by John Edward
“We used to tease her, ‘You’re such a nag you must drive him crazy,’” the spirit’s mom says.
My attention is drawn to the kitchen window. “Did anyone think they saw him in that window?” I ask.
After a moment, this clicks for the mom. “The day it happened, we were sitting in the yard and I looked up at my kitchen window, and I told my daughter, ‘My God, I thought I saw your brother.’ It wasn’t a vision or anything like that. His friend Doug was in the kitchen, and he looked like him.”
The spirit talks about his physical appearance, focusing on his build, which is superb. At another point, he shows me himself underwater, scuba diving, surrounded by fish. I’m told it’s Cancun. The family confirms the trip. “That’s exactly where he was,” says the mom.
“Who’s Lisa?”
A very important person, she says excitedly. “She was his babysitter when he was little. He was always so concerned about her because she lost her husband.”
“I’m seeing his name in cement in front of the house,” I say.
This doesn’t make sense to anyone.
“I’m getting his middle initial as ‘J.’”
No, I’m told.
Throughout the reading, the spirit gives me the feeling of familiarity. I keep asking the family if they know whether I knew him, because it feels as if I did. I ask if we went to the same college or worked together, or somehow knew each other through mutual friends or acquaintances. But they say no, we didn’t know each other. Did he ever go to the show? No, they say—“Mike didn’t believe in any of this.”
“I know I’ve seen him somewhere,” I say at one point.
After well over an hour, he pulls his energy back and the reading ends—without the spirit ever giving me any indication that he was a victim of the September 11 attacks. So for all I know, it was someone else who came through, maybe another son. But then the family starts filling in the blanks, as in I’ve Got a Secret.
The spirit’s name is Mike, and yes, he did pass on September 11. His mother tells me that her friend’s sister recently had a reading at the studio, and her son came through. That’s why he felt so familiar to me. In a sense, I did know him. He was a firefighter. His name was Mike Kiefer.
It’s a cardinal rule on the show that I cannot know anything about anyone coming in, or even about the process of booking the appointments. So only later do I learn that after Eileen and Patty, the two women whose sister was Pat Kiefer’s friend, were read in the studio, producer Kim Dunn had followed up with them and found out that they had told Pat Kiefer about the reading and that she’d had a positive response. Kim had then called Pat and asked if she and her family would be interested in a reading in their home.
“I took everything off the walls, all the pictures of Mike, everything having to do with the fire department,” Pat later told my collaborator. “As much as I believe in this, I was thinking, I’m going to put him to the test. What validated it was that he came through with specific things about our family, and not once did he mention Mike being a fireman, or the Twin Towers. And that was even more proof, because that would have been so easy to say, ‘I’m seeing big buildings and fire.’”
In the post-reading discussion, I learn what made sense and what didn’t. Pat explains what it meant when Mike thanked his father “for speaking up” for him, and when he said he was “sorry you were interrupted.” After September 11, Pat and Bud went to a support group for parents of firefighters lost in the tragedy.
“We all sat in a circle and had to introduce ourselves and say who we lost,” Pat recalled. “Now I’m a real talker, but I didn’t think my husband was going to say anything. But they come to us, and Bud starts talking. He says, ‘I lost my best friend, who also happens to be my son.’ He says he will never be able to get over this, and is really talking. But I keep interrupting him, saying, ‘Tell them he’s 25,’ and this and that. In the car going home, I told him, ‘It was great that you spoke up for him and I’m sorry I interrupted you.’ And these were the exact words in the reading, that Mike thanks Bud ‘for speaking up for him’ and he’s sorry he was interrupted.”
We get up from the table. Pat wants to show me some things. During the reading, I pointed to her younger daughter, Kerri, then 18, and said I was seeing Pooh bears all around her. Now they bring me to Kerry’s room, and it’s filled with Pooh bears from floor to ceiling. They take out a photo album and turn to a page that has an underwater picture of Mike, taken in Cancun. He’s surrounded by fish. I’m taken aback by the photo because it’s exactly what he showed me during the reading. It was one of those times when I wish I could have had electrodes attached to my brain that would allow people to see exactly what I see.
Two things that didn’t make sense during the reading are clarified later on. Nobody understood when I said that I saw Mike’s name in cement outside the house. But a few days later, the Kiefers find out that as a tribute to the men of Ladder 132 who perished, the sidewalk outside the firehouse has been replaced, and the names of the men are written in the wet cement. And the family thought I simply got one wrong when I said that Mike’s middle name was coming through as beginning with ‘J,’ when his middle name is Vernon. But a week later, Mike’s federal tax refund came in the mail, incorrectly addressed to Michael J. Kiefer. A little thing, but the kind that tends to bolster the validation.
MONTHS LATER, Sandra and I are having lunch at one of our favorite restaurants. It’s just the two of us and two other women. Suddenly, I’m overwhelmed with the feeling that someone’s brother or husband is here. I start to sweat, my ears are starting to feel hot, and I tell Sandra that I think that one of the women over there, across the room, lost someone, a male to her side. It begins with an “M.” Sandra asks if I’m going to say anything to them. I tell her I don’t feel it’s appropriate to go over to them and say, “Hey, your dead relative isn’t allowing me to finish my baked ziti.”
Sandra rolls her eyes. A little while later, as we’re getting ready to leave, she calls out, “John Edward—wait for me!” Her devilish plan to get the women’s attention doesn’t work. I blush and keep moving. The women don’t seem to notice. We get to our car and Sandra announces that we need to go to Babies “R” Us. Why? I ask. She says we’re having a lot of family over for the holidays and she wants to get baby gates for her nieces to block them off in one little room. There are other stores we can go to that are more convenient, but Sandra insists we go completely out of the way to go to Babies “R” Us. It’s in an area that’s insane with traffic and parking on weekends. But this is the store my wife says we must go to. So we go.
I begin driving—away from home, I point out—toward the store. A silence comes over the car. Now that same male figure is back, the one in the restaurant whose name begins with “M.” And he’s not leaving. I’m getting this urgent “I’m here!” feeling in my chest, a heaviness that’s almost uncomfortable. We pull into the store parking lot, and there’s surprisingly little traffic. And we find a spot right near the door. Hmm. Sandra smiles with self-satisfaction.
We walk into the store and go to the baby-gate section. She’s deciding exactly what kind of prison cell she wants for her baby nieces when a pretty girl with light hair asks us if we need any help. I think no but say yes.
“John Edward?” she says.
I smile politely and nod yes. She tells me that I was at her house for a reading—on Halloween. She is Michael Kiefer’s sister, Kerri. We chat briefly, I ask how everyone is doing, and she helps us find a baby gate. I haven’t taken ten steps out of the store when I stop and blurt out to Sandra, “That was her brother.”
“What?” she says.
“That was her brother in the restaurant and the car. The “M” was for Mike. The chest. All that was her brother. What should I do?”
Sandra takes the bags from my hands and says, “Go in and tell her.” And that’s what I do.
I believe that the family needed to hear from him again, and I was more than happy
to be his personal mailman. And that’s how it is when I’m not in a session. I don’t know where messages belong or who they’re intended for. Mike Kiefer must have somehow imprinted on Sandra that we had to go not to just any baby store, but the one that his sister worked at.
When I heard all the missing pieces of this story and reflected on it, I was blown away by how much it reminded me—and how much the people involved reminded me—of the story of Andrew Miracola (in One Last Time). Like Andrew, Mike Kiefer found a way to get his messages through. Whatever it took, whoever he had to tap on the shoulder, he was going to get through.
There’s one more thing about this story. When Pat Kiefer told me that she woke up at 5:45 a.m. on September 11 and felt queasy, I realized that this was exactly the moment I was awakened in my hotel room in Los Angeles—2:45 Pacific time—and asked if I was all right after supposedly placing a 911 call.
Some Final Thoughts
about September 11
NEW SYMBOLS have come through from this event for me. If I’m working with a family who lost someone of service—a police officer, firefighter, or emergency medical worker—I’m overwhelmed with a feeling of honor. That is my symbol for them, and I think it’s a beautiful tribute to them and something special for their families.
Still, these spirits have not dwelled on the events of that day. Rather, every one of them has focused primarily on their families and friends. In fact, by the summer of 2002, I’ve done about two dozen readings for families of victims—most of them in my private work outside the show—and only once has a spirit come through describing his death. He was in one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center. I didn’t realize what it was, even after I asked the family, “Did he crash into a building?” But even he, like the others, came through mostly with remarkable validations to let their loved ones know that it was indeed them. Why have they stayed away from details of their passing? I believe it’s because we know all too well how they passed. It would only sustain the negative to dwell on that—and not provide enough real validation.
I hope that everyone who reads this postscript understands that the same principles hold true for their families as well. The day your loved one dies is like your own personal September 11. You’re no different from the Puckett and Kiefer families in your grief. And I hope that you—and the Pucketts and Kiefers and all the other families affected by September 11—realize that you don’t need a medium. If you understand the process, own your experiences, and honor your grief, you can move forward. Life will never be the same without their physical presence, but they are still with us, and whether they passed on September 11 or on any other day of the year—that is their ultimate message to us.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Edward is an internationally acclaimed psychic medium, author, and lecturer. On his internationally syndicated talk shows, Crossing Over with John Edward and John Edward Cross Country, he captivated audiences worldwide with his unique abilities to connect people with loved ones who have crossed over to the Other Side. John has been a frequent guest on CNN’s Larry King Live, and has appeared on many other talk shows, including The Today Show, Oprah, and The View. He is a regular guest on morning radio, including New York’s WPLJ and Los Angeles’ KROQ. John has been featured in articles in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, People, and Entertainment Weekly. John is the author of several New York Times bestsellers including After Life and What If God Were the Sun? He conducts workshops and seminars around the world, and is the founder of the metaphysical Web site InfiniteQuest.com. John lives in New York with his family.