Jump Girl

by Salicrow

  The man I saw sitting on the hospital bed was not that man. He carried a heavy sorrow as if his heart was sick. I could feel it. His heart was failing him, not only from the emotions he held but also from illness. He had heart problems and was in the hospital because of them. I looked around and saw that he was alone. His wife was nowhere in sight.

  Seeing him there with his heavy burden, I started crying, my physical body sobbing with deep, hidden tears. In my astral form, as I floated in the corner of the room, I felt a tug, as if a strand of energy connected me to him, and something was pulling on it. As I felt the tug, he turned and looked up into the corner of the room and saw me again.

  When I came back to my body, I told Noel what had happened. This experience haunted me. I didn’t want my father to be part of my life now. I had done my work around him when I went to see Jimmy. So why had I sought him out now?

  That night Grammy came to visit. In fact, she began visiting me every night just as I began to fall asleep. When I closed my eyes, Grammy Brown would appear. At first I was ecstatic to have contact with her, but it soon became apparent that she, like the others, was there to teach me and set me right on my path.

  She would start by asking me a bunch of questions: Were you ever physically abused as a child, Sali?

  No.

  Did your father and mother abandon you as a child?

  No.

  Hmm. Interesting. Your father was abandoned. He was left with me when he was still a baby. I loved him, but I was not his mother, nor his father. I wonder how it was that he didn’t do the same to you?

  Her questions were not really questions. She was trying to get me to see that my life had not been as hard as my father’s. He had done the best he could with the experiences he’d been given. Her questioning went on like that every night, often with her repeating the same questions or showing me images of terrible ways in which I could have been abused and then asking if that had happened to me. She was making a point.

  While my Grammy worked on me at night, Tamin worked on me during the day. He preached on and on about how much more difficult it was to heal problems when one of the parties involved was dead. Again and again I went back to look at the scene from the hospital. My father would look up into the corner of the room, sensing me. I got more out of the experience every time I visited. I realized that my father perceived me as some kind of angel.

  Tamin’s advice is something I often share with my clients. It is far easier to make amends and begin the healing process while both people are still alive. After all, most people cannot talk to the dead. When we go to our deathbed with unresolved issues, there is a good chance we are going to be working on that stuff in the next lifetime. Maybe I’m just efficient, but I am not into repeating lessons.

  As time went on and my journey work with Tamin continued, I was able to look at the damage my father had sustained throughout his life. I continued to visit him in the same location from the corner of the room, but while I was there, I looked into him psychically. Time warped, and I was taken from viewing him on the hospital bed to seeing him as a child, as a young man, in the jungles of Vietnam. I discerned shades of his current life and watched memories like movies of times we had shared together. The more I watched, the softer my heart became. The anger was seeping out of me.

  As it left, I realized that beneath it all was a deep well of sorrow. I loved my father and suffered for the loss of him in my life. I told myself it was something my family did: they disowned. I had heard jokes about the Irish and the art of disowning, and I had just accepted this as something to which we were prone. We are a passionate people, and that side of my family told many stories of fights that spanned years when each side refused to acknowledged that the other existed. It went beyond fighting. People acted as if the other person was dead and looked right through them as if they were invisible.

  I witnessed my grandfather in the act of disowning his only daughter when she was sixteen. I remember him driving through Littleton with me sitting in the back of his van. We passed his daughter, my aunt, walking down the sidewalk, and I got excited and exclaimed loudly, “There’s Aunt Sheila!” My grandfather didn’t even turn his head to look. He kept his eyes straight ahead and pretended not to hear me. After I repeated myself three or four times, Grammy Brown said, “That’s enough, Sali. He can’t see her.”

  The statement “he can’t see her” confused me, but the way Grammy looked at me made me realize that what she spoke of was a type of magic, like a spell that was almost impossible to stop once it got started.

  In watching my father, I understood this ability to treat someone as if they were dead. It wasn’t a gift; it was a curse, the sort that keeps you bitter with a wound just beneath the surface, for years or lifetimes. The wound pokes you at every family gathering and every important life moment.

  I decided to write my father a letter. I made a scrapbook and filled it with pictures of my life: my wedding, my children, my home, places that were special to me, things I loved. I put in captions and artwork, pictures my kids drew for him, their excitement showing in their work. I left the last pages empty and said he could fill them with pictures like the ones I had sent him. I wrote my truth and told the story of who I was. I invited him to be part of my life and family. It was a powerful piece of secular magic, a prayer of love.

  I did not know my father’s address; nor did I want to ask relatives for it. I didn’t want anyone else to know of my actions. This was partly because I felt the work would be more powerful if it was held in silence. Mostly it was because I didn’t want anyone else to know, in case he refused my peace offering.

  This is where spirit showed me that it can do real work in the world of the living. Grammy Brown gave me my father’s address. My whole life read like a fantasy novel by this point—traveling between lifetimes, talking to dead people, having beams of energy shooting through the center of my body—so getting a mailing address from my dead great-grandmother seemed reasonable.

  I didn’t hear from my father for two weeks and had started to think he was no longer interested in me and I had been a fool. Then I received a package from him in return that included a beautiful letter, a picture of him and his dog, and a few little things for the kids. He started his letter by apologizing for being so late in replying, but I had gotten his mailing address wrong by one number, and my package had cycled around the mail system for a while before he received it.

  One number! That was pretty damn impressive considering where I had gotten my information.

  I was given ten more years with my father before he passed. Through the healing of our relationship, my father was able to heal the relationships with all of his family, including my mother.

  44

  Boxed up and Manic

  My spirits, particularly Peter, had begun talking to me about responsibility and plans. He was forever reminding me that I had planned this life and that I needed to follow my plan. He told me my primary job in this lifetime was to work as a bridge between the worlds of the living and the dead. He told me I would be famous, known for my ability to talk to the dead. He said the barrier between the living and the dead is the primary obstacle to the evolution of the human race, but it’s there for a reason: to be overcome in a special way that will open other cosmic doors.

  People were going to start waking up in masses, Peter said, and they would be confused, unable to process the emotional overload of becoming empathic. To help people wake up, I was going to travel locally, throughout the country, and around the world. I had to become more responsible, more vocal.

  He told me I would write a book—many books, in fact. I would be a teacher of magic, energy work, and sound. My mind frantically raced to make sense of what he was saying. How the fuck was I supposed to build Hogwarts? Whenever I started to panic, he would remind me that I had planned well and that my path would expand naturally like ripples in a pond. I would be ready every step of the way. I would know when it was time for the next move. />
  One day in early December when my husband was at work and the kids were in school, I was experiencing visions about the ecological, political, and psychospiritual changes coming to the world and my part in it. I suddenly decided things of the world were no longer necessary. I was going to become a minimalist and get rid of everything!

  My husband came home that afternoon to find our living room stacked full with boxes, trunks, and crates. Costumes, books, knickknacks, jewelry, and other family items were stacked in the middle of the living room. I had gathered belongings from every room and was still manically rushing about the house as he walked through the door.

  He stood in the hallway, his face white with shock. “What the fuck is going on?” he said. “What are you doing? Why is all this stuff stacked here?”

  I explained that I would no longer be needing any of my earthly belongings and that I was making room for whatever was to happen.

  The path to becoming a shaman is one that not everyone survives. Death is not the greatest threat that the shaman faces. I understood this even as I experienced it. I knew I was being tested, tried, and beaten into shape. Far in the depths of my soul, I knew I would survive. But there were moments when my survival and sanity no doubt looked like they hung in the balance.

  Noel coaxed me to sit down, and he comforted me. He told me that being connected to spirit didn’t have to mean living a life devoid of pleasure. I really did love many of the things he saw in the pile. He didn’t tell me I was crazy; he simply said that I might want to wait before making such decisions. Noel eventually convinced me to keep most of the stuff, but I did give away a shit-ton. It started a tradition for me of cleaning out my closets and purging unnecessary goods just before the holidays.

  The stacking of boxes in the living room was followed by pacing the house and showering three or four times a day. I constantly felt like I was behind the eight ball, my mind squirming, trying to figure out how the things I’d seen for myself were going to happen. It has always been a problem of mine that if I know something is supposed to happen, I impatiently race forward as if I’m running out of time.

  When doing readings, I see that people generally fall into three categories when receiving information. The first category stays true to course, only shifting around things they want to avoid. The second category puts the brakes on, even if the thing they desire is approaching. They get nervous about fucking it up, so they downshift to second gear and proceed with extreme caution. The third category puts the pedal to the metal and drives like a bat out of hell. I guess you know by now I’m the third kind. I’m the kind of person who walks to the edge of the cliff, counts to three, and jumps into deep water before I can change my mind. I sink or swim, but I do best when put right to the test.

  The full-immersion personality always seemed to serve me, even if I did occasionally feel a bit uncomfortable. This was different, though; it was jumping over and over and over again without my feet ever reaching the bottom. No matter how far I jumped, I never seemed to touch solid ground.

  I had to work really hard to prepare myself for outings to the grocery store and school-board meetings. I remember sitting at a budget meeting with members of the school board, the principal, and the superintendent of the school district, and having to struggle to stay focused as spirits were chatting away in my mind, telling me who would come through the door next, often describing something about them such as what they were wearing or the mood they were in. Even though I often felt like Alice in her adventures in Wonderland, I was also trying hard to do the good-mom thing. I was holding my shit together. The kids were taking ski lessons through the school, and I was working on budgets with the chatty Cathies of the spirit world in my head.

  All of this was a deliberate teaching. They were training me in multitasking my communications, teaching me how to be present in one conversation without giving away that I was listening to another on the back burner in my head. They were teaching me to have a poker face and play my hand close to my vest. They were my backup, my team; they watched over me. It was kind of like being undercover and listening to your support team via earphone.

  I have since developed a very deep relationship with my spirits, and I use their services in special ways. I don’t walk into a dark parking lot without Adam first checking the perimeter. At the same time, I have also had spirits get me parking spots at Christmas, give me directions, help diagnose a weird sound my car was making, and more. They teach me in the way I learn best—through experience.

  One day I was on my way to pick up my daughter Levi up from a day of skiing at the mountain. I knew the time when school skiing ended, and by my calculations, I was going to arrive about fifteen minutes early. As I drove down the hill toward the ski area, I started seeing my neighbors driving up the hill, heading toward me in the opposite direction. After passing a neighbor whose child I knew skied, I began to panic. Maybe I had my times wrong; maybe skiing got out half an hour before I thought it did. My daughter was going to be there scared, wondering where I was.

  I began to drive faster, but I couldn’t go too fast because the roads were covered in a buttery snow. I begged Adam to be with her, to let her know that I was on my way, that I was coming. My kids knew who Adam was—there was no hiding it by this point—but they had never witnessed him.

  By the time I got to the mountain, Levi was in the lodge sitting with her friend and her friend’s mom. I was so thankful and felt like the biggest-loser mom in the universe. The friend’s mom just said she understood, and I knew she did, because I read her thoughts as they passed across her mind.

  Mind reading is one of those things that make some people nervous when you tell them you’re a psychic. They immediately think, Oh, shit, what if she can tell what I’m thinking? So I want to explain it a little. Mind reading takes concentration; otherwise, it happens sporadically and usually just involves the surface thoughts. The hidden bits, the secrets, are generally more guarded. I don’t really give a shit what most people are thinking, but if there is danger, I will hear it. I have trained my brain to listen for those thoughts.

  I apologized to Levi, hugged her, and told her I hoped she wasn’t scared. She was still only in the fifth grade.

  When we got to the car, she told me, “I heard Adam.”

  I looked at her through the rear-view mirror as she buckled in. My breath caught in my throat. For a split second time separated, as Adam told me how he had told her, Your mom is on the way, don’t worry.

  When I let out my breath, Levi said, “He told me, ‘Your mom is going to be late, don’t worry.’” Her words and Adam’s were almost identical. Levi could hear spirits too.

  45

  Backyard Communication

  As my world crumbled and rebuilt itself, I found myself visited by many spirits. At least they didn’t come in the middle of the night anymore, thanks to my doorman, Adam.

  One of the guests during my visiting hours was the father of one of Sandy’s children. He had died recently and had a lot to work through. He was too smart for his own good, his intelligence tainted with cunning. I liked Paul, although I knew his lifestyle had often bordered on the piratical. But at the end of his relationship with my sister, he had showed his less savory side, and I felt some hesitation in meeting with him.

  He explained that he was reviewing his life and needed to speak to my sister to make amends and apologize. As when I first came into contact with Adam, Paul told me clear stories of his life for confirmation. He told me personal stories about their travels in a Winnebago, their time in Mexico, and situations for which he was responsible. I called Sandy and told her the things he had told me. My sister agreed to meet with him but preferred to do it outside. Sandy likes being outdoors; that’s where she has always been most at ease. When she was a child, she was too wild for the parlor arts, like cards, so Grammy Brown sent her outside instead to learn the magic of wild-crafting.

  We sat in the upper corner of her yard under the cedars, where we could look
out over the field and see the brook weaving through tall grass at the edge of the woods. Sandy’s yard, like my own, is a place of energy that remembered what it would become. It’s a place of power where the energy of the land has been made stronger by the workings of geomancy.

  We bundled up and grabbed a couple of lawn chairs. The ground was frozen, covered with a dusting of snow. Winter hadn’t yet settled in, as it was not yet solstice. It was stick season in Vermont, a time when the leaves have fallen and the brown, barren land feels a bit haunted. We sat with our winter coats, hats, and mittens, the air crisp on our cheeks. Sandy was smoking a cigarette, savoring it as we prepared to begin. I took a drag or two, my usual quotient.

  I created sacred space, surrounding myself with energy and spreading my aura out around us like a shield. Sandy’s land itself carried enough protection of its own: spells and prayers she had woven into the landscape, the plants she planted, the way she placed stones. It was protected. But I had become habitual about my protective maneuvers, feeling that it was better to be ritualistic about protection when dealing with spirits of the dead. I called upon Adam and asked that he watch my back, keep track, and make sure no one other than Paul be let through.

  This was the first time I had worked as a medium for another and passed messages between the living and the dead. It was also the first time I had done spirit communication in front of anyone other than Noel without tools like a Ouija board. This was just me and my senses connecting through the veil. I wasn’t nervous; I don’t know what I was. I could feel Paul’s anxiety as he began to communicate. He came through boldly and in full persona. I could feel his bravado as a cover-up for what he felt beneath it: remorse, sorrow, inadequacy.