Signs

by Laura Lynne Jackson

  Henry doesn’t talk about his candles with too many people, but whenever he lights a candle for his Mami Emma, and it flickers and dances in the windless air, Henry makes sure to mention it to me.

  “It is something that is so personal to me and my belief,” he says. “It brings me so much peace and so much closure. I feel like I understand how the Other Side works.

  “Every time I get the sign, it is this beautiful message of hope and security and unity, of how we are all connected, how our families endure, and how we can always be there for each other in times of need.”

  17

  TURTLES AND MERMAIDS

  STEPHANIE Muirragui worked as a bartender in a Japanese restaurant in Florida. Everyone loved her—customers, co-workers, everyone. She was so popular that she was often asked to work double shifts, simply because she drew such a big crowd around the bar. In one twenty-day span, Steph worked more than 120 hours. “She was like a magnet,” says her mother, Gio. “Everyone knew her, everyone gravitated to her. She worked so many hours it was like she never got to go home.”

  After a grueling fourteen-hour Saturday shift, Steph got in her car around two thirty A.M. to head home. She was tired, but also excited because it was her niece’s first communion later that day. For some reason, most likely exhaustion, she neglected to buckle her seatbelt.

  She fell asleep at the wheel and her car hit a tree. She crossed instantly. A police officer found her cellphone and called her mother, but Gio didn’t hear it ring. The police came to her house, but Gio didn’t hear the knock. An officer came back later that morning, and this time Gio answered the door.

  “Can I come in?” he asked.

  That’s when Gio knew.

  “Steph was such a beautiful person, so loving and caring and generous,” Gio says. “She put everyone ahead of herself. So many people we didn’t even know showed up at her funeral.”

  The grief was almost too much to bear. It all seemed so abrupt, so meaningless. “The only thing that helped was that we never stopped telling each other, ‘I love you,’ ” Gio says. “We were so close, and we shared everything.” On the morning of the last day they saw each other, Gio told her daughter to be careful.

  “She looked at me and she said, ‘LudaMom’—she called me LudaMom because I like the rapper Ludacris—‘I’m okay, I’m going to be okay.’ And that was the last conversation we ever had.”

  One month later, Steph’s college diploma—she’d just completed a major in communications and a minor in marine biology—showed up in the family’s mailbox, a sad reminder of a future that would not be.

  “It made no sense,” says Gio. “All of the love we had between us, and suddenly it all just disappears? Just like that? No. It’s not possible. Love like that cannot just disappear.”

  * * *

  —

  I met Gio and her husband, Pat, a few months after Steph crossed, at an event sponsored by the Forever Family Foundation.

  As the session began, something immediately drew me to where Gio was sitting. Someone was coming through for her, very clearly and forcefully. It was a woman. She shared the story of what had happened to her.

  “She passed before her time, and she has regret about that,” I relayed. “But she is happy. She is okay. She is telling me she chose your family.”

  Steph went on to explain what she meant by that. Her parents were both married before, and they each brought children into their marriage. “You brought three kids,” I said, pointing first to Pat and then to Gio, “and you brought two. And early on, this caused problems.”

  Gio nodded. “Our marriage was very rocky in the beginning,” she says. “It was a difficult adjustment for all of us, maybe like it is for most blended families. And then we had Stephanie, who came along at just the right time and brought us all together. Just like she always did.”

  “She was the glue that united her family,” I told Gio at the reading, before Steph corrected me, and I corrected myself. “Actually, she is saying she wasn’t the glue. Love was the glue.”

  Gio and Pat were crying now. They believed their daughter was there, assuring them she was okay. But like so many grieving parents, they needed more. They needed a way to connect with their loved one. They needed to know the connection between them was still alive.

  But the thing is—Gio already knew.

  She just didn’t know she knew.

  So her daughter, through me, reminded her.

  “She is bringing up your necklace,” I told Gio, who instinctively reached up and touched it. “She wants you to know that she loves it, and that it is tied to her.”

  Gio was taken aback. She knew that Steph had never seen the necklace. A friend gave it to Gio after Steph passed, in her honor. But Gio immediately understood why Steph brought up the necklace.

  * * *

  —

  Ever since she was a little girl, Steph loved animals. All animals. “As an infant, she crawled around in the dirt and looked for insects,” says Gio. “She was fearless and daring. She loved anything that was alive, though her favorite were turtles. We had all kinds of pets—dogs, cats, sugar gliders—but her favorite was a little turtle she called Pollo.”

  Steph loved turtles so much, that became her nickname—Turtle.

  In high school, she worked as a caretaker in a dog rescue center. In college, she volunteered at the Loggerhead Marinelife Center—an organization in Florida devoted to turtle conservation. “Her dream was to make a life helping turtles and other creatures,” says Gio.

  A few weeks after Steph crossed, her family threw a party in her honor, on what would have been her thirtieth birthday. “Pat built this big aquarium with her name on it, and filled it with pink coral and angelfish, which she loved.”

  Around that time, Gio heard from one of Steph’s friends. Steph had encouraged him to pursue a career in art. “He never believed in himself, but Steph pushed him to paint,” says Gio. “When she passed, he started making these amazing paintings. He did them in her honor. He said he owed his career to her.”

  The paintings were all wonderful depictions of mermaids with Steph’s beautiful face.

  Not much later, a neighborhood group announced a fundraising sale that included a huge painting of a mermaid. “I bought it in Steph’s memory,” says Gio. “There was even a little turtle in it.”

  Gio would always buy little turtle figurines for Steph, and after she passed she continued to buy every turtle she saw. And, Gio says, “They just keep turning up.”

  Gio was desperate to find a way to connect with her daughter. She was searching for the key that would unlock all the love they shared when Steph was still alive. She just needed to find that one thing that would convince her Steph was still with her, and always would be, forever.

  But what was it? What was that thing?

  It was the most obvious thing in the world.

  “When Laura Lynne said that Steph loved my necklace, it all made sense,” Gio says. “It was just a simple black leather cord and a gold pendant. But inside the pendant was a silver turtle.”

  * * *

  —

  The love that we feel on earth comes with us when we cross. The love we have for one another, and the love we have for all the things we bonded with while we were here. In Steph’s case, her passion for animals, and for turtles in particular, wasn’t diminished by her crossing. And so now she would be using turtles as a way to connect with her mother.

  Turtles would be their sign.

  Deep down, Gio surely already knew this. Every time she saw a turtle figurine, or a turtle postcard, or a turtle T-shirt, she thought of her daughter. And in that moment of remembrance, Gio experienced the love all over again! The turtles made Gio feel like her daughter was still with her. Yes, the way they communicated was different now. But the love they felt for each other was as real and vital an
d life affirming as ever.

  Everything came into sharp focus for Gio. Her daughter had been speaking to her all along! For example, she shared how, a few months after Steph’s crossing, she decided to start going to church after work to pray for her daughter. Her local church wasn’t open at that time of day, so she found another one, but it was much farther from her home. On the first evening there, she felt sad and out of place. “I was in this strange building and I didn’t know anyone,” she says. “It made me feel lost.”

  Just then, a woman walked into the church and sat in the pew directly in front of her. She was a nurse, still in her hospital scrubs. “I looked at her, and I noticed the pattern on her scrubs,” says Gio. “They were turtles. Hundreds of turtles! The church wasn’t that full and she could have sat anywhere, but she chose to sit right in front of me.”

  Gio instantly felt better. “It was the turtles,” she says. “They were a message from Steph. And the message was, ‘LudaMom, I’m doing okay. LudaMom, I’m still here.’ ”

  * * *

  —

  I don’t believe Gio needed her session with me to understand that turtles and mermaids would be the signs she shared with her lovely daughter. I believe she would have realized that on her own.

  But I also believe that it was Stephanie who brought her mother into my path, so that she could speed up the process and let her mother know they were still connected in a powerful way. During our session, Steph came through with so many clear affirmations. She told Gio she loved her turtle necklace, but she also shared that she was amused to see her father wearing shoes, not sandals (“Of course that would make her laugh,” Gio says). She loved the aquarium her father built for her, and the chocolate cake her mother got for her, and even the Chinese lanterns the family strung up for the party in the backyard.

  “She was letting us know that she was at the party,” Gio says.

  In fact, Steph was letting her loved ones know that she would always be there with them, no matter where they were.

  And even though Gio and Steph couldn’t physically go on shopping trips together, or sit on the bed and talk for hours like they used to, they could still keep telling each other, “I love you”—just like they did when Steph was still on earth.

  Except now, they would use turtles and mermaids instead of words.

  If you could sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.

  —FRED ROGERS

  18

  THE CONNECTOR

  I​F you are reading these words right now, chances are that you have already saved someone’s life, or will one day.

  That’s right: From what the Other Side has shown me, most of us have the opportunity to save at least one person’s life, and possibly even more.

  Our lives are all interconnected, and because of this, the things we do to and for one another have far-reaching consequences we don’t always get to see (well, at least not until we cross to the Other Side and do our life review, which is when we see and understand everything). While we are here on earth, we each follow our own path through life, but our paths intersect with other people’s paths, and theirs with ours. And these intersections are very meaningful—they are opportunities for us to play important roles in one another’s lives, from offering support and guidance to, yes, saving a life.

  What I’ve seen in my thousands of readings is that the Other Side uses these points of intersection to help steer us to our highest path. The Other Side also enlists people here on earth to be part of our Teams of Light—people who help guide us toward those paths. I call these people light workers.

  Light workers are the Other Side’s foot soldiers on the ground, sleeves rolled up, making things happen. They are contracted—without even knowing it—to do the Other Side’s work here on earth. They facilitate the flow of ideas and connections and signs among others, sometimes just by being in the right place at the right time, sometimes by bringing their unique skills and gifts to a certain situation. Just as the Other Side sends us all kinds of signs and messages, sometimes the Other Side sends these light workers into our lives.

  Who are these light workers?

  They are us.

  Each of us has the potential to be a light worker. We can all be used by the Other Side to make things happen for others, and we often are, even if we’re none the wiser about it.

  There are some people, though, who seem to have an advanced ability to play this role. People who always seem to be in the right place at the right time to play a part for others. They function like old-time telephone operators, sitting at switchboards and slotting phone plugs into phone jacks and making connections happen! They are souls that have entered into a spiritual contract with the Other Side—unbeknownst to them—to do the Other Side’s bidding.

  They are what I call connectors.

  Let me tell you about Jill, a friend who is one of the most magical connectors I know.

  Jill is one of those special people who is very comfortable in her own skin. She is kind and quirky and funny and completely open to the world and all its possibilities. When she was twenty-five, she met an Indian guru and had a spiritual awakening. The guru gave her a meditation practice, and Jill went on to travel throughout India having experiences that challenged her notions of how the world works. “I felt my heart opening up and I felt the limits of time and space expanding,” Jill says. “I was open to new dimensions of reality.”

  Eventually, Jill’s friends began noticing that wonderfully strange things seemed to happen when they were with her.

  For instance, one of her good friends recently lost her husband. Before he crossed, her friend’s husband had been reading a book called Just Kids by the iconic singer Patti Smith. “So my friend decided that she wanted to meet Patti Smith,” Jill says. “She believed meeting Patti Smith would be a sign from her husband.”

  Not too much later, they took an Amtrak train from D.C. to New York—it was her friend’s first trip since her husband’s passing. “All of a sudden she came up to me on the train, shaking,” Jill remembers. “She said, ‘Patti Smith is on this train.’ I said, ‘You’re hallucinating.’ ”

  But Patti Smith was on the train, and Jill and her friend got up the nerve to approach her. “I ended up explaining the whole story and told her, ‘You are my friend’s sign,’ ” Jill says. “And Patti Smith said, ‘I am so happy to be her sign!’ ”

  “I don’t know why,” Jill’s friend told her, “but whenever we get together, signs come.”

  When another friend’s father, who was a well-known actor, passed away, Jill was there to help her through the grieving process. “I noticed all these weird things started happening, with TVs and phones and electronics,” Jill says. “I told Susie, ‘This is your father’s way of communicating with you.’ ”

  Photos of her father that Susie hadn’t taken began popping up on Susie’s cellphone. When Susie and six friends gathered in her home to reminisce about her father, the windows inexplicably rattled whenever his name came up, then stopped when the conversation was about something else. The song “I Will Survive” kept playing on Susie’s car radio. Her cellphone’s autocorrect kept changing “does” to “dies” and the name “Alita” to “aorta,” which made her think of her father, who died of a heart condition.

  “All of this weird stuff just kept happening,” Jill says. “I told her to start keeping a list, because this was her dad trying to connect.”

  Jill drove Susie to her father’s funeral, but they got lost on the way back. They drove down unfamiliar streets and finally stopped so they could figure out where they were. They found a street sign—and the name of the street was Susie’s father’s last name.

  “It was very comforting for us both,” Jill
says. “I’d say, ‘You are getting these signs!’ I just felt like I knew what they were, and when you know something, you know it. People can believe what they want, but beliefs don’t matter as much as experiences do. And all of these things that were happening were direct experiences of connection. They were real.”

  Jill’s friends began to describe her uncanny ability to make signs happen around her. They called it manifesting—as in, Jill manifested Patti Smith for her friend. Jill seems to invite vivid, powerful signs from the Other Side for those around her.

  Jill’s personal spiritual journey has changed the way she sees the world and made her an ideal accomplice for the Other Side. Her intense meditative experiences, she says, “have allowed me to have different kinds of relationships with people who have passed on. And because of that, I do not see death as an end. I always say, when a good friend is traveling somewhere far away and I feel sad that I can’t physically interact with them, that I don’t have their physical presence. And that’s what I feel death is like. It’s like the people we love aren’t gone forever, they’re just away somewhere far away. Like Thailand!”

  Jill devotes a great deal of energy to activism and is a powerful champion for social justice, sustainable development, and education for all. As a friend of hers says, “Jill has tapped into her life’s purpose, and through her work she lives in this sweet spot of being a connector, moving forces toward the greater good of humanity. She thrives in all of these worlds, and the connections between them come naturally and effortlessly for her. Synchronicity has become the currency of her life.”

  Here’s just one example of how that synchronicity works: