Allison DuBois - Don't Kiss Them Good-bye

Jim’s love for his daughter, Angie, was deep. When he was alive he told Diane that he wouldn’t have been capable of fathering a child as beautiful as Angie, so someone else had to bring her into the world for him to raise. Angie was one year old when Jim came into her life.

I was able to learn a great deal from Jim’s spirit. He had shown me an acoustic guitar at the beginning of our reading. Jim’s father played acoustic guitar and Jim used to sit with him while he recorded music. Jim’s son also played the guitar as a teenager, so the guitar could have symbolized a couple of things, showing the connection between grandfather, son, and grandson. It was also nice to see that Jim and his father were together on the other side.

It’s especially difficult for young people when they lose someone. We all would like to think that a visiting spirit would soothe the living, but often this is not the case. When a living person is mourning the loss of a deceased loved one, the spirit tends to want to be close for support.

Sometimes this can be a catch-22. When a spirit’s energy is around us, we can feel it. We long for those we miss instead of realizing they’re actually in our presence, spending time with us, feeling our pain. Sensing all the sadness, the spirit will then try harder to bring energy through to console us, which can cause all sorts of reactions in the survivor: pictures flashing through the mind, hearing a song play in the head, feeling a cold draft, feeling as though one is being touched.

Sometimes this can make the living person long for the dearly departed even more and cause even greater heartache. I don’t believe spirits realize that their presence is aggravating the pain caused by their loss. The same effect can be felt when a spirit wants to be around loved ones, and the living think that they have thought of the deceased out of the blue.

In this situation a normal reaction is “I haven’t thought of that person in a while. I wonder what triggered that memory.” In reality, the visiting energy has caused us to retrieve feelings and memories that surround their being. If we are open to the thought that our loved ones remain with us after death, we can understand the relationship that we have with them after they die physically.

If you can’t wrap your mind around this thought, at least know that you and those you love who have crossed over will be together again when your time comes and you are invited over to the other side. Don’t be in a hurry for your reunion. We are here to learn and enjoy life, and for each one of us, our day will come.

Jim was the only spirit I brought through for Diane that day; he was the visitor she had hoped for. He is by far one of my favorite people on the other side. He has the heart of Santa Claus, the trust of a child, and the humor of a friend who is always trying to cheer you up when you’re down. I can’t do him justice through my description—some people are beyond words. When Jim started pulling his energy back, the last thing he said to Diane was, “We will always be together, and when the day comes that you cross over to the other side I will be there to greet you.”

Jim showed me his hand lovingly extended to take Diane’s, as though helping her out of one life and into another (but not anytime soon). Diane expressed closure and satisfaction. She said that she was entirely engulfed by a calm, peaceful, good feeling after her reading. Diane is one of the reasons I continue to do what I do.

When Domini found out that she was dying, she reached out to her old friends, one of whom was Stacey. I’ve known Stacey for thirteen years, through my association with Domini. We were frequently around each other in our teenage years, but we hadn’t become close friends.

Domini was over at Stacey’s house getting ready to come over for a party I was throwing in her honor so that Dom could be around the old gang one last time before she passed. Domini put us in an awkward situation when she handed the phone to Stacey and forced us into a conversation. It turned out that Stacey and I live only a couple of miles apart and we have the same sarcastic sense of humor. Strangely enough, Stacey and I clicked immediately and made a play date for our kids for the following week.

Stacey was pregnant with her second child, whom she had already decided to name Trevor, and like any excited mom she was eager to show off her son’s ultrasound pictures. She handed them to me and I admired the small form.

“Domini told me what you do. Is there anything wrong with him?” Stacey asked.

I hesitated, then ran my hand over the ultrasound; my hand stopped around his lower abdominal area. “He’s perfect up until here,” I said, pointing to his kidneys.

Stacey said, “Oh yeah, the doctor said one kidney is bigger than the other, but they said that’s normal for boys, and it’ll correct itself in the womb.”

I wasn’t sure whether I should reply truthfully and upset a pregnant woman I was hoping to become friends with, or lie and let Stacey find out later in her pregnancy.

But she prodded me: “You can tell me.”

“Well, he has a serious problem with his kidneys, but it’s correctable. They have a medical procedure they can do in utero.”

Stacey said, “You mean they’ll have to go into me? They said they wouldn’t do anything before he was born, and they said it’ll correct itself in utero.”

Stacey was clearly troubled by this information, and understandably so. She asked what else I saw. I told her that after Trevor was born they would have to perform another procedure, a fairly common one, and that he’d be fine.

Stacey felt enough anxiety to go in for an early checkup for Trevor, but she truly felt that everything would be fine and that the doctor would tell her that the kidney had already corrected itself. Unfortunately, that was not the case. The nurse called in Stacey’s doctor to take a closer look at her condition. Stacey was informed that the baby’s kidneys were distended and so was his bladder. Tests confirmed that he might be going through renal failure, and his amniotic fluid was low. She was referred to a specialist and told the outlook wasn’t good.

Stacey called me in tears. “You were right, there’s a problem.”

This was one of those occasions when I would have been overjoyed to be wrong.

The doctor kept saying, “I’m sorry, Stacey.” Stacey asked him if there was any chance Trevor could make it. The doctor said, “Let me talk to my colleague and get back to you.”

The doctors wanted to retest the fluid, and this time the results were even worse. Stacey called me for consolation, but all I could say was “He will be fine, Stacey. This is one of the most difficult experiences that you will ever endure in your lifetime, but I can tell you that Trevor will be born, and he will be fine.”

I was afraid that I appeared to be a condescending, callous know-it-all, but I knew what I told her would turn out to be right.

I went on to tell her about her grandfather on the other side, who was “tinkering” (a term she said he used) with his own form of intervention for Trevor. Her grandfather came through with details, one of which was that nobody was winding his cuckoo clock and he wanted Stacey to do so. I told her it was the clock that was brown with big black maple leaves on it. Stacey said she knew exactly which one I was talking about. This was important information to have shared, because it validated something personal between Stacey and her grandfather.

He also wanted her to know that she wasn’t alone and that he was doing what he could from the other side. I sat on the phone with her and listened to her sob uncontrollably, feeling powerless to do anything but be there for her.