The journey from curious observer of psychic phenomena to confirmed believer only truly began after Tom passed away. Up till then, psychic powers, the paranormal, the spiritual world and ghosts were simply topics I read about and watched on TV. Due to my several unexplainable experiences, I was keeping an open mind and trying to form some idea of what the reality might actually be.

Once Tom was on the other side, my experiences became more and more persuasive, until I was absolutely convinced of Tom’s continued existence in the afterlife and that the physical world as it appears to us, scientifically, is subject to a higher power. What follows is an account of the events as they occurred which finally made a believer out of me. It was important to validate that Tom was really still there, aware of my current life events and that I understood how to interpret his communications, because he was going to reveal the very tragic truth about his psyche and soul. This truth would eventually change my understanding not only of my life, and marriage, but deepen my faith in the importance of every human mind and soul. Therefore, it was vital that I absolutely believe and recognize all the levels of meaning of what I would be shown. 

When I said goodbye to Tom, I thought I’d buried the only true friend I'd ever had, someone who understood, as I did coming from a dysfunctional family, what a desperate struggle life could be, even for a child; someone who understood how deep the need for love could be, and how very lonely life could be. I didn’t have the slightest suspicion that he’d had a secret life. I thought his illness and death were due solely to constant worry and all our struggles to survive.

In the hospital, when visiting the cafeteria on a break from tending my dying husband, I would make my way down the line, looking at the mashed potatoes and grilled fish, and wonder why I bothered to eat. Disassociation is what it's called. I functioned. At my age, functioning is a more a habit than anything else. I cried and paid bills, and cried and called about cremation, cried and cleaned out the last fifteen years of our life, cried and stopped wondering why I kept going, because it didn't seem to matter.

During Tom's illness, I spent many days and nights alone in the cold, impersonal cancer hospital surrounded by strangers whose loved ones were also fighting for their lives. I had heard the phrase 'dark night of the soul' somewhere, and I knew that was where I was, lost in the dark. Absolutely nothing in our life had worked out as we had hoped. And Tom was dying.

In Tom’s half-truth version of our life, we had tried to make use of our gifts, struggled, and hardly gotten anywhere. So much promise, so little to show for it, and not for lack of trying or success. The long years of stress, underemployment, frustration, feeling like a useless failure, and always living one calamity away from ruin, had taken a terrible toll on both of us. The fight was all gone out of me.

I read about the Dark Night of the Soul in a book I kept going back to for strength by Gerald G. May. He introduced me to John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila, two Christian mystics who explained the dark night as a state of mental obscurity and protective darkness.

"John's explanation of the obscurity goes further. He says that in worldly matters it is good to have light so we know where to go without stumbling. But in spiritual matters it is precisely when we do think we know where to go that we are most likely to stumble. Thus, John says, God darkens our awareness in order to keep us safe. When we cannot chart our own course, we become vulnerable to God's protection and the darkness becomes a 'guiding night' a 'night more kindly than dawn.'"

Whatever faith in God we had was entirely Tom's, and he was dying. In my dark night, I could not see why either of us had ever been born. But out of that dark night, God was leading me to a deeper knowledge and understanding of love and my destiny. But that was going to take a lot of spiritual work.

After Tom was gone, as I lay all alone in the bed we used to share, crying my heart out, night after night, distracted thoughts raced through my mind. Suddenly, I remembered the dream I'd had over a year ago, the death truck dream. "Once it comes to earth, it can never return empty, because some greater power has decreed a person's death and mortals may do nothing to prevent it." (Wikipedia) Tom’s death had been decreed. We’d spent a year in useless treatments. Why did the death coach wait so long for its passenger? The answers to this and many other puzzles would be a long time coming, but right then, I was very deep in the dark night and emotionally and intellectually numb.

Blame my Irish grandmother for this dubious gift of second sight, the kind of thing I'd always considered merely ignorant superstition. But I was about to learn how permeable the veil between life and death is and how intimately cherished our earthly loves and endeavors are by our creator.



I knew that large black pickup truck had meant death, but back then, I had only a mortal idea of what death was and meant. And I'd never paid much attention to my dreams. But there it was. The death coach had come to my door and had taken my husband away from this life. To where? How could that possibly be? What was I thinking? Was I losing my mind? Yet, when I thought about it, I remembered the experiences I’d had in the past which had aroused my curiosity about psychics and paranormal events and had even prompted me to take a closer look at the bible, keeping a more open mind to the possibility of supernatural events being possible.