Love Beyond the Grave

A reminder of loved ones watching over us.

Bob Olson is the host of Afterlife TV, author of two books, Answers About The Afterlife and The Magic Mala, and creator of the reputable directory of psychics and mediums, BestPsychicDirectory.com.

Photo by Christopher Sardegna on Unsplash

Below are three true stories of our spiritual connection with our loved ones in spirit. It’s easy to forget or question this connection, so I’m sharing these with you as a reminder of the love and guidance that forever exists on the other side.

The First Story

Last week, I was leaving my house to visit my friend, John. A thought popped into my head when I grabbed my keys out of the drawer where we keep them. “Ask about Bailey.” Bailey is John’s dog. I thought, “Okay, I’ll ask about Bailey.” And then I had an overpowering feeling that something might have happened to him. “Oh,” I thought with a heavy heart, “ask about Bailey. Okay, I get it.”

This doesn’t happen often, but I pay attention to it when it does. Sure enough, John had lost his sweet dog, Bailey, who had been in his life for twelve years. We had a long conversation about his loss, a few tears were shed, and I was able to be there for my friend. John needed someone in his life who understood the deep grief that can accompany the loss of a pet.

I’m not an experienced psychic or medium, so I don’t know the source of the message I got about Bailey. Maybe it was my spirit guide. Perhaps it was John’s spirit guide. Maybe it was the infinite connection between all living beings, the intelligent energy that psychics tap into when giving a reading. Or perhaps it was Bailey himself who was so concerned about his best friend that he reached out to me to help him. I lean toward the latter as the source.

The Second Story

Another friend, Susan, told me about her unexpected encounter with her sister this week. Her sister called her, outraged about something petty. Susan explained it was a simple misunderstanding, but her sister wouldn’t listen. She was already angry, so the sister unloaded her rage on Susan.

Without letting Susan get a word in edgewise, her sister threw out decades of grievances, anything she could think of to hurt her. When she finally ran out of insults and accusations, the sister brought their dead father into the altercation, claiming that she had discussed one of these issues with their father before he died, insinuating that the deceased father agreed with her about some of these grievances.

All Susan could say was, “Oh great, now you’re bringing our dead father into it.” As anyone would be, Susan was affected by the confrontation. But it was the “dead father” comment that bothered her the most, especially considering there was no way she could confirm or deny its validity.

Incredibly, a medium called Susan on the phone two days later. The medium realized that Susan had paid him twice for her last reading. He called to say he was tearing up the second check. That’s when Susan’s deceased father showed up to him. Through the medium, the father assured her she shouldn’t concern herself with what the sister had told her. There wasn’t any truth in it. Given that the medium knew nothing about the altercation, the message was timely, accurate, and comforting.

The Third Story

I had two interviews on Afterlife TV with Dr. Lani Leary. In the first, Lani explained the circumstances of her mother’s death when Lani was thirteen years old. Here’s Lani sharing that story.

“When I was thirteen, my mother was ill with Guillain-Barré. In the ’60s in Hawaii, where I was born and raised, there were seven known cases of Guillain-Barré [syndrome], and [all seven people were] dying. But in my family, with the right intentions, I believe, my mother and father did not talk about her illness. They didn’t educate us, so we didn’t know what was coming. Therefore we couldn’t prepare.

“A week before [her death], my mother was very loving and open. I clearly remember her standing at the kitchen sink. I walked by. I was a typical thirteen-year-old. She turned around and looked at me and said, ‘Lani, I love you so much.’ ...In a typical thirteen-year-old’s way of trying to gain independence and break away, I just tsked, rolled my eyes, and walked on.

“[A week later], my brother told me that my mother was especially ill, so I did the only thing that I knew how to do at thirteen. That was to take my two younger brothers away from home to play at the beach, thinking that my mother would be able to sleep and rest. I didn’t know she was dying, so we left the home. Later that afternoon, when I came home, I walked into her room. Her bed was empty, and she was gone. There was a note from a friend saying that she had taken my mother to the hospital. My mother died in the hospital without me ever being able to see her or say goodbye.”

Lani lived with this weight on her shoulders for fifteen years. Because she didn’t know her mother was dying, she did what many teenagers do when their parents tell them they love them. She rolled her eyes and walked away. A week later, her mother was gone, and the teenager wasn’t sure that her mother knew that she loved her.

As Lani put it, “My mother died, in my mind, without me telling her that I loved her. So, in the absence of information about why she died, I created my own reasoning. It was a fantasy reality, but in my mind and for decades afterward, I believed that my mother had died because she believed that her only daughter didn’t love her enough, and so she hadn’t thought to live... I lived with that image and the meaning of her death in a very convoluted and shame-based way for years and years.”

At the age of twenty-nine, Lani had a near-death experience while at the dentist. She was allergic to the nitrous oxide he had administered. In Lani’s words, “I was lying back in the dentist's chair, and the next thing I knew, I was up in the corner of the room looking down at my inert body. And I felt no fear. I felt no anxiety.

“I was trying to talk to the dentist. The dentist didn’t hear me. I just looked at my body with kind of a fond detachment, and I had no sense of time, so I don’t know how long I was up there in the corner of the room. But the next thing that I was aware of was that I was entering a tunnel, and my mother, who had been dead for fifteen years, was right at the entrance to the tunnel with her arms out. She was whole, and she was beautiful, vibrant, and healed. She was healed, and that was really important because she did not die whole and vibrant and thriving in this way. I saw her. I knew it was her, and I went into her.

“I was there, and it felt to me like the entrance of the tunnel, and my mother was right at the entrance of the tunnel to catch me. It felt like she was there to catch me, and so her arms were open wide, and it was a peaceful landing, I might say, but you know, right into the bosom of your mother. It was so clearly a healing moment for me, what I had needed for all those years.

“I communicated with [my mother] telepathically... I heard it inside of this being, whatever I was now. I said to her, ‘I love you,’ and she said, ‘I know,’ in such a way that the energy went around me like her arms. And I said, ‘I miss you,’ and she said, ‘I know.’

“And what I knew in that communication was that all those things, every single day of my life, that I had wanted to tell her or I had wanted to ask her, I already had. What I knew was that she had always been with me, and there had never been any separation between us. I knew that she knew that I loved her... So in this moment of communication, [the hurt I had felt for fifteen years] was healed. I knew that she would always be with me, and I still know that. I know that now. I know she’s right here.”

Lani’s experience with her deceased mother didn’t happen as quickly as Bailey’s message to me or my friend’s message from her father, but this is where divine timing comes into play. After Lani’s near-death experience, she realized she wanted to dedicate her career to hospice care, which she has done. At the time of the interview, Lani had supported thousands of dying or grieving patients and sat at the bedside of more than five hundred people as they passed.

Final Thoughts

My point in telling you these stories is not to convince you of anything. These stories by themselves are unconvincing. But they are a reminder. The next step for those who believe life continues after death is to grasp precisely how that works. What do they know about us now that they’re in spirit? Can they see us? Can they hear us? Ultimately, once we’ve had the experience of losing a loved one to physical death, how are we to understand our new relationship with that person, that consciousness?

So many of my articles are my attempts to share what I’ve learned regarding my relationships with loved ones in spirit. I, too, once asked, Do Spirits Attend Their Own Funerals? Or Can My Loved One See Me in the Shower? Today, I’m responding to questions about our deceased loved one’s involvement in our everyday lives.

A dearly departed dog wants his owner to be comforted by a friend. A father wants to set the record straight about what was said while alive. A mother wants her daughter to know that she never questioned her love for her and certainly did not give up on life because she didn’t feel loved by her.

The holiday season can be filled with deep emotions, and some of those emotions are related to people who won’t be celebrating with us on this earthly plane. We miss them. We have regrets concerning them. We wonder how much they know about our lives now. We wonder if they know how much we love them.

These three stories, and I could tell you a hundred more, remind us that our dearly departed loved ones are with us. They know what’s going on in our lives. They know how much we love and miss them. And they are doing what they can from the other side to help us navigate the complexities of living a human life. The more we’re aware of the signs and communications from our loved ones in spirit, the easier it is for them to do this.

I hope you’ll keep that in mind this holiday season, as my wish is that it will give you some comfort and peace amidst whatever emotions you might be feeling.

With love,
Bob

PS, You can watch my first interview with Lani about what she learned about dying and grieving from working in hospice: click here. You can watch my second interview with Lani about her near-death experience: click here. You can also read about the four ways that spirits communicate with us (both loved ones in spirit and spirit guides): click here.

Bob Olson is the host of Afterlife TV, author of two books, Answers About The Afterlife and The Magic Mala, and creator of the reputable directory of psychics and mediums, BestPsychicDirectory.com. His newest venture is Bob Olson Connect, where you can read Bob’s articles before they become books.