Long Island Medium

Content Alert: If the idea of spirituality and being able to communicate with loved ones and mediums freaks you out, stop reading now. 🙂 You have been warned, lol.

So, April vacation followed the week after Luke passed away. I am a teacher, so this was a good opportunity to take some time after the funeral, and after our family all returned to Canada, to be alone and just be sad in the missing. The days were very quiet. I would get up, walk down to the cemetery, do some chores, and then sit outside and read. Reading has always been my go-to way to slow my brain down and distract it from my own thoughts. I think there is nothing more therapeutic than getting lost in a story and its characters. I had been given two books from friends to help with grief so I decided this would be a good time to check them out. I have to be honest – I was hoping there would be answers: Answers as to why Luke was gone; answers as to why this was so painful; answers as to how this was affecting Logan; answers as to what we could do to make it hurt a little less; answers as to how the heck I was going to live without my boy for the rest of my life. Just answers.

The first book was titled ”I Wasn’t Ready to Say Goodbye” by Brooke Noel and Dr. Pamela Blair. This book was almost like a manual of how to get through the first year of grief. The authors had experienced loss and were able to capture with their words how I was feeling, and it made me feel understood and not crazy. It really spoke to the experience of losing someone suddenly and how that can be a different process. There was also an excellent section on what another child in the family might be feeling: both the loss itself and the loss of their family as they know it. This section was a tremendous help and validated for me the importance of being present for Logan. The author discussed how when parents are overcome with grief, surviving children can get lost in the chaos, and some kiddos report that it’s almost like they lost a sibling AND their parents. Creating/continuing a safe, loving environment for Logan became our primary goal and knock on wood, I think we have been successful. I cannot stress enough how much I recommend this book and its incredible list of resources for a newly bereaved parent.

The second book I was given was “There’s More to Life Than This” by Theresa Caputo. I had always believed in God and Heaven, but until this moment I had not given a lot of thought into the logistics of what exactly it is all about. Was Luke in Heaven? Was he suddenly Buddha Luke and had all the answers? Was I really going to still be able to communicate with him? For those of you rolling your eyes at this moment, and I know some of you are… you need to understand that when you lose a child you just want them back. Period. And if this means as a spirit or guardian angel, you don’t care. You just want to believe with all your heart, that dead is not dead. And so I read. Now this is no Pulitzer Prize winner, but it was an interesting look into Theresa’s life with medium abilities, both as a child and as an adult. There were plenty of funny anecdotes about what it is to grow up and be able to see dead people. Most importantly, there was lots of information about what “the other side” is all about and what might be happening to Luke. No, he isn’t suddenly a Buddha, yes, he is still a jackass. lol. It talked about what you can expect when you go to see a medium and how you shouldn’t go before three months because your loved one is “getting settled”, for lack of a better way to put it. Theresa, with her big hair and her high heels, made me feel like there was a chance, a chance, that my boy wasn’t lost to me entirely, and my goodness, ten days later that was EVERYTHING. I love Theresa for that. I also booked an appointment that very day with a recommended medium. More about that later.

So here’s what I need you to know: If today is your Day One or you’re early into missing your loved one, you might want to do some information seeking. Learning more about what the grief process looks like, helps you to better understand what you are going through. It really does. Investigating the afterlife gave me hope in an otherwise very bleak time and isn’t that worth something? In this age of digital resources and audio books it is easier than ever to find a voice that speaks to you and/or shares your same kind of loss. It’s one of the reasons I started to blog – so someone in the throws of loss might feel less alone. Hope can be found wherever we need it; even in words.