EXPERIENCE DESCRIPTION

I've had many experiences:  I am just going to put a couple in here.

1. My mother was dying of cancer.  I got the news she was likely to die within hours.  I took a bus from NYC to Boston, hoping I would make it in time.  However, while I was still on the bus, my mother died.   My sister in law phoned me to give me the news.  I was numb with shock, grief, and sadness that I had not made it in time to be with her.  Just a few minutes later, my bus arrived at Boston's South Station.  The urgency of my trip was over.  I slowly walked to the local subway line, arriving on the platform just in time to watch a train pull away.  I sat on the bench to wait for another.  As I waited, a guitarist on the opposite subway platform played two songs, 'Tears in Heaven' and then 'Stairway to Heaven'.  Then my train came.  Those two songs, 'Tears in Heaven' and 'Stairway to Heaven' were a gift to me.  I believe an angel was letting me know Mom was on her way to heaven.  I don't think it was Mom herself, because I am pretty sure that Mom, who loved Broadway show tunes, was not familiar with either Eric Clapton or Led Zeppelin.   Then again, maybe it was Mom.  In Heaven, anything is possible.

2. Another anecdote: my friend Nancy is a smart, beautiful woman who embodies generosity.  When she was nearing the end of her first pregnancy, I felt uneasy.  She seemed to have a perfectly healthy pregnancy; nevertheless, I was worried about her. One night, I was quite tired and went to bed early, around 9PM.  I dreamt that 'I' - not the physical I, but I nevertheless-- was inside a pregnant woman's uterus and I could see the baby.  He had the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck.  I felt tremendous fear. I flew out of her uterus straight into the forehead of a nearby doctor.  'Do a C-section!' I screamed into the doctor's mind.  'The baby's going to die!  Do a C-section!'I suddenly woke up from the dream, still feeling terror.  I looked at the clock.  It was about midnight.  Peter was in the living room.  I called him into the bedroom and told him about the awful dream I had just had.  I felt better after telling him about the dream and was able to go back to sleep.  Around 5 AM, the phone rang.  It was Nancy's husband Joe.  Nancy had given birth around midnight.  Doctors performed an emergency C-section.  The umbilical cord wrapped around the baby's neck three times, and both mother and baby almost died.  Later that day, we visited Nancy in the hospital.  The baby was crying incessantly.  Nothing would comfort him.  I picked him up and cuddled him and he stopped crying.  He just looked into my face.  As long as I held him, he was calm - as soon as I put him down or handed him to anyone else he started crying. 

3. One day I was sitting on the sofa in my living room, enjoying a cup of tea and a good book, I suddenly felt an intense pain in my chest - anguish!  I started thinking about a friendly acquaintance's son, Luke, a brilliant young man working on a master's degree.  I had no reason to think about him - I hadn't communicated with either my friend or her son in about three years.  'Luke is in pain', I thought,  'So much pain.  His life is too intense for him.  He is under too much pressure academically and socially.'  I looked at the clock - it was 3:45, which meant I still had an hour or so before I needed to cook dinner.  I let go of these unhappy thoughts and returned to my absorption with my book.  That evening, my sister called to tell me the news.  Luke, had taken his own life.  To end his pain he swallowed an entire bottle of sleeping pills.  It had happened around 3:45 PM.

I was heartsick.  Because I had experienced that strange pain in my chest, I felt that I knew what his pain was, and that Luke had been out of his mind with anguish.  My emotions teetered between grief and anger at him for doing this.  Yet, I also understood because I had felt his pain.  I could barely get out of bed for a week.  About a week after his death, I dreamed of Luke.  In the dream he said, 'I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry!  I never would have done it if I'd known!'  A few days later, I had another dream in which Luke was in a space of grey mist.  On each side of him were beings made of mist and light.  They seemed to be supporting him, helping him.  Luke begged me to talk to his mother and to tell her how sorry he was. I was to have similar dreams, repeatedly, for months.  I remained open to whatever Luke wanted to communicate to me.  However, I did not want to talk to his mother about this, as he seemed to be requesting.  She had suffered enough and I did not want to add to her pain.  In the dreams, Luke persisted in asking me to tell her he was sorry.  More than a year later, I finally mustered the courage to have a conversation with Luke's mother, telling her about my dreams.  Hearing my story proved a comfort to her.  She wanted to believe her son still existed somewhere and hearing my story helped.   She'd had no premonition, no feeling of anything being wrong when she got the call that he died.  That someone else had this connection with him consoled her.

4. When our son was in  kindergarten, my husband had a brain tumor.  In retrospect, it was easy to see that something had been very wrong for a while.  He was strangely bloated; he became short tempered and had a number of other odd physical symptoms.  He was just not himself. One day, his left eye started to bulge and by the following day, it was protruding dramatically.  The tumor appeared to be benign, but was extremely close to the optic nerve.  Peter needed surgery to remove the tumor, because if it touched the optic nerve he would be blind.  Before getting to the neurosurgeon, other doctors had prescribed various (ineffective) drugs. The surgeon wanted to get the wrongly diagnosed prescription drugs out of Peter's system before he performed surgery.  This process would take a few weeks.  Meanwhile, he had frequent MRI scans to make sure that the tumor did not get closer to the optic nerve.  If it did, the surgeon would operate immediately in spite of the medications.  I accompanied my husband to his appointments, and maintained a cheerful optimistic attitude in his presence.  When I was not with him, I fell apart, terrified.  I became accident prone - tripping and falling frequently.

One day during this time, I took my son to the park.  As he played near me on the grass, I silently prayed.  'God, I know I'm not supposed to ask you for proof of your existence.  But - if you are near me and helping me, I want to look down RIGHT NOW and see a 4 leaf clover.' I knew it was silly, but I checked anyway - there in the grass, between my feet was a 4-leafed clover!  My heart leapt!  I thought, 'OK, OK, Wait a minute, it could just be a coincidence'.   I looked again and there was another 4-leafed clover.  And another!  I showed my son.  All around us were 4-leafed clovers!  We began to pick them. Other people nearby saw this and began looking for four leafed clovers.  No one else found any.  'OK, I thought.  We are just in a four-leafed clover patch.  We moved to another area of the park.  We instantly found more four leafed clovers.   We moved to still another area of the park where we immediately found several more four leafed clovers.  Within a few minutes, we collected about 20 four leafed clovers.  That afternoon, we visited a friend who was having difficulties.  We gave her all the four leafed clovers. The next day, my son told me he could probably sell four leafed clovers at school, so we went back out to the park to go four leafed clover hunting.  We found none.  We looked everywhere we had been the previous day, and scoured many other areas of the park as well.  We found no four leafed clovers.  A few days later, Peter went to the neurosurgeon for his pre-surgical MRI.  The surgeon told him the tumor had shrunk slightly.  There was no medical explanation for this.  They decided to postpone the surgery, wait a week and look at the tumor again.  The next MRI showed it had shrunk further.  Over the next year, the tumor shrank, slowly but surely until it disappeared.  After a couple of years of regular MRI's the surgeon told Peter he did not need to see him anymore.  It was a spontaneous remission.

I have many, many more stories of miraculous events.  I wonder if this happens to me because I had an NDE as a child. 

Was this experience difficult to express in words?  No

Did you ONLY sense an awareness of presence of the deceased without actually seeing, hearing, feeling or smelling them?        No

Did you hear the deceased or hear something associated with the deceased?          Yes

            Describe what you heard, how clearly you heard it and what was communicated:            songs, played by a guitarist

            Did the voice or sound seem to originate externally or outside of you, inside you, or did you not hear a voice or sound, but had a sense of knowing what was communicated?            external

            If you heard a voice or sound, was it similar or dissimilar from the voice or sound the deceased made when they were alive?           No

            Is there any possibility what you heard was from any other source present in the surroundings at the time of your experience?           yes, a busker

            Was there any possible impairment to your hearing at the time of the experience?   no

Did you feel a touch or experience any physical contact from the deceased? No

Did you see the deceased?         No

Did you smell a distinct smell, scent, fragrance or odor associated with the deceased?      No

How long did the experience last?        5-10 minutes

Was the beginning and end of the experience gradual or more sudden?         Yes.  Suddenly started playing.

Could you sense the emotions or mood of the deceased?           No

Did the deceased give you information you did not previously know?  No.

How do you currently view the reality of your experience?           Experience was definitely real

            Please explain why you view the reality of your experience as real or not real:            There have been so many of these.  They are frequent occurrences in my life.

            Was the experience dream like in any way?   No

Describe in detail your feelings/emotions during the experience:           Happy to get the message.

Was there any emotional healing in any way following the experience?           Yes

It was OK that I hadn't made it in time.

What was the best and worst part of your experience?      It was great to have that message from my Mom.  I was sad I hadn't made it before she died, but I knew she was telling me she was OK>

Has your life changed specifically as a result of your experience?         No