My friend, Katrina, is to put it mildly…amazing. She recently attended a writing retreat where she was asked to write about a life changing experience/person and she chose to write about a reading she had with me. I thought it might be interesting for you to read about a reading from the other side of the table. The following is a guest post by Katrina.
I’m sitting at my kitchen table, photographs splayed out across its scratched wooden laminate surface. My friend Michelle sits opposite me, furrowing her brow and deep in thought. If anyone had come across us,we looked like we were in the middle of a scrapbooking jam.
When Michelle speaks, it’s clear we are not creating a collage from my photos.
“Your uncle really loves this photo. He wants you to remember him like this. He was really happy on his wedding day and he’s proud of his beautiful head of hair.”
I laugh as I look at the 1977 photo of him with a beautiful head of blonde hair, wearing a white tuxedo with bellbottom flared trousers; I stop as I remember the last image I saw of his head as he lay in his coffin at the funeral home: shiny, cold, and rigid.
Disbelief claws its way into my mind but quickly dissipates as Michelle goes on to tell me more messages my uncle has for me, ranging from comical to mundane to knowing some of my deeply personal and never before verbalized thoughts.
The week before Michelle and I were having lunch when the topic of ghosts came up. She says she believes in them. I say I don’t, but I press her for more information out of curiosity. She confesses she has been able to see, hear, and talk to spirits since she can remember. She’s never told me this before and I am flattered she trusts me with such a vulnerable confession. Michelle goes on, telling me she has learned to switch it off and would prefer to live her life without that being a part of it. I ask her some more questions and we say goodbye.
Two days later Michelle calls me to say that our lunch conversation temporarily opened her to spirit communication and there’s a man who is adamant he speak to me. He gives no other details other than his appearance – a full head of blonde hair and some bellbottom pants. Those details don’t ring any bells in my consciousness and I tell her than man must be there for someone else. I hear her pause, then say, “He didn’t want to have to show me this, but he’s showing me a tree was involved in his death.”
Tears fill my eyes as I instantly connect this is my Uncle LaDon, who died unexpectedly in a freak accident two years ago when I was six months pregnant with my daughter. He had been pruning a large tree when a massive branch fell at just the right angle to his unprotected head, killing him instantly.
I rarely speak of him so Michelle has never heard me talk of his death. I carry grief from losing him and guilt from not seeing him more the last time I had the chance ; those feelings are still fresh and cut me at my core.
As I look back across Michelle across my kitchen table, I’m struck by how “normal” she looks but what incredible things are coming from her mouth. Good friends since starting graduate school together four years prior, I see her as my peer in many ways – a mom, an elementary school teacher, a wife, and a fun friend to play Bunco with. But she clearly has an amazing gift as well.
Michelle delivers messages that evening from my uncle that validate our close bond, that tell me he’s with me all the time, that he’s happy in his new existence, and he loves me. The guilt I had previously carried in my soul dissipates, with an almost physical feeling of weight lifting off me. I still feel sad I can’t see him, but my grief is transformed knowing he’s still with me.
Michelle nervously looks at me across the table as we finish the reading and says, “I never know if I’m just imagining all this stuff or not.” I am in awe of what she is able to do and wonder how she can possibly doubt herself after being spot on about every single thing she said to me over the past two hours. My whole belief system has just been challenged and awakened in the most significant way it ever could be. In my heart I know this is just the beginning of her journey to embrace her gifts, continuing to transform my life and changing the lives of others for years to come.
Thank you, Katrina for sharing your experience.
Until next time,
Michelle