After-Death Communication | Annie Mattingley

Mirabai Starr is a local writer acquaintance whose daughter died nine years before mine. I read her most recent book, a memoir, Caravan of No Despair (www.mirabaistarr.com), just before the fifth anniversary of my daughter Randi’s suicide, then set the book aside.

Recently I went to retrieve the manuscript for my own book The After Death Chronicles after Mirabai had read it. I felt chagrined when she referred to my knowing about her daughter’s after-death contact from her book, because I could not remember this. Eighteen months after my first reading, I read Caravan of No Despair again.

Now I could see how unprepared I had been for reading about her grief process and her daughter’s death. How could I have “forgotten” the strange sense of peace that permeated Mirabai on the night of that death—before she knew? How could I have “forgotten” the radiant encounter with her father on the night of his death—before she knew? Despite after-death communication’s profound significance to me, her stories had been too emotional for me to hold onto then.

Mirabai wrote that she could only read literary fiction in the immediate wake of Jenny’s death. I could not bear to read anything that touched my heart. Mirabai described the piercing choice to push the button to ignite the crematorium’s fire. I had asked to see my daughter’s body before it was turned to ash and nearly collapsed when I did. There are so many ways to grieve.

When I read that Mirabai had never met a bereaved mother who did not crave death, I wondered why I didn’t fit this pattern. I believe I had no space for craving death when my granddaughter Chelsey became my surrogate daughter. I had never considered living to be really old a worthwhile goal; suddenly I yearned for long life. Eighty-eight would take me past that vulnerable year in Chelsey’s life when she’d reach the age—47—her mom was at her death. But I did the math wrong. I’d have to live to be 98. Could I make it?

Mirabai wrote of the possible “suicidal despair” of grieving mothers, another pattern I had sidestepped. Knowing firsthand how suicide tortures those left behind, I would not subject my beloveds to that pain. Yet when she wrote of the holy fire of her pain, I burned with the compassionate sisterhood of our shared experience as mothers, no matter the external differences in our grieving process.

I experienced odd hits of synchronicity in the book. At fourteen, Mirabai’s daughter planned to be a doctor. My daughter had been a doctor. On the day that Jenny would have turned 25, Mirabai adopted a dog they named Lola. On the day after my granddaughter Chelsey turned 25, she gave birth to a daughter they named Lola. Why this made me cry when I read it and again as I write this, I don’t know. Maybe it’s simply that same sense of grief’s shared sisterhood.

On May 23^rd I was on a train in Spain with my family, including Chelsey and Lola, the trip a college graduation gift for Chelsey, partly funded by her inheritance. This would have been Randi’s 54^th birthday. I spoke of what I always share on my daughters’ birthdays as I relive the days of their births, of telling Randi about being awakened early by contractions, leaving in the dark, her toddler sister Rowena drowsy in my lap—no seatbelts in 1963—dropping her at my parents’. By noon I was putting my second-born to my breast, kissing her soft spot.

I will always honor Randi’s birthday. Without it my heart would not have cracked open 47 years later, but I would not trade away this day to avoid the day of her death. A broken open heart is like a seed that can burst into new life in damp soil. It was Randi who told me—after death—that I would be transformed by our connection and by all those I interviewed who had similar experiences. She was right. My will to live and my awareness of Spirit’s constant support have never been stronger. As Mirabai says, though tragedy doesn’t guarantee transformation, it does offer the opportunity for it.

The After Death Chronicles: True Stories of Comfort, Guidance, and Wisdom from Beyond the Veil. To be released October 6, 2017. Watch for pre-ordering in July.
www.anniemattingley.com

There were fifty butterflies or even a hundred surrounding our sun porch when we arrived. It was hard to enter the house without letting them inside. We were returning from Colorado a few days after my daughter’s memorial service. As the butterflies fluttered around our windows and door all day long they lifted my heart on their delicate wings. Nothing could lift me into full-fledged joy, yet they flooded me with tiny shots of hope and possibility.

They were not quite out-of-season. I’ve seen an occasional butterfly in late October here, but never so many. Today I looked up what to call such a group—a flight, a flutter, a swarm, a rabble (weird, eh?)—but the best name is “kaleidoscope,” because these contained so many kinds and colors.

Summer seems finally to be on its way here in New Mexico after lots of late spring snow. This was stunning on the crabapple blossoms, though many of their fuchsia petals curled when the snow melted. Now that it’s so sweet to be outside, it’s the perfect time for everything from a stroll to a long hike and to look for, maybe ask for, contact, because a common way for our dead beloveds to contact us is through nature, with birds and butterflies being typical. Butterflies can come in December. A single one has accompanied a person in grief on every step of a five-mile hike.

The key to these experiences is what happens inside us when they occur. This often involves an instant knowing. When a ladybug landed and stayed on my friend’s glasses as she hiked, she “knew” this was her mother. It can take a while to learn to trust this knowing, not to dismiss it as our imagination or coincidence.

The first time I got buzzed by a hawk, I was in my purple pajamas on the rooftop of my Oaxaca, Mexico apartment. As the sun rose, my attention was on my daughter. I thought the bird was a pigeon. It was very, very low and nearly directly overhead before I recognized it as a hawk.

Back home, I stood talking, when a shadow raced over us so close I ducked. My friend, facing me, was open-mouthed. “What was that?” I asked. “A hawk,” he replied. Had we ever seen a hawk come so close? This time at least I noted we’d been talking about my daughter. The third time I was swooped in my own front yard, again as I spoke of her. Finally I got that there was a connection. Being swooped by hawks is as rare as a kaleidoscope of butterflies that hovers and flutters all day. We’re not hawk-prey. Hawks swoop mice and bunnies they can eat for supper.

When such out of the ordinary events happen, if we can set our doubts aside and look for resonance, ask what the experience has to tell us, we may receive a grief-relieving dose of reassurance or hope. In my book, The After Death Chronicles, I share stories of contacts made via eagles, geese, hawks, swallows, falcons, butterflies, ladybugs, clouds, rainbows, and a large, unidentifiable insect that flew in and out of a baby’s open grave. Even the direction in which a hawk flew over another gravesite—to the west, where the sun sets—had meaning to the woman’s son and granddaughter.

So, whether we’re on a hike or a stroll or just sitting on the front stoop, we can listen for the voice of the wind, notice the rocks on the ground, how green shoots rise from the soil, watch the birds. If we think we might be receiving contact but are unsure, we can take a hint from some of the interviewees in my book–say thank you anyway. It can’t hurt.

Gratitude is always a gift to those who feel it and it might open up a path to receive a satisfying contact we are sure of. Besides, can anything but good come from being outside in nature? Enjoy.

www.anniemattingley.com
The After Death Chronicles: True Stories of Comfort, Guidance, and Wisdom from Beyond the Veil. To be released October 6, 2017. Watch for pre-ordering in July.