name I made up for the essay I asked you to read. Funny.' So then! He reads the essay and says to me, 'Huh. Crazy fact? The cousin's brother's name is Mark'. Ha. That cousin had a hold of me for many days before coming through to see my friend. I can always hear them laughing over there, and the cousin is now the one laughing. But, to be fair, our small minds must be funny to watch. xoxo