Visions

I’m a believer….a firm believer in life after death.  In my world, death is just a transition to our next life.  The afterlife which is really eternal life.  I didn’t get this from being a religious person.  I’m not particularly religious but I try to be spiritual.  I eschew religiosity.  I’m just not too good at following all the rules.

Everything changed for me at the age of 19, when I visited a spiritualist colony, Cassadaga, in central Florida.  It was a lark on a slow, sunny Sunday afternoon and my sister had been dying to go. Many Sunday afternoons we spent going antiquing or taking in film festivals starring Greta Garbo or Gloria Swanson, but Cassadaga was a new adventure.  Trust me, it didn’t disappoint.

We just walked up to a medium’s front porch, knocked on the door and asked for a reading  During my turn, the medium started coughing like a madwoman and she managed to ask me if anybody had died from throat cancer.  Well, that was my great grandfather who told me in that session I would be speaking in front of people one day and I needed to get back in school.

That turned out to be somewhat prophetic as I had dropped out of college and would go on to be a teacher and later an administrator.  There was also devastating news.  My grandmother was very ill and would not recover.  When I told my mother, she told me to stop cavorting with the devil.  A month later, my grandmother was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

I’ve been to Cassadaga dozens of times now and I have a cast of characters who seem to always visit me there.  My grandmother, my friend, Marcia, who passed in her early 50s from a brain hemorrhage, my ex-boyfriend’s mother, Edith, who advised me to kick him to the curb.  My Uncle Vinnie came about a month after he passed.  I swear it is like having a ‘normal’ conversation with my friends and family members who have gone on.  They know what’s going on in my life.  It’s like they’re here with me.  Which on some level they are.

None of this is lost on BH.  He’s not a believer.  If it ain’t tangible, it just can’t be.  Or not until he has actual proof.  I tell him there are pretty good odds that I will pass before him since he’s been taking good care of himself his whole life and I’ve been taking good care of myself for three years.  I tell him not to worry because I will definitely send him a sign from the other side so he’ll know it’s real.

Today, I read in the Herald-Tribune that palliative care physicians are finally starting to research the role of patients’ end-lo-life dreams and visions.  These have been happening for thousands of years and have shown up in medieval writings and Renaissance paintings, in Shakespeare’s works and in 19th century American and British novels.  We’re not talking near-death experiences, these are visions that happen as people get closer to death.

How amazing that our culture can finally start to appreciate this perfectly natural phenomenon and not pooh-pooh it!  We’re so quick to say the patient is delirious or losing their mind or over-medicated.  One of the most powerful stories I read was about a 13 year old girl who was dying of bone cancer.  She had a vision where she saw her mother’s best friend who had died of leukemia years ago playing with the curtains in her mother’s bedroom.  She turned to her mother and said, “I had a feeling she was coming to say, ‘You’re going to be OK.’ I felt relief and happiness and I wasn't afraid of it at all.”

I remember my own grandmother weeks away from her passing speaking to her mother as if she was there.  And I think she was.  She had come to comfort her, I believe.
Days before my husband, Kevin, left us, he awoke and was startled.  His eyes opened wide and he declared, “I’m not supposed to be here.  I died.”  They were already surrounding him.  I asked him if his Aunt Daisy was there.  He nodded.  She had never married and she contributed greatly to his college education.  He adored her.  I knew she would come.  He was hovering between life and death and her presence lessened the fear.

So far, no visions for me.  I can’t even remember any of my dreams.  Guess I ain’t going anywhere for awhile!