A while back, Reader, I posted an entry here about my longtime friend Louie. I’ve known Louie since we were both “kids” in New York City … He’d come from France to study music at Juilliard, while I’d just returned from college down South, and was working at an Off-Broadway theater where we had a mutual friend who introduced us. And we’ve stayed close over the years.
Louie had at the time of my previous post lost his beloved mother and, several years later, his brother Liam as well. Liam’s death was sudden and unexpected—he had drowned while at their sister’s house near Crozon, in Brittany, on France’s northwest coast. While Louie was undergoing his own grieving process, he was also very concerned about his sister, Gabrielle. She’d been extremely close to both her mother and brother, had done caregiving for both, and was deeply stricken. In particular, she was plagued by the fact that Liam, who had suffered a mental breakdown a few years before, had died while visiting her house. She could no longer look at her beloved beach and ocean there, she’d told Louie, without thinking of Liam’s death.
Louie had reached out to me from his own home in Candes-St.-Martin, in central France. He was not himself. His voice had an atypical flatness, an air of desolation. At one point, he expressed the wish that he had a belief in the spiritual realms, as he knew I did. On hearing that, I had talked with him about some impressive work going on in the field of mediumship studies—rigorous, highly professional scientific studies. I told him there was a book I could recommend about it, by one of the founders. (If you’re curious, Reader, see my post “Mediumship: Follow the Science at the Windbridge Research Center.”) I thought it might bring him some comfort, and possibly his sister too.
Louie had listened and thanked me. But I knew it had not opened up his mind to the possibility that such phenomena could be real, and I doubted he would check out the work I had mentioned, at least not anytime soon.
Fast forward to earlier this year, when I was deeply saddened to hear of the sudden and unexpected death now of Louie’s sister, too! She’d been found on her couch; Louie said he believed she’d died of a broken heart. While I hadn’t known Liam, I had gotten to know Gabrielle a little over the years, and we’d bonded over being caregivers for members of our family. I expressed my condolences and sadness to Louie, who told me he couldn’t imagine his life without her.
I was surprised when Louie reached out to me again before too long to tell me that one of his sisters-in-law—Liam’s ex-wife—had hired a medium, and that his deceased brother had, she said, “come through.” Shazam! I thought. I couldn’t wait to hear what had occurred.
“She told me that Liam said some things about my sister and what happened when she died,” he said. Liam had reportedly told the medium that he went to his sister when she was dying, and that she “couldn’t see the light,” and was afraid. Apparently, he had helped her to “cross over.”
“And he said some things about me … about my relationship with him. That he loved me and respected me, even though we sometimes fought …”
“Did you fight?” I asked.
“Well, yes,” he admitted. He paused, hesitating. “She also told me that Liam was saying he was concerned about my health!”
Louie’s former sister-in-law had shared that his deceased brother, according to the medium, had used the word celiac, a word the medium didn’t even know. The medium said that Liam was explaining that it was related to the intestines. His ex-sister-in-law, who knew what celiac disease was—“an intolerance for gluten,” as she put it—advised Louie to seek medical help.
“I don’t really know what to think about it all,” he said. He was definitely skeptical and a bit disturbed by what had been said. And he seemed to be looking for my opinion about it.
“It’s impossible for me to say if this medium is actually connecting to your brother,” I said. “But you know that I’m a believer in the ability itself … My feeling is, if a reading doesn’t help you, if it isn’t comforting, or uplifting, if it doesn’t resonate with you as true, just let it go. Don’t let it affect you!” He seemed very relieved to hear that.
Even good mediums, I told him, sometimes got things wrong, because they were interpreting what they got, and also because they perceived things through their own filters … And all of this was also being filtered through Louie’s ex-sister-in-law. Again, he seemed relieved to hear it.
It was funny, I thought. Here I was, thinking that mediumship could comfort Louis. In fact, it had done the opposite. I did hope that he would take his brother’s advice and see a doctor, though.
Not too long after that I heard from Louie again, via text. “Hello, my dear,” he wrote. “Well, it turns out that I have celiac disease. It is freaky. I knew I had intestinal problems for a long time as I go the bathroom too often, and often have pain on my right side. But my former sister-in-law was not aware of this. Ah, the mystery of the afterlife …”
Double shazam! I was impressed.
As for Louie, though … had it convinced him that the medium had actually been in contact with Liam? It didn’t sound like it. And it didn’t really surprise me. To me, this medium picking up a disease that Louie didn’t yet know he had was pretty good evidence that something more than guesswork was going on. Then again, I’d had so many experiences with valid evidence coming in from mediums that I no longer questioned the phenomenon. To Louie, it was all brand new. And, apparently, “freaky.” I couldn’t blame him.
Time passed, and Louie began posting photos on social media of his gluten-free baked goods (he was an excellent cook!). He said he felt much better, and I was happy to hear it.
But the photos he posted as he went about cleaning out his sister’s house, grappling with what to keep and what to let go, broke my heart. One of her antique bed, which had been handed down through their family, and in particular one of a little red ceramic mug she had made as a girl, brought tears to my eyes.
I wondered what impact, if any, the reading would have on Louie as he moved on with his life? Had it made him curious to have a session with the medium himself? You know me, Reader. I had to ask.
“I still really don’t know what to think of it all,” he said, when I phoned him.
“So, how do you explain the fact that he was accurate about your having celiac?” I asked. I’d come upon situations like this before, many times, with skeptical friends, and I genuinely was curious to understand. Did he just see it as a huge coincidence?
“I don’t know. Maybe she could have, you know, gotten that psychically somehow. It just … doesn’t really convince me that she was in touch with Liam.”
Well, I could understand that. But to me, the medium not having been in touch with Louie himself made it, well, perhaps not impossible but unlikely that she would have picked it up from him.
As we chatted a bit more, I asked Louie how he was holding up. “I don’t ever feel like Gabrielle is around me,” he said. “I go to her house, and I can feel her there, even when it’s empty, though. It doesn’t feel like just an empty house, even without all her things in it. It still feels like her house.”
Louie mentioned that someone had spoken to him about the idea that Gabrielle had “left” because her work here was done. That perhaps, with her mother and brother gone, both of whom she had taken care of, her “job” on Earth might be complete.
I was surprised to hear him say it, and not dismissively. “Yes,” I said. “There is that idea of ‘soul contracts.’ That you contract to play out certain roles, and perform certain functions, before you come into each life,” I said. I’d read some fascinating books on that subject. Perhaps, one day I’d share them with him, if he seemed so inclined.
Most of us had a “tipping point,” I felt, an experience, or experiences, we could no longer brush off, that awakened our curiosity, or even directly changed our beliefs, opening us to new ways of seeing and being. But we were all on our own paths, and perhaps not everyone would ever hit that point—at least, not in this lifetime. And whereas I could be a bit zealous, I knew, about sharing my own adventures in the metaphysical world, that, I had come to understand, was perfectly OK. And sometimes I needed to remind myself of that.
We were here to be different, and unique. To learn from one another through all our differing experiences. In fact, as souls, I’d come to understand, we had a choice about what we wanted to experience here. It was not my job to attempt to convince anyone of anything, no matter how excited I might be about what I had experienced myself … Sharing was one thing. And yes, I did believe that was something—with my books and Salons—that I was here to do. With those who felt called to it. With those who asked.
I would do what I could to be supportive and compassionate, here and now, on our very human level, to my friend in his grief and loss. And if he ever wanted to know more, to arrange for a reading himself and reach out to his sister, his brother, and maybe his mother, too, just to experience what might happen for himself, he knew that all he had to do was ask.