Tag Archives: communicating with the deceased

Can We Communicate with the Dead?

Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops a picture of a small gold moth, perhaps a sign sent to her from her daughter who died, from the other side.Hearing my dead daughter’s words in my head wasn’t enough. So, last weekend I attended a Forever Family Foundation retreat where three mediums conducted spirit communications. I was hoping to get a message from Marika. Instead, I got a golden moth.

We were eating lunch outside, between sessions, when I felt a light tickle on my wrist and turned my right hand over to find a delicate gold charm attached. The moth glistened, iridescent in the sun. Its tiny feet clung to my skin like minuscule Velcro pads. It sat there, close to my beating pulse, its fragile wings occasionally flapping in the breeze while I ate with my left hand, wondering how long it might stay. Half an hour, my friend told me, later. Long enough for another friend to snap its photo on her phone. Long enough to consider that maybe the golden moth was a gift from my daughter, from the other side. It was not the clear coherent message I wanted. I was still hoping to be “read” by a medium.

Lunchtime ended. The moth flew off and I went to the next session and watched in awe as the medium first validated the presence of a family’s loved one, and then relayed messages that were received with tears of joy. Details, bits and pieces of peoples’ lives were exposed; secrets and explanations were revealed. There were apologies, pardons, advice, and affirmations of love. How and where could such information be found, or kept, other than in the consciousness of the deceased loved ones themselves? I waited, my eyes begged the medium, please, connect me to Marika. But the other people’s needs must have been greater than mine. Maybe their loved ones’ spirits were more determined than my daughter’s. Or maybe I wanted it too much.

I did not get a reading that weekend. But I did get to witness the joy and transformation of others hearing from their loved ones. And I came 95 percent closer to believing in after death communications and the survival of consciousness after death. I’m reserving the last little bit of skepticism until the day I get to have a reading myself.

And I wonder: if people can believe in a God who gives and takes life and sometimes answers our prayers, why shouldn’t I put my own faith into the small spark of vibrating energy that remains (somewhere) of Marika? I pray to my daughter. And she answers my pleas by sending me small creatures, mostly at mealtimes.

 

What do you believe in? Can we communicate with the dead?

 

REPLY TO ROBIN

Singing to the Moon

Singing to the Moon, Robin Botie in Ithaca, New York, sings to the moon, to her daughter in the moon.“ I see the moon. The moon sees me. The moon sees the one I long to see,” I’d sung as a girl and later as a mother holding my young daughter.

In the first days after my daughter died I felt her presence all over the house. But in a week, after I brought her life-sized portrait home and started talking to it, she seemed to fade away. Then something was drawing me out into the night, out to the driveway where the wind roared as it rocked tall trees over me.

I’d never felt comfortable outside alone in the dark before. But there was little to fear next to the nightmare I’d already survived. After my daughter died, nighttime became one of the gifts I got. And now, even in rain or snow, I bundle up in a down coat, grab the flashlight and my inherited dog, and walk up and down the long pebbly driveway, searching for stars, sometimes dancing with the dog in the moon-shadows.

“Hey. Marika-in-the-moon,” I call to her when it’s a full moon. When it’s a fingernail moon. On moonless nights when the sky is a thick blanket of cloud. Every night. This is when I feel closest to my daughter.

Our planet has one moon. I’ve been singing to it all my life. We can’t always see the moon but we know it is there. Our ancestors watched it and our children’s children will look up to the same night sky. And wherever my daughter is, or is not, if she were to look for light in the dark night, she would look to the moon. So I keep singing to the same moon.

Where or when do you feel closest to the one you love who died?

REPLY TO ROBIN