Later that night when I went to bed, I was almost asleep when something tapped twice—hard—on my mattress. I jumped, and once again spoke out loud. “James, if that’s you, I hear you. I felt that. I love you.” The ongoing visits from him left me mystified. Yes, they’d slowed down some, but they were still happening. I wanted to believe he was okay, that he just popped in sometimes, especially when I forgot and spoke out loud to him. I was really trying to break that habit.
Sometimes, those closest to us can lead us to what we didn’t expect to find. My husband’s niece Tanya had somehow pulled through a devastating stroke a couple months before. It had been touch and go for a while, with the doctors saying she would not live. Then they revised their prognosis to say that if she did, she would be a vegetable, unable to ever lead a normal life, destined to be institutionalized forever.
After the shock began to fade—at this relatively young woman being at death’s door—the praying started. And then, day by day, Tanya began to improve. We were unable to get away to see her immediately after her stroke, but we stayed in contact with family on her progress.
My husband’s family had always been fairly devout; they always said grace before our meals at yearly gatherings, and they lived their Christian values. These were good and decent people who not only talked the talk, but walked the walk. They helped others whenever they could and were impressive both in their faith and their stoicism.
Finally, over a long holiday weekend, we drove the several hours to see Tanya after she’d been transferred to a rehab center. There were both tears and smiles. Tanya had retained her sense of humor, joking about the helmet they made her wear while her missing piece of skull remained covered only by a flap of skin. I couldn’t help but remember that my son had this same surgery and didn’t survive it. Tanya still tired easily, so after a half-hour visit, we made our way to my sister-in-law’s house for a bite to eat before the trip home. We were anxious to hear more about everything that had taken place. Tanya’s husband, Dwayne, usually a very quiet, amiable guy, had a lot to say that day.
“Tanya told me her dad sent her back,” Dwayne began. Puzzled, I waited to hear him out, as Tanya’s dad, Gerald, had been dead for almost a decade. Dwayne shook his head, seemingly still amazed, then gazed steadily at me. “And Tanya said her dead aunt was there too.”
Dumbfounded, I asked what had happened.
After Tanya had awakened from her stroke and surgery, she told Dwayne that her dad and her aunt had walked up to her. They told her it wasn’t her time yet, and she had to go back! She told this to Dwayne as soon as she woke up.
I explained to Dwayne that I was writing a book about just these kinds of things.
“That’s not all that’s happened,” said my husband’s sister. “Did you know that Dwayne saw something in the weeks before Gerald died? And on the night he died too?”
We told her that we hadn’t heard about this, and Dwayne, who never said much even on a talkative day, began to tell us the story.
“Gerald had been in the hospital and had descended into a coma. No one could wake him up, and they knew if he didn’t wake soon, things must be moving toward his end. They’d all tried talking to Gerald, telling him to get up, doing their best to rouse him. One day, I was sitting in Gerald’s room with him, when I looked up to see what looked like a window appear in the wall, with people moving behind it. There hadn’t been a window there before! Suddenly, a woman stepped right out of the wall. She walked to Gerald’s bed, took his hand, and said ‘Wake up.’ As soon as she touched his hand, Gerald sat up! He was wide awake. ‘Mommy,’ Gerald said, and then the woman just disappeared. Then Gerald looked over and saw me there, and began thanking me for all I’d done for his family and for him.”
My sister-in-law chimed in. “When I came into Gerald’s hospital room, Dwayne told me what had happened, and then he described the woman who came. It was Gerald’s mother—to a T—and Dwayne had never met her. She’d died long before Tanya and Dwayne got married.”
I was speechless after hearing this incredible story. I knew and trusted these people; they’d never make something like this up. My sister-in-law then began another story.
The night her husband, Gerald, died, Dwayne was sitting there beside his bed, and my sister-in-law noticed that Dwayne kept looking up at the ceiling. She said Dwayne was acting very strange and just kept glancing up at one spot.
Dwayne looked slightly embarrassed, and softly said, “I thought maybe I was going crazy.”
I asked him what he saw up near the ceiling.
“Jesus. I saw the face of Jesus. I think he came for Gerald.”
The table fell silent. Far be it from me to discount this vision—I myself had seen too many unexplainable things. I’d also witnessed my son’s returns after his death. So I quietly nodded. Dwayne looked uncomfortable.
I don’t know what Dwayne saw, but knowing his honesty, I am not prepared to call him a liar. And like all Christians who hope that the Lord himself might come for us when it’s our time, many of us can relate to this.
I now looked at quiet, unassuming Dwayne in a new way. I already knew he was a good husband, a great father, and a kind and decent man. But now I knew he’d been blessed with visions of things many of us may never get to see.
I drove home that day through a pouring rainstorm, deep in thought about God, life, death, and what awaits us afterward. All I discovered was that the more I learned, the less I knew.
The next day, I drove to meet a lady for a ghost-story interview. A light rain was falling as I made my way to my favorite coffee shop to meet an old friend I hadn’t seen for a while. Maura, originally born in Ireland, and her husband, Dick, had been friends with my aunt and uncle, so I’d met them many years before. I also knew their daughter,
who was an artist and came to my music performances occasionally. Dick had been a lifelong bluegrass musician, so he and I also had many musician friends in common. Maura’s husband had passed away a few years before, but I’d heard through their daughter that Maura had some stories to tell me, and I definitely wanted to hear them.
I maneuvered my car into a parking space and pulled my hood up against the raindrops. It had been a cold, wet day. I ordered a cup of chai and sat down in the window alcove. Maura arrived moments later, smiling and carrying a bag that she laid on our table. “It’s an answering machine,” she told me mysteriously, as I gave her a quizzical look. But she just shook her head, not yet ready to tell me what it meant. Maura pulled out a chair and sat as I went to order coffee and scones. I carried her decaf and the blueberry scones to the table.
Maura’s pleasant hazel eyes crinkled when she laughed, and her red hair and fair complexion proclaimed her Irish heritage. I was very curious about the answering machine, but politely made small talk as we sipped our hot drinks and nibbled the delicious bakery treats. Finally, I got down to business.
“I know you had some experiences after Dick died, and I’d like to hear everything.”
Maura nodded and pointed to the answering machine she’d brought. “If you can hook this up, you can hear for yourself.” Seeing my puzzled look again, she smiled.
Maura told me she had several stories to tell, and they were kind of intertwined, so she started from the beginning. The first thing she told me was that she and Dick had had a son who was killed in an accident.
I told her I was sorry and that I’d heard that from her daughter.
Maura nodded. “The night our son died, my husband Dick woke up at 2:00 a.m. gasping for breath and choking, unable to get air, and just as that was happening, the phone rang. But when I answered it, there was no one there.” Maura frowned slightly at the memory. “Two hours later, the police came and told us that our son had died at 2:00 a.m.—the official cause was he’d choked to death.” Oh, how sad, I thought.
Maura continued on.
She and Dick had discussed i
t afterward, wondering if somehow their son was able to call them when he died, trying to reach out one last time. And of course they wondered if somehow Dick had experienced what their son was going through—fighting for air and choking, which then woke Dick up. The more the couple talked about the phone call and how Dick couldn’t breathe when he awoke, the more they felt it was their son trying to let them know.
Maura looked sad as she sipped her coffee. She continued with the rest of the story.
Dick began to have some health problems of his own. Dick’s bluegrass band wasn’t together at that time, and some of his friends wanted to hire Dick’s band for an event. So Dick told them about a good band that they could hire instead. Maura and Dick decided to take their friends to see the band perform locally that night. They sat right up front. It was a loud nightclub setting, and while they were all watching the band, Dick’s head fell onto Maura’s shoulder. She thought he was just fooling around with her, as he often did. But when Maura asked him what he was doing, she saw that his eyes were rolled back.
Maura screamed and the band onstage noticed immediately and asked if there were any EMTs in the house. There were, and they came running. Dick’s heart had stopped—he was clinically dead. Maura said it seemed like forever until the ambulance arrived. Finally when it did, the paramedics used the paddles on Dick, and his heart restarted. But it had been at least seventeen minutes since his heart stopped.
At the hospital, they did a procedure for blocked arteries, but because Dick had been dead for so long, the surgeon didn’t think he would ever wake up. And yet, somehow he did. It took Dick a little while to come back to his old self, but one day the surgeon came in to talk to him. He told Dick he’d never had a patient die for so long, and the surgeon wanted to know if Dick had seen the light. Dick said no, but that he’d been trying to catch a little cherub angel he’d been following. Dick said it was just wonderful where he was, that he felt love and joy, and the pain he’d suffered for years since he’d had spinal surgery was gone—at least until he slammed back into his body.
This event really changed Dick too. Ever since their son had died, Dick couldn’t stand to go to funerals. But after Dick himself died that day, he didn’t feel this way any longer. In fact, he would often go to funerals just to talk to the survivors and reassure them how wonderful it was on the other side!
I told Maura that maybe that’s why he didn’t go at that time—because he was needed here to tell others about his experience.
Maura nodded again and told me she’d wondered the same thing.
“So what is the answering machine for?” I finally asked her, and Maura smiled again.
“That’s the most amazing part of all,” Maura said.
After a few more years together, Dick had been diagnosed with cancer. He lived with it for over a year, and he and Maura had a lot of talks—about their son, about Dick’s experience with death, and toward the end, Dick promised Maura he’d try to come back to her if he could.
Maura and Dick’s granddaughter’s birthday was three weeks after Dick died. The girl had been having a terrible time because she and her grandpa had always been so close, going to breakfast each Sunday and spending lots of time together. The granddaughter was taking his death really hard. On the girl’s birthday, Maura came home from the store and saw the light on the answering machine blinking, showing that a message had come in. And when Maura played it back, she sat in shock. The message was an eerie voice saying “Hello”—it had a very hollow, scratchy, echoey tone to it. But even so, Maura could hear that it was her dead husband, Dick. She called her daughter and everyone she could think of, and they all came over and agreed—it was definitely Dick. There was no number on the caller ID—it really was a call from the grave.
Maura and I sat in silence for a few minutes after she relayed her story.
Then Maura told me her daughter also had an experience if I wanted to hear about it. I told her I did.
Right before Maura and Dick’s son died, their daughter, the boy’s sister, went to an antique shop one day and found a wooden rocker that she just fell in love with. She brought it home and used it regularly. Her best friend and neighbor was there one day with her young son, and he had wandered into the room where the chair was kept. The boy called to Maura’s daughter from the other room, “Did you know your new chair says ‘Believe’ on it?”
Maura’s daughter was puzzled and didn’t understand what the boy meant at first—because the chair didn’t have anything written on it. So Maura’s daughter brought the chair out into the light, and sure enough, the word “Believe” was spelled out across the back of it, seemingly written in the grain of the wood! A week later, Maura and Dick’s son—her brother—was killed. It spooked Maura’s daughter so badly that she covered the chair up with a sheet and couldn’t bear to have it in the house. She gave it to her neighbor’s son. By that time, it no longer said “Believe” on it. The word went away on its own somehow, just as mysteriously as it had appeared.
Maura looked thoughtful, and then began to tell me another story about their son’s return.
That wasn’t the only time Maura’s daughter believes her brother came back to her after his death. Maura’s daughter is an artist and had been in a real rut, artistically speaking. Just burnt out and unable to think of anything new to draw or paint. She had already done a painted dinnerware line for several large chain stores. But she found herself in a stagnant state of mind. Her brother had been her biggest supporter, often watching over her shoulder as she painted. So obviously the girl was devastated when her brother died. Not long afterwards, while she was going through her painter’s block, she had a dream. Her brother came up behind her in the dream and grabbed her shoulder. Then he whispered in her ear: “Try watercolors.”
Maura’s daughter had never tried watercolors, although Maura had bought her daughter a set long before. The daughter kept them stored in a closet, unused. When she woke up the next morning after the dream, she came down to her studio, and in the middle of the floor sat a small tube of red watercolor paint. There was no way it could’ve been dropped there—her only watercolors were in the old set stored in the closet, which was nowhere near her studio area. Maura’s daughter knew then that her brother had come back to her in her time of need. Somehow, he left the tube of watercolors to reinforce what he’d told his sister in the dream. As her biggest fan, he’d always helped and encouraged her before. And he helped her after death too. It worked. Maura’s daughter went on to create new and successful lines in watercolor.
I told Maura I thought it was great that a loving brother was seemingly still showing his sister support. That had to make them both feel good.
We finished our scones and coffee and said our goodbyes. Maura asked me to take the answering machine so I could hear and record Dick’s call from beyond the grave. And I did. You can hear this and see other evidence at my Facebook author page, www.facebook.com/debrarobinsonauthor. I only wish my son James could have called and left me the sound of his voice.
Later that night I was sitting in my usual spot on the sofa, laptop on my knees and feet up on the coffee table in front of me. I was home alone with just the dogs. My little dog Bo Bo was curled up beside me on the couch in his usual spot. And James’s big Lab, Leia, was asleep in the kitchen. The door to the kitchen, about three feet away on my right, was closed. This is the same door that James had scratched his initials into one night after he died. I had the TV on mute, so the room was quiet and still. Suddenly I heard—click. The sound of the old metal doorknob turning made me jump. With a metallic rattle and a click, the door slowly swung open. From my position on the sofa I could see Leia fast asleep a few feet inside the door on a rug. So it wasn’t her up against it.
“James, is that you?” I always talked to him when these things happened, just in case he wanted me to, just in case he needed the acknowledgement. But there was no other sound. I got up to ch
eck the door in case there was anything else written on it this time, but there was nothing different. James’s initials were still scratched into the century-old wood—they’d somehow appeared one night right after he died, after I’d heard the sound of scratching and then five knocks, apparently to get my attention. I looked down at James’s old dog, almost sixteen and very frail now, still snoring, fast asleep on the rug. I sighed and closed the door again. I went back to my work. A short time after this happened, James’s old friend Tazz posted on Facebook.
“My computer just opened and turned itself on!” I quizzed him about it, thinking maybe he opened it himself and forgot, after maybe having a few beers or something. But Tazz was stone-cold sober.
He told me he’d gone to bed and looked over at his computer, thinking maybe he’d use it before he went to sleep. It was closed tight. Then when he couldn’t sleep, he decided to get up and go online, and the computer was wide open and turned on! I told him what had just happened here.
Tazz and I both knew that James had visited him before. Just after James had died, he’d manifested as a blue light hovering over Tazz that had scared poor Tazz’s friends half to death when they witnessed it! I finally had more peace about these things. I didn’t feel James’s pain or desperation any longer, and I hoped it was just his way of letting us know he was still around and just visiting us all occasionally.
The next day was finally the first beautiful one in what was turning out to be a very late spring. It had been cold and snowy far into March and April that year. I’d spent a few hours cleaning up the yard, picking up sticks, and raking leaves. When I headed into the house to get a cup of tea, it was almost dark. My husband had been in the basement studio working, and as I checked my email in the living room, he passed by, headed outside with the clippers. He’d wanted to help me do some yard work but had lost track of time.
The Dead are Watching Page 6