Do you believe in life after death?

A year ago, I would have empathetically said yes, life goes on after death, many things happened in my childhood that I could not have put down to mere co-incidences. Over time, my beliefs have been questioned over and over again, leading always to the same conclusion. Today is the 1st anniversary of my mother’s death, mostly spent crying on my own and thinking back, but I am left without comfort. I need to explore this in stages.

My Childhood.

My mother was very physic and a practising medium at the Spiritualist church, only giving up when she was eight months pregnant with me. In later years, she often told me that in the early stages of labour, she was calm and happy; she used to see little spirals of light in the room. When the nurse came in, the spell was broken, it was a difficult birth and I nearly died. I was born with severe damage to my neck and a wound from the placenta. After two weeks, I was still not getting any better, mum signed herself out of hospital and took me home, despite the doctors saying I would die. It was two years before I could stand, my head was wobbly and my balance poor. Yet at eighteen months old, I could sing all the nursery rhymes and make clear sentences.
Many of my earliest memories were playing with the spheres of light that danced around my bed. I never questioned their appearance and it was years later that mum told me about them.

My younger sister was born 14 months after me; I adored her from the start. When she was two years old, we both had Scarlet Fervour, a killer disease in those days, some ot the time I was halucinationing, but my “spirit” friends were there all the time, dancing around and running their fingers through our hair until we went to sleep. I never told anyone about it except for my mother, who told me to never mention it again. We both survived and only I remembered my friends,

My mother had lots of bad dreams; sometimes she would speak about them, as we got older. Other times she only told me. As I got older I knew she was a genuine physic, she never asked for the dreams and never made any money from it, in fact, they disturbed her so much, she was frequently in tears,
I remember her crying over a little boy who was trapped in a dark place, it was a kidnapping that went wrong. A submarine went down with a total loss of life. Mum heard them calling out for help and shouting numbers she could not understand. I wrote them down and begged her to tell someone, but who would listen to an uneducated women? Towards evening she gave a long sigh, her message was, it’s okay now, we are home." The next day it was in all the papers, a last message from the doomed men was the co-ordinates, they matched mums perfectly. Many other things happened until mum became to tired to take any more, she never changed the destiny, just suffered.
Often, mum and me shared the same dreams, some good and some really bad, though mum helped to keep the violence from me.

The only time I saw a ghost, was when my elder sister was in labour with her second son, she wanted a home birth, as she hated hospitals. I woken up at 300am; at the bottom of my bed was a pale greyish woman with eyes full of tears. Terrified I burst into my parent’s bedroom, mum was awake and there was no need for words. We woke dad, saying we had an urgent call, we rushed to the local hospital, where my sister was having a blood transfusion, her home-birth had gone very wrong. My nephew Patrick was born on the bathroom floor in a pool of blood. My sister needed 6 pints of blood and Patrick was in an incubator for two weeks, the time of birth was 3.00am.

Years passed by and as mum got older, the dreams were easier, almost as if her health could not stand them anymore. . Meanwhile, my own became worse; I had vivid dreams and even waking ones. Once, in work, I found myself telling a colleague, her baby would be born before the years end. She and her husband had been trying for a baby for eight years. David was born in November; she never spoke to me again.
My dreams continued, but I never spoke of them again.

My dad had a stroke on 28th December 1994. I arrived before the ambulance; I never needed a phone call. There followed a 15-month period of hell. Since he had lost his speech, I interpreted his needs by gestures and expressions.
During the last week of his life, I asked the matron, should I talk to him about death, she thought it was a good idea, coming from me, mum could not accept he was dying.
I found it much easier than I thought it would be. Dad already knew. After I had dropped mum home, I used to sit with dad until the early hours of the morning. He used to pat my hair with his good hand. Sitting in the darkened glow of a night-light, we watched the lights dancing, dad would point and laugh. When it got late, he would point to the door, he knew I needed my sleep.
On February 28th 1996, I left dad sleeping. I got to bed around 2.0 am. At 6.05am I sat up in bed, I knew something was wrong. Hastily dressing, I was nearly out of the door at 6.15am., when I got a call from the nursing home, dad died peacefully in his sleep at 6am.
Although I cried at the funeral, he was with me for a long time after. When life seemed hard and I could not sleep, I felt the touch of his hand on my hair. Along with this, I smelt the delicate aroma of daffodils, and the colour and smell of fresh bluebells, dad and I used to ramble the woods for the wild flowers.
How could I mourn him when he was always there?

My mum died of a stroke on 27th May last year. I started writing this on the same day.
She passed away in my arms. We had always had that physic bond between us, I waited in vain for the same comfort I had from my dad, to no avail. The only comfort I had was on the day of the funeral, I woke up to the sound of a very old song, running through my head.
It was called Scarlet Ribbons, an old song by Harry Bellefonte, my mum’s favourite song.
Somehow I got through the day, an orphan at 51!

Since then, I have waited for anything that reminds me of my mum, but there is only a void.
I was brought up a Christian, though mum showed me a different world of Spiritualism,
Maybe, with all religions, there is some truth in all, perhaps mum was enlightened enough to pass on, or to be born again, as in Buddhism. Maybe dad stayed around so long because he had work to do. There is truth in all religions, basically, it’s the way we approach it, with a humble heart and the need to pass through death to something better, I want to believe, with
All my heart, but wish I knew my mum was still around.
Thanks for reading Lisa