Two and a half years after my husband’s death I woke during the night with an impression of him having been present. The way I recorded it in my dream journal was:
Not sure if this was a dream or a visitation. Roger appeared and gave me a message which I can’t remember clearly but it was as though he thought his mother hadn’t let go of him and he wanted me to see if I could do something about it.
This was not a welcome message for several reasons. Firstly, in spite of the many unusual experiences I’d been having which were pushing me into an awareness of a realm beyond the physical, I was in no way convinced that they had an actual reality beyond my own imaginative faculties. Secondly the relationship with my mother in law was strained at the best of times and I was most reluctant to deliver a message that I myself was unsure of. Most of all though, with my psychoanalytical reasoning, I had to wonder if it was really meant for me and not his mother and worried that I was inadvertently holding him back, even though I didn’t really understand what that even meant.
Later that day I had another one of those synchronistic events that often accompany significant dreams. I bumped into a friend and when I asked how she was, she said she was feeling sad because it was the 7th anniversary of the death of her son, who had died tragically in a workplace accident. We sat down and chatted and I asked her if she thought she had let go of him and she said she didn’t think she had. I told her about the dream/visit, half hoping, I think, that I was going to get rid of the problem that way. When I got home, no sooner had I got in the door than my mother in law rang, so without saying anything about the incident I tried to gauge how she was dealing with her son’s death. She seemed to be doing fine but she wasn’t one to show any sign of not coping, so it was hard to tell. I was happy to have a reason to let the incident go but unfortunately it wouldn’t let me go and I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t going to be able to forget it unless I told her.
After several days of arguing with myself, I finally gathered the courage to ring her. To my surprise and relief she was not fazed at all about the possibility of a visit from her deceased son. She insisted that she didn’t have a problem but then in the next breath said that whenever she thinks of him, she is telling him off! I suggested that perhaps that was the problem and again to my surprise she didn’t argue the point. We chatted on a bit and then just as we were about to hang up, she suddenly burst out, quite vehemently, ‘well, that’s typical, isn’t it, they can’t tell you themselves, they have to tell someone else and then let that person tell you!’
When I put the phone down, I just sat staring at it with her words replaying in my head, hardly able to believe the conversation I’d just had. Suddenly another voice, in my head but not my thoughts, said ‘I’ve tried to but she won’t let me in.’ Rather sheepishly and thinking it can’t get any weirder, I said ‘is that you Roger?’ With that I felt a very strong tingling sensation in the top of my head that hovered there for a few seconds, then it whooshed all the way down through my body to my feet, followed by a sensation in the room like a change in air pressure. A voice in my head is one thing but like the meditation experience three years earlier, these kinds of physical sensations are hard to ignore. What to do now? In light of her earlier openness, I thought it best to call back and tell her what I had just experienced. Again she was receptive, taking what I told her quite seriously and after discussing options, said she would lie quietly when she went to bed and ask ‘what do you want to tell me?’
I had many mixed emotions on hanging up the phone, among them surprise at what had transpired and relief that I had delivered the message. I was also relieved that the original experience had been validated and that the message did appear to be for my mother in law and not me. On the other hand it raised a lot of questions in my mind about the nature of the non-physical realm, which I now could no longer ignore or doubt the existence of. One thing that puzzled me for some time after this event was that it didn’t seem to conform to a typical ADC (After Death Communication) in that frequently the deceased person appears to reassure those left behind that they are okay. This seemed to be the opposite but eventually I came to the conclusion that each experience is unique and tailor made to the individuals involved. Apart from convincing me of the reality of ADCs, even if it did open up more questions than it answered, it certainly convinced me that our relationships do not end with death and that the potential for healing unfinished business is a very real possibility if we only take advantage of it. Dreams are a most effective avenue for healing all kinds of relationships and not just with those who have passed over.
I spoke to my mother in law a couple of weeks after the phone call and she said there was nothing to report. I asked her from time to time afterwards but the answer was always the same and eventually the subject was dropped. A couple of years after this she moved to Sydney to be near her daughter and eventually our sparse communication ground to a halt. She is now living out her days unhappily in a nursing home, so I can only assume that she was never able to make peace with life’s disappointments.
Roger’s visit was certainly the most dramatic experience I have ever had in terms of appearances, although I have personally had a lot of what I can only describe as interference, especially objects disappearing and reappearing and interference with electrical and electronic equipment. These physical happenings are hard to ignore and I have heard too many stories from others to believe that they are all the results of my own fertile imagination. Who or what is responsible is anybody’s guess but that they are real events is unquestionable to me.
