There's More to Life Than This: Healing Messages, Remarkable Stories, and Insight About the Other Side from the Long Island Medium

by Caputo, Theresa

  Mom says that years alone won’t heal the pain; what does is finding tools and people who can help you cope with your loss and put it in a different perspective. Eventually, it will feel okay to go out with friends again and let others be there for you. During Mom’s training, she watched the teacher do an exercise that was very relatable. She said the instructor asked a woman to hold one bucket, while he carried another. He told the woman to put all the feelings she’d had while grieving into the pail—anger, loneliness, sadness, and others. Meanwhile, the man’s bucket was full of sympathy, understanding, compassion, and other resources he could use to help her feel better. But, he said, her bucket was so full, for so long, that she couldn’t make room for any of his tools. As time went on and the woman healed from some of the emotions in her bucket, she found space for what he could offer. I really liked this metaphor, and it reminds me of why support and bereavement groups are so useful when you’re having a hard time. They give you the information, advice, and resources to work through your grief. They let you share your struggles with people who know how full or empty your bucket can be.

  I want you to know that you’re not alone in how you feel. Personally, I grieve my deceased loved ones every day. When Gram died, I cried all the time—when I was by myself in the car or saw a picture of her in an album or on my mantel . . . But on our first Christmas without Gram, I took steps to accept her passing and honor her memory. When I set the table, I put Gram’s picture in an angel frame at the place where she usually sat. The photo was taken two weeks before she died, and Gram looks happy and beautiful. During dinner, we talked to that picture as if it were her. At one point, Mom was like, “Hey, Gram, how’d the meatballs turn out?” It gave everyone at the table permission to say her name, miss her together, and acknowledge that she will always be part of our family. It helped us normalize her absence and recognize that she will never be forgotten.

  Don’t Worry! They All Feel Fine!

  As my clients grieve, I often find it interesting to hear that their biggest concerns aren’t for themselves but about what the person who’s passed on is feeling. Is my wife experiencing the same sadness that I am? Does my child feel scared or lonely in Heaven? I’ve had clients tell me that they devote hours to feverish prayer to make sure that their loved ones are safe and happy in Heaven, because they’re sure that the soul must be as miserable as they are. But again, I remind them that souls don’t experience the same heartache we do, because they’re still with us and know they’ll see us again. I also reassure them that their souls were greeted by familiar faces, and the reunion was joyful.

  Often accompanying this emotional fear is a worry that the person physically suffered during their final moments on earth—because to us, death can look and sound really terrible. But Spirit promises that what you witness and hear during those final breaths is simply the body shutting down. From the initial moment that a life begins to end, be it the first pang of a heart attack or gunshot from a murder, the soul exits the body and no further suffering occurs. The soul leaves this world with dignity and grace. You know how on old soap operas, an actor would see bright, white headlights from a car coming toward them, and then boom!, the show would end? That’s my symbol for when a person didn’t know what was happening, they passed instantly, and there was no pain or suffering when they crossed. This comes up a lot with car accidents. One time, I channeled a girl who was walking on the highway, got hit by a car, and then her body was run over by other vehicles and tractor trailers. Her family imagined her lying on the pavement, suffering, as her body received repeated blows. But her soul said, “I know what you saw when you identified my body, but my soul had left.” I remember another man who was hit by a car and dragged, and his soul said that he too died instantly and did not suffer.

  Souls also remain unaffected in the bodies of those with Alzheimer’s, dementia, and in a coma or vegetative state. With Alzheimer’s or dementia, Spirit tells me that what you’re witnessing isn’t a soul that’s suffering but one that’s struggling against the limitations of the physical body. Spirit’s said that comas and vegetative states, on the other hand, can occur when it is not the soul’s destined time to leave this world, so these souls will simply live out the rest of their time in this way, if they don’t recover. But here, the soul is also fine. In fact, I’ve channeled souls in these states, because it’s like the body is asleep, and the soul has all the energy in the world. The most poignant time this happened was when I read a woman whose parents lived together in an assisted living facility. They were very ill for years, and the father took care of the mother, who had very bad dementia or Alzheimer’s—ironically, I can’t remember which. As these situations often go, it was the caretaker, the father, who died first, and the ill mother was still alive but unable to communicate very well. During the reading, I channeled the father, who said to his daughter, “I’ve been sitting at the end of your mother’s bed, calling her for weeks. But she doesn’t come. She’s so stubborn!” And then I heard the mother’s soul chime in, “I’m not stubborn! I’m just not ready to go!” The two went back and forth like this for a while, even though the mom wasn’t dead. But as they carried on, I could feel that the mother was growing increasingly at peace with the idea of crossing over. “Don’t worry,” the father’s soul finally assured his daughter. “When Mom passes, my soul will be there to greet her.” Do you know, four hours later, the mom died? Incredible.

  And while we’re on the subject of bodily concerns, I want to cover one more. Clients ask me what happens to a soul if a body isn’t recovered from a tragedy or is unable to be laid to rest for some reason. So in these cases, their soul is still at peace, because our bodies are just a shell. In fact, graveyards are for us, not your loved ones. It’s where you go to remember them, but you can also do that from a mountaintop or your living room—they’re around because of you. Same thing if Spirit shows up at their own funeral, which they often do. But they come because you are there. And if you have a reading, they might even validate their attendance by describing what their casket looked like, who showed up, if you fixed their hair, and what they wore when they were laid to rest—from hockey uniforms, to leather jackets, to Juicy Couture sweat suits. One time, a soul even told me he was buried in Timberland boots. Who still wears those?

  Lending a Healing Hand

  When you’re mourning a person’s death, it’s very common to realize how brief and precious your own life is. You might start to care more about your health and see a nutritionist, take vitamins, hit the gym, try alternative medicine . . . Know that as you do, your loved ones are not personally capable of healing you or improving your health, unless they had those abilities in the physical world. Only God’s energy can bring healing through prayer or a spiritual healer, and this requires faith and concentrated focus. I also believe that you can move the process along by changing the way you think, raising your vibration, and having faith in a power higher than yourself.

  What your loved ones can do is look out for you and steer you to the right people or circumstances that lead to good health, if you specifically ask them to. They can put the right doctor or friend in your path, someone who’ll know exactly what you need to feel better. I know a woman who prayed to her grandma while suffering from a painful pelvic condition, and the next morning, got an email from an old friend who randomly mentioned a surgeon who finally brought her relief. I also believe Nanny and Gram have intervened for our family’s health on many occasions, but the time Gram helped heal Victoria from a gymnastics injury is one of my favorite stories ever.

  During November of her junior year of high school, Vic tore the ACL, MCL, and meniscus in her left knee. Doctors call this injury “the unhappy triad,” since it takes so long to recover from the cumulative damage. Not only did Victoria have to sit out all of her normal competitions, but colleges couldn’t scout her, and she needed to commit to a school that fall. This added even more stress to the situation. My brother, a sport
s physical therapist, suggested Victoria see a specialist who, rather than do ASAP surgery like most doctors advise, told her that he had to reconstruct her ACL, but the MCL had the ability to heal on its own. The meniscus, meanwhile, was a real mess, and he wouldn’t know what to do with that until he operated. We happened to schedule Victoria’s surgery for January 6, or Little Christmas—an Irish holiday that celebrates the end of the season; it’s also known as the Feast of the Epiphany, a Christian feast day that celebrates Jesus’s physical presence as God’s son. I, of course, took all of this to be a major sign. It gave my brother Michael time to rehab Victoria for two hours a day, five days a week; it gave Pat time to do a healing; and it gave Gram time to elbow God about doing His thing and help guide the process for everyone here as well.

  On the morning of the surgery, our family was both confident and nervous. And after only an hour in the OR, the doctor said he was finished because all he had to do was reconstruct the ACL. What the huh? The MCL was healing, and the meniscus had reattached itself and was back to normal. Not long after, we went back for her first checkup and the doctor showed us where he reinforced one side of the ACL with a screw, and the other with a button. A button! I know doctors do this, but it was a reassuring sign for us since Gram was a seamstress and collected buttons, and now there’s a button sewn to my daughter’s knee. I knew this was Gram’s way of telling the family that she’d had a hand in Victoria’s healing, sort of like how Zorro leaves his mark—Z—when he’s saving the day. I should also mention that when I was telling this story to my cowriter Kristina, and we got to the button part, the lights dimmed in the room. We laughed for a minute, and when I said, “Gram, I like the lights better on!” they went back on. I then looked at the clock and it was 6:09 p.m. and 6/09 is the date Gram died. Talk about validation.

  Another thing your loved ones can do from Heaven is warn you about health or safety scares, though I allow this in a reading only if a warning can prevent a bad situation or bring us comfort later. Many times with my clients’ health, Spirit will guide them to healing by having me do what’s called a “body scan.” This is where I look at the person’s external body and assess places on the inside that might need medical attention. If I see red spots in a given area, they are my symbol for cancers and severe illnesses that aren’t being addressed properly or need to be approached differently; they can also mean that a person’s holding on to negative emotions or situations, so I ask Spirit for ideas that can fix this. When I see pink spots, it means the person has a condition that isn’t life threatening, and Spirit is already doing everything they can to help resolve it. They can also signify a benign situation like a food allergy that you will be able to rectify on your own.

  What’s clever is that there’ve been times when a person is very sick, but I don’t see a thing because either Spirit’s already doing everything they can to heal it and/or the client has decided there’s nothing more to do. I once read a woman with stage-four cancer, but I saw no dots at all. Sure enough, the woman said the doctors had done everything they could, and she’d chosen to live the rest of her life without further medical treatment. I also read a man with pancreatic cancer who, to look at him, was hardly the picture of good health. But again, he had no issues when I did a body scan, though this time, it was because Spirit told me that he would soon be in full remission. He called me a few months later to confirm that his doctors told him he officially was.

  Spirit also likes to warn clients about safety concerns, though not always in ways I expect. During a private reading for a mother, Spirit was very specific about the type of car her son drove. They told me his full name and said he never wears a seat belt. “I tell him every day to do that!” she huffed. The woman told her son about the reading, because we thought they might be warning him against a future injury. But shortly after the reading, the boy was killed in a car accident. His seat belt was off, but only because he momentarily unsnapped it to pick up an item that fell to the floor. The reason, then, that Spirit told us about the seat belt was so the mom didn’t torture herself after her son’s death, wondering if she could have helped him prevent it. Another time, Spirit told me that a woman’s daughter was pregnant, though the mom insisted this wasn’t the case, because the girl was sixteen years old and not sexually active. I thought maybe I was wrong, but four months later, she called to say her daughter was going to have a baby, but she handled the news so well because I’d already told her about it. I feel Spirit revealed this news early so she’d support her daughter in a way she might not have if it were a surprise.

  Healing: Do What You Can to Keep Going

  When Spirit leads us to healing, I’m always impressed, because if you’ve ever chased answers with doctors about a tough health issue, they don’t always give you the right answers at first! But when a client tells me that they’ve healed emotionally after a reading, I’m even more in awe because this is subjective. You can’t see an emotional scar disappear, the way you can with a physical one. Yet time and again, the heartfelt healing that Spirit brings, often through a reading, is more powerful than years of therapy. And I say that as a woman who really respects therapists!

  In chapter four, I mentioned my friend Geeta, who’s an aesthetician and Reiki Master. (No, she doesn’t do both at the same time. But how amazing would it be if she got rid of your depression while also waxing your upper lip?) Throughout her life, Geeta felt Spirit was sending her signs and messages, though she never really knew how to interpret them, how they related to her purpose, or what lessons she was supposed to learn from this lifetime. Like once, when she lived in Trinidad, she went to a temple to pray, and the steel trishul—a three-pronged spear that’s cemented in concrete—began “shaking like a leaf in the wind,” she said. Yet when Geeta lightly touched it, the movement stopped. Seeing a sturdy structure tremble for no reason would be enough for me to suspect it’s an act of God or Spirit, but Geeta has since found an even deeper significance in it. She says traditionally, a trishul is a weapon used to destroy negativity, and this one was on the right side of the lingam, a stylized phallus worshipped as a symbol of the god Shiva. “The right hand is usually used to bless someone, so I believe I received blessings from the universe, destroying all negative energy, which began to allow good things to flow into my life, though I didn’t fully realize it at the time,” she said. The trishul shook for two more Sundays, and then three weeks later she moved to New York City, where things gradually changed for her in a very positive way.

  She’s since had many visitations while sleeping about her father, mother, and brother who’d died. One was about accepting things that made her uncomfortable, and four weeks after that, her husband passed away. She also had a dream that she was at the gates of Heaven and her aunt, who’d died a day earlier, told her to go back to earth and tell everyone that she was at peace. Geeta’s seen Spirit in the form of light, like orbs on family photos and little flashing twinkles on the ceiling of the spa where she works. She thought this last one was a reflection from her jewelry, but when she shut off all the lights, they were still there.

  When I met Geeta, she was in a very sad and stuck place from her husband’s death, but after talking to her about Spirit and intuition for a year, I knew she had a gift worth honing that might also turn her mood around. I suggested she meet Pat, who introduced her to a Reiki Master we know. Geeta studied under her and has since healed others and herself. She’s more positive and feels that her values are in line with who she is. She believes there is an infinite love connection that you have with your family that never dies and keeps you connected to them forever. Even more incredible is that her evolution has inspired her daughter Crystal to take Reiki classes as well, and though the two have a rocky past, they’re close again. Her son Tyler feels his dad’s presence and enjoys talking to Geeta about the emotions that connect us with the afterlife.

  Another great example of a couple who received profound healing from a reading is one that I rea
d in Zorn’s, which is a skinless fried chicken place on Long Island. I did this on the show, but the curative effects happened after the cameras stopped rolling. The funny thing is, when I first walked in, there was a woman who recognized me and wanted a spontaneous reading so bad that she followed me everywhere. But Spirit pointed me to a couple who’d just left their son’s basketball game and wanted chicken nuggets and fries to snack on before dinner.

  The man’s father had passed away three months prior to this, and it left the husband in a very dark place. He wasn’t being social, he was drinking a lot, and he refused to go on vacation or simply enjoy himself around his adorable family. The guy had worked with his dad for thirteen years until he retired and then recently began a business similar to the one that his father owned. On weekends, the men went deep-sea fishing together, and they’d also talked about going on a Caribbean cruise with their families to celebrate the older man’s eightieth birthday and the husband’s fiftieth, which were a month apart. The father died before this could happen, so the family celebrated the father’s birthday without him. When they did, they shared all the amazing signs they’d experienced since he died—lights turning on and off, a receipt from 1978 with the dad’s signature found on the floor, pennies in odd places. The grieving son explained everything away. Even when the family found fifteen dollars in change in a parking lot, directly under their car, the man told his wife not to call it a sign. “You sound like a moron when you talk like that,” he said. His dad kept trying to say he was around, but the son didn’t see it. Until I met them at Zorn’s.