Do Dead People Walk Their Dogs? (14 page)

I assume you
mean one that has crossed over, but the sad fact is that I can only reach individual spirits with whom I have had a personal connection, either directly with them or through someone dear to them who is still here. And to tell you the truth, some of my favorites are still here. My favorite singers of all time are Judy Garland and Bette Midler—one on the Other Side, one on this side. To me, Judy Garland was the best
performer
of all
r
time. At a time when performers were practically
owned
, she was never entertaining for the studio moguls. It was for the audience. That’s what kept her alive. The audience was her IV bottle going straight into her veins. While I never saw her perform live, I’m still such a fan—seeing the movies, the clips of skits and songs—I so get it. I wish I could be like Judy Garland—I’d love to have her talent in any category, but make better decisions about my life. Of course, also Marilyn Monroe—count me among the millions. I’m a HUGE Marilyn Monroe fan. I have a zillion books, photographs, and also a zillion photographs of myself mimicking her. Call it corny or call it whatever you want, but I love to “play Marilyn.” Any woman who wants to feel appealing or sexy can relate to Marilyn. And Bette Midler—I’m very glad she’s still among us here. I love Bette Midler’s singing and I love that she goes around New York City planting trees and starting neighborhood gardens and cleaning things up where the city has fallen apart and been trashed in years past. She spends so much of her life just trying to make things more beautiful. God bless her voice, and God bless her passion to clean up the world! So many entertainers are so endeared but they are protected by their “people,” their publicists, and so forth. So many show themselves eventually to be not really a nice person. But here’s Bette Midler out there with rubber gloves on, picking up garbage. That is humble and beautiful. Some stars talk a good game, but meanwhile they are living in gated communities, or on ranches somewhere, far from everyone. As if they aren’t human, just like everyone else. Those are the ones who aren’t in touch with reality. They really should get out more—the real world is not such a bad place!

Generally, yes, they
will. And we often will be aware of their presence, will know who it is who is waiting. But there will be others that we aren’t necessarily expecting who will be with the ones we
are
expecting. I’ve done many readings where the person who comes through tells me to tell my client that he or she will be there to lead them over to the Other Side, or there to welcome them when they get there. Nobody makes this trip alone, but just as we can’t know all our guardian angels—some of them are people we’ve never met in this lifetime—we can’t know our entire welcoming committee until we see them. Then, of course, we will recognize them as people we’ve known before, over multiple other lifetimes.

I got a letter from a woman named Sherri, who responded to my newsletter, where I’d said people could send any questions they had and I’d try to answer them. She told me that when her son was two years old, her grandfather died at the age of ninety-one. On a nice day, she and her son would walk to a baseball field that was just around the corner from her grandfather’s old house. One day her son was waving and saying hello to no one. When she asked who he was waving to, he said that he was greeting “Baby Pop,” which was her grandfather’s nickname, and Jon, her cousin, who had died on 9/11, years before her son was born! After that, there were several occasions when her son mentioned seeing and talking with Baby Pop and Jon. He’d wave to them and tell his mother what they were wearing. Then one day, they were at the ball field again and Sherri asked her son if Baby Pop and Jon were there. He said no, and proceeded to tell her that Baby Pop had gone to “Dee Dee’s house.” (Dee Dee was what her son called her grandmother.) He said Baby Pop told him that he was going to Dee Dee’s house because Dee Dee was tired. Two days later, her grandmother was diagnosed with third-stage cancer, which had already spread throughout her body. Her grandmother passed away two months later, and since then her son has not mentioned seeing Baby Pop or Jon. She asked me, did her grandfather and cousin come to get her grandmother? Of course the answer is yes, they did. The souls are always close by and never more so than when someone is about to cross. The one who is preparing to leave will be more aware of them, but even the rest of us are able to notice the vibe, too, at these times. It sounded from Sherri’s letter that when her son reported his connection with his great-grandfather and cousin, she was welcoming, not fearful, which gave him the support to continue reporting his conversations with them. Hearing these messages from her son allowed her to have the comfort of knowing that her grandmother was well taken care of, surrounded by loved ones, when she crossed.

The answer is
that this could not be further from the truth. I’m not sure why this question is asked so often—I’ve also been asked whether Satan has anything to do with it when a child dies. Per-haps because a parent who has lost a child so often feels like they themselves are in absolute hell. It’s so tragic—I want to be careful how I say this—but God has a perfect plan. I assure you that a child who crosses, crosses to God, and the fact that they return to God at a young age has always been part of the plan. They knew when they came here that they would not be here long. When I meet a parent who has lost a child, it’s so hard. I want to be a comfort, but it’s so difficult to convince them that God is not angry with them;
whatever
the circumstances of the child’s death, they need to forgive themselves. Even if there is a lesson for them in this situation, the question isn’t, “Why would God do this to me?” The child came knowing they would leave at this time. Satan had nothing to do with it. Thinking that Satan had anything to do with it implies that Satan has power over God. Life, death, and everything in between is the business of ALL-mighty God.

Besides people who lose a child, there are also those who would do anything to have a child and yet they are not meant to be parents in that way. Again, this is all according to God’s plan. It has to do with our individual karma and soul’s purpose in this lifetime. I can use myself as an example in this case. I desperately wanted to have a child of my own. I tried everything—in vitro, fertility surgery, and many other things. But, I’m not God. This was not something I got to decide. I had even been told by the Other Side, when I was very young, that I would never have a child, but I fought against it. It took me a long time to completely accept that I had another purpose and to have peace in my heart on that account. Now, even though I didn’t get what I wanted, I’m happy. There’s no way I would sit around and be miserable and complain to God. I don’t know everything that He knows. All I know is that there is a plan,
for each of us
.

I think there’s
more than one question here or maybe it’s just that the answer is connected to other things that don’t have anything to do with birth defects or disease. First of all is the matter of how we define these things. We will call something a defect when what it is in reality is a sign of a particular challenge—or mission—that individual has. It’s hard for us to understand this because we only relate it to ourselves. If we are reasonably perfect in our body, we’ve got all the usual parts and they all work in the way we expect them to, more or less, we think of this as normal. Then anything that differs from this model of normal, we call a defect—it isn’t there, or it doesn’t do what ours does. But what we don’t realize is that, according to the greater plan, it isn’t
supposed
to be there, or it isn’t
supposed
to work in the same way. In our human terms, we often perceive suffering in that individual. In human terms, they do suffer. But these individuals are what are called “mission entities.” They literally are here on a mission to have some powerful impact on us. They shock our emotions, they cause us to grow spiritually, at a faster rate. Mission entities are not always children, but it tends to be the children who we notice more, who tug at our heartstrings even more than if we would see an adult with the same challenge. The effect on us is more powerful. Not to make any kind of a joke about this, but in a very real way, they often become the “poster child” for a particular issue that we all need to solve. They pull our awareness to an ongoing tragic circumstance, where there has been much suffering for a long time, but we just aren’t focused enough on it to work for a change—whether it’s a cure for a particular disease, or to heal a sickness in society.

We also need to keep in mind that God’s glory and the love He has for us is so great that we all are perfect on the Other Side and have no limitations, regardless of how we were here. A couple came to see me whose little boy had crossed over when he was just five years old. During the reading, their son came through and he said to me, “Be sure to tell my mother that I’m riding a bike!” He also said, “Tell her not to cry,” but of course that was pretty much a lost cause. Tears flowing, the mother told me her son had had a disease that made his bones very fragile, so he couldn’t play with other children because he was easily injured and wouldn’t heal properly. She was always asking him what he wanted to do—did he want to watch a movie, play a board game, have something special to eat? He never wanted to do anything except watch other children. Any time she asked what he wanted to do, he wanted to go to the park. He couldn’t walk, he had to be in a stroller, but they’d go and sit together and he’d watch the other children playing, and he’d laugh and giggle, getting so much enjoyment out of just watching. He especially loved to watch kids riding bikes. He was never sad; he was always trying to cheer up others. It just broke her heart that he couldn’t play like the other children, only watch them; he would never be able to ride a bike himself, but he never complained. Her son actually lived longer than they’d been told to expect. Just before he died, she saw him looking toward the ceiling of his room, toward the corner of the ceiling, and he stretched out his arms like he was reaching toward someone. Then he turned to his mother and said, “Mommy, they say now I can do anything I want!” and then he crossed.

I always say
that it is this side of the veil that is the difficult side. The Other Side is perfection, but not here. In fact, this side is often called “the vale of tears.” It’s not only pain here, of course, it’s a mixture of both joy and pain, but here is where we learn our lessons and grow spiritually. It’s a Buddhist concept that everyone feels pain, but not everyone suffers. What this means is that we can choose how we accept the pain in our life; we can trans-form pain to something else rather than choosing to answer our pain with excessive grieving or depression. But I will admit that it can take years or even lifetimes of spiritual practice to fully grasp and embody this truth. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t start now.

My friend Barbara, whom I’ve spoken of before, is such an animal lover. She has a huge heart and can’t pass by an animal in need. One summer day, she had gotten her couple of dogs on their leashes, heading to the woods for a walk. As she was passing a parking lot on her way, she saw there were a lot of birds perched on nearby buildings and, strangely, they all seem to be watching a particular car. Barbara walked over to the car and saw there was a tiny creature under it—very small with its eyes still closed. Without even looking at it closely (she told me she thought it was a mouse!) she put the animal in her pocket, turned the dogs around, and ran back home. Once there she set about getting a box, lining it with a piece of fur, looking for an eyedropper, heating milk to try to get the tiny animal to eat. She finally realized that it was a kitten and was
so
young, really just born. Her little terrier, Penelope, had taken a shine to the kitten and was avidly watching over it while she called her father to ask his advice. Her father was not very encouraging. He said, “Honey, there must be something wrong with it. It’s really not common for a mother cat to just abandon a kitten like that unless it has something wrong.” She hadn’t noticed anything, but trusted her father, so she had another look at the kitten and saw that he was right. On the inside of one of the kitten’s back legs was an open wound. She realized she’d need to take the kitten to the vet the next day, but for then she just concentrated on trying to get the little thing to take some of the milk she’d warmed for it. That night as she slept, Penelope came to her, barking to get her attention. She could tell that the dog’s agitation had to do with the kitten, so she got up and followed her to the box she’d prepared. Immediately she realized that the kitten had died. Barbara was very upset. Even though she’d only had the kitten less than a day, she had completely bonded with it. She cried and said out loud to God, “I thought if You were giving it to me I’d get to keep it!” But clearly, this was not to be.

Exactly six months from the day she’d found the kitten, her birthday, Barbara was in a fairly serious car accident and was taken to the hospital. As she lay on a gurney in the hospital hallway, she spoke to God again, asking why He would have this happen to her, what lesson was she supposed to learn from this? Hadn’t she been humble enough? Hadn’t she shown her gratitude enough? What could possibly be the reason? She had more shocks coming.

Within the next three weeks, her father died. And then her beloved Penelope was hit by a car and also died. The losses were nearly unbearable, but for Barbara, an answer was forming:
Nothing
was hers to keep. She realized that all she had, everything good in her life, was temporary, and only hers by the grace of God. She did not own anything. It was God’s love for her that gave her all she had.

Into each life some rain will fall and we just need to do our best with whatever form that takes. God doesn’t give us more than we can handle, even if it seems like it sometimes. On the material plane, nothing is permanent. Only on the spiritual plane are we eternal in God’s love. This is the only true reality and it is all joy. Here, many of our lessons come with hard knocks, but we have to remember it’s not intended as a punishment. We are confronted with our problems and our diseases to learn and grow. Princess Diana took off her gloves and kissed AIDS patients. This made her glorious! It’s difficult for humans to comprehend this—we operate from such a narrow band of knowledge. It’s up to us, to the best of our ability, to make the imperfect more perfect. To comfort one another when we are in pain, to learn, and to love.