On the Grace Surrounding Death

Posted on August 29, 2017 by anniemattingley

Today I’m continuing with the third in my series on the various ways in which our dead beloveds visit us. This week’s examples focus on what can occur just before and after deaths, during the dying process, and at the moment of death. Each example is a real experience that has happened spontaneously.

I’ll begin with a story I tell in my book about a young man who drowned. Neither he nor anyone he loved could possibly have been aware on a conscious level that this accident would occur. After his death, as his family and friends gathered to mourn, it was revealed that within the previous week he had gone out of his way to connect with many of his closest beloveds. He had given gifts and told many of them that he loved them. After the fact, it seemed obvious to everyone that he had been preparing them. This illustrates what I call the Grace which surrounds death and often helps to soften its blow.

The opposite can occur when we have an urge to visit or call someone, to make amends or apologize or say “I love you” and that turns out to be our last opportunity because soon after the person dies unexpectedly.

A drawing done hours or even years before a sudden, accidental death may later reveal details about the death as though the person had known when and how and where they would die. What does this say about time and its mysteries?

After a sudden death, we may realize a recent dream was designed to help us cope.

A child may burst into tears, saying something has happened to her father before being told of his sudden accidental death.

If we’re unaware someone has died, we may be informed of the death by vision or voice or dream before we are told by expected means like phone calls.

A family may “protect” a dying person from disturbing news like a miscarriage or a divorce or a death, yet the dying person may “see” the event and speak of it.

If we’re present at the death of a beloved, we may see or hear or be aware of those who come to greet the dying or have any number of invisible phenomena made known to us.

At a deathbed we may be aware, by means we cannot fathom, seeing with non-physical eyes, of when the person’s essence exits the body.

I experienced this last example at my father’s deathbed. I “knew” his essence (or soul or spirit) had left his body and risen up and passed through the ceiling. When I asked the ICU nurses to disconnect him from life support because of this, they too knew he had gone.

Watch for my focus in the upcoming weeks on physical and electrical manifestations and experiences of synchronicity.

I would love to hear how your dead beloveds have lit up the scene beyond the scrim that separates life from death. I invite you to share your experiences with me at https://anniemattingley.com/participate/ If you’d prefer to tell me your story verbally, let me know and we can arrange for that.

The After Death Chronicles: True Stories of Comfort, Guidance, and Wisdom from Beyond the Veil. To be released by Hampton Roads on October 6, 2017. Pre-order on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and IndieBound. Find out more on my Book Page.

Nothing, No One, Is Ever Totally Lost

Posted on August 22, 2017 by anniemattingley

Fall is in the air, in the way the mornings smell and feel, in the crackling cry of the Clark’s nutcrackers. These noisy birds are annoyed if I come too close and interrupt their pinon harvesting. It’s too early for them, isn’t it? I’m not ready for fall yet. Does this all portend an early frost? Will the flowers be felled before what I perceive to be their time?

My drying peppermint. Note the afternoon rain on the window.

I harvested the peppermint this morning and hung it in the sunporch to dry. This is a late summer task, not a fall one, but still that word “harvest” bothers me.

What I’m really not wanting is what follows fall—winter, snow, ice, cold. Yet these cycles teach me about how nothing ever stays the same. The grape hyacinth and crocus are the first to bloom in spring and the first to fade. All through spring and summer beauty shines, then disappears—lilacs, daylilies, the tall yellow yarrow I love so. Our irises are still impacted by last year’s army of voles who also killed most of the rhubarb. We have not yet finished clearing away the branches that were broken off by our heavy, late spring, snow.

Hail clattered everywhere last Sunday. I held my breath, remembering the baseball-sized hail that crashed through roofs and totaled cars in Colorado Springs last August. Sunday’s hail passed through without doing more than knocking off a few flower buds and petals.

Miscarriage, birth, life, death, illness, injury—they are all reflected in nature. If I can’t be present with change, I will suffer constantly. My garden and yard, the seasons, the moods of the sky and the mountains remind me of this at every turn. I don’t mourn the sun when it sets each night. I did not mourn it when it eclipsed on my birthday either. Why? Because I know the light always returns.

Last week I noticed a new volunteer hollyhock, not two feet tall, blooming a brilliant red. Another gift to be grateful for until the frost takes it away.

I look back at a journal entry about the despair I felt six years ago as I approached the first anniversary of my daughter Randi’s death—before her time. There have been so many steps and stages since then. Tears still arise unexpectedly as though from a bottomless well, yet even then I feel astonishingly blessed by life, and amazed and pleased that I can feel so blessed despite her death. I still often and regularly sense her presence to remind me that nothing, no one, is ever totally lost, totally gone.

This October 6^th, the seventh anniversary, will include a new quality, since that’s when Hampton Roads is publishing my book. I think of this as bringing light to the darkness of that hellish day. Interviewing for and writing this book supported me through the winter of my grief and into its spring. I composted my sorrow and used it to nourish and feed my project. Now it is about to come into full bloom.

My prayer is that The After Death Chronicles will nourish all who read it, just as so much and so many have nourished me and it. Isn’t it ironic that I shrink away from fall for fear of the winter that will follow, when fall is my favorite season?

If you have after-death communication stories, I invite you to share them with me at http://www.AnnieMattingley.com. Just click “Share A Story” in the menu and follow the instructions. If you’d prefer to tell me your story verbally, let me know and we can arrange for that.

More Ways our Beloved Dead Come to Visit

Posted on August 15, 2017 by anniemattingley

Today I continue the series I began last week on the myriad ways that our dead beloveds can visit us.

I’ll start with a mini-story. When Thelma (not her real name) inherited her father’s home, she moved into it temporarily and felt his presence nearly constantly. His garden had been his favorite place. I love that he once pointed out to her that a particular tree (I believe it was one he’d planted.) needed watering. I could use that kind of help, since I often fall behind on my watering. Thank goodness for this rainy August.

Practical info is just one way dead beloveds can participate in our lives though. They may also assist us in much more significant manners.

If we’re struggling with a difficult decision, a solution may arrive with a memory of the person or just a sense that we’ve been helped by them.

If we have a particular route we usually travel, a nudge to go a different way may come. Sometimes we’ll never know why. At other times we might hear later that a bridge had collapsed or an accident or a crime had occurred just when and where we would have been had we not changed our route.

We may ask for help from our beloved with an important transition like a divorce or career change or move, receive advice that defies logic, follow it, and have it work out just as our beloved had suggested.

If a nudge or advice or solution comes in a voice, we may hear words either inside our heads or externally in the person’s voice. Sometimes it simply feels like our own thoughts.

Our dear beloved may give us a message—directly or in a dream—that we’re unsure we should deliver. When we do, it may be received with joy and gratitude and tears.

When we’re unsure whether after-death communication is even possible, a book on the subject might fall off a library shelf at our feet. (Yep, this really happened, as all these incidents did!)

The sense of someone we’ve lost connection with may be felt so vividly we search the Internet for news of them and, to our shock, come upon their obituary.

We may hear our dead beloved’s happy laughter.

Looking at what was happening or being said at the precise moment that lights go off and on without discernable cause, may reveal meaning.

A hug or a kiss in a dream may feel as real on awakening as if the person were right there in the physical.

Of course, these contacts are comforting. But when we discern levels of meaning within them, the comfort is deepened, because meaning reveals an unseen order we yearn for. Little feels more out of order than death. Each time we discover meaning we straighten the house of our grief by one small increment.

Watch for more examples in upcoming blogs.

If you have your own stories I would love to hear them. I invite you to share them with me at http://www.AnnieMattingley.com. Just click “Share A Story” in the menu to write about your after-death communication. If you’d prefer to tell me your story verbally, let me know and we can arrange for that.

Lighting the Stage Beyond Death’s Scrim

Posted on August 8, 2017 by anniemattingley

Scrim: In the theater a scrim is a curtain that appears to the audience as an opaque backdrop at the rear of the stage. When a scene is lit behind this backdrop, the scrim becomes transparent.

After-death communication lights up the scene beyond the scrim that separates life from death. In a flash, it can dispel any illusions we have that nothing exists beyond death (or that what exists is somehow unfortunate), dispelling both our fears about death and our concerns for the welfare of our deceased beloveds.

Today’s blog begins a series on the enormous diversity of ways in which our dear dead ones can light up the scene beyond that scrim. Each experience (and I include a few that happen prior to a death) has actually occurred and has revealed meaning to those involved. In his book, The Map of Heaven, Eben Alexander calls “…meaning, the language of the spiritual world…” These
contacts speak the language of meaning and sometimes require translation to be fully understood.

Here goes…

We may receive contact as sensations in our bodies, or as goose bumps, which I like to call “truth bumps.”

If we meditate, do mantras, or pray—Our beloveds may arrive in any manner while we are engaged in our spiritual practice.

If we’re doubters—We may experience contacts so profound our worldview is transformed.

If we’ve been unable to attend a funeral, we may receive any kind of contact—a dream or an experience in nature—that reassures us the person holds no grudge.

A car may be flooded with someone’s scent when they’ve not been in it for months.

Our cell phone may flash the number of our dead beloved as though they had called.

If we’re in danger without our awareness—A verbal warning like “Slow down” or “Watch out” may come just in the nick of time.

A message may come from lyrics or the timing of a meaningful song on the radio. Music may bring on awareness of someone’s presence.

After a death, a clock may stop repeatedly at a time which, when examined, has personal meaning. Once that meaning is understand, the clock may never stop again.

I would love to hear how your dead beloveds have lit up the scene beyond the scrim. I invite you to share your experiences with me at http://www.AnnieMattingley.com. Just click “Share A Story” in the menu to write about your after-death communication. If you’d prefer to tell me your story verbally, let me know that and we can arrange a phone call.

To be continued next week…

Tiny Ways to Honor the Dead

Posted on July 31, 2017 by anniemattingley

Doing something to honor a person we love who is no longer in a body pleases the heart and satisfies the soul. It is a kiss through the veil. Activity is natural to us. We miss our regular acts of service and love—making a meal, sending a card, buying a gift, placing a phone call. Death stymies us. At every turn we face a detour sign that blocks our natural impulse to connect.

Of course, we honor our dead in traditional ways like headstones and crypts and arrays of flowers. We endow scholarships, fund benches in parks, start charitable foundations, dedicate books (that’s me). There are also really personal ways that can ease the sting of our thwarted impulse to connect. Here’s one that arose spontaneously for me.

As I was preparing to take down an unhealthy tree on the far edge of our land I noticed how sculptural its bare branches looked. I stood back, wondering, if I left the rest standing, how turn it into an art project. Over lunch I asked my visual artist husband what he might put on this tree. “I’ll think of something,” he said. “I’ll add it to my list.” I wanted something that could happen in the next hour.

Suddenly my deceased daughter’s sun-hats came to mind. A bag of them had been sitting on a shelf for a couple of years. I counted them. There were thirteen hats. I went out to the tree. It had thirteen branches.

That’s how Randi’s Hat Tree came to be. It has no plaque. It pleases me that her hats make passers-by laugh. You won’t count thirteen hats in the photo though. Some have been sacrificed to snow and wind. The rest are drooping and shredding and fading. One branch has broken off. Within a few years there will be no more hats. I find this temporary quality gratifying. It’s our love that lasts. I don’t need a marble monument to remind me of that.

Here are a few ideas for what you could do in the name of a dear dead one:

Plant a tree, a rose, a wildflower bed. Watch it grow, wither, and bloom again in the spring.

Give a quarter to a homeless person. Say, “This is from my mother…”

Offer up today’s practice—prayers, mantra, meditation—to honor someone beloved.

Balance a pebble on a fencepost as you walk by.

Put up a birdhouse.

Spend ten minutes weeding the library’s flower bed

Walk to the corner and back again as a gift to your beloved.

In what tiny ways have you honored someone? If you try some of my ways, what was it like when you saw that pebble on the fencepost the next week? Or when bluebirds nested in the birdhouse? Or the next time you saw a homeless person? Did any of this ease the sting of a moment’s grief? What happened over time? I’d love to have you share these on my website at www.anniemattingley.com.

Annie Mattingley

after-death communication researcher, author, & speaker

Category Archives: Grief