My friend went to an appearance of a woman whose presentation features sessions of speaking with the dead. The house was packed with what my friend estimated to be a thousand people. The program featured the medium making contact with the spirit of a departed loved one. As she talked, those who had some kind of connection with the person she was talking with were to raise their hands. As she continued talking the conversation would gradually eliminate people and their hands would drop until only one person remained. That person was asked to stand and a microphone was taken to them. The medium then would proceed with a what she called a reading and relay statements to the person from her loved one. As one would imagine, these are very emotional sessions especially for the one who has been chosen.

My friend was chosen for the last reading of the night. Since she is a very private person I was amazed to hear that she stood in front of  those thousand people and exposed her feelings. She did so because she is so desperate to know that her loved ones are well and together. The medium made statements that she interpreted as being what her loved ones would say and brought up some things that she did not think the medium could have known about, which further convinced my friend that the whole experience was real.

I was not there and therefore not in any position to speak about the veracity of the experience. Nor do I wish to deal with what I believe about mediums and mystics. I told this story because the aftermath of my friends experience reveals a very important truth about grief and grieving. Whether or not I believe that some people can talk to the dead is totally beside the point in this post. What my friend experienced, felt, and reacted to is important and is the point here.

She was the last reading of the night. When it was over she was inundated with people congratulating her and telling her how lucky she was and how comforting it must have been for her to know that her loved ones are in a better place and are cognizant of our world. That they are happy there. That they are concerned about us here. She said she thanked them all and nodded in agreement, but wondered why she did not feel what they said she would and should feel. She was not elated. She did not feel at peace. She could not understand why she did not feel like she thought she would. She drove home with friends who were almost beside themselves in joy and wonder, while she felt dazed and oddly troubled.

The let down came a couple of days later and she said she felt like she had been run over by a truck. She told me her story in great detail and, of course, wanted to know what I thought about the experience and its meaning. I answered her questions and then focused on what she felt that night and what she was feeling a week later. Mostly she was feeling depressed and confused because she was not feeling what she expected to feel and what everyone else expected her to feel. She really didn’t feel any better nor did her grief seem to be diminished by the experience and she could not understand why not. Why didn’t this take her grief away and replace it with peace and joy?

As we talked we began to discover again that the bottom line to grief is the loved one is no longer here. That is why we grieve. Learning to live and cope with the loved one not being here is the whole of the grieving process. All of the expressions of comfort or contacts with the loved ones does not change that one fact. They are not here. Knowing they are somewhere else and at peace is great and relieves a lot of worry, but the fact remains they are not here and we grieve and work at coping with their no longer being here. The only thing that can take that away would be for them to come back. Since that cannot happen even in a séance noting takes our grief away nor replaces the long journey of dealing with the pain and learning to live again with a chunk bitten out of our hearts that will not grow back.  

Real or not, I think my friend received a lot of comfort and peace from the experience. There was an emotional let down of course as there always is after such an intense high, but in time, I think there will be benefits to her. She did not feel the sense of total peace she thought she would feel, because, getting to hear from the other side did not change the loneliness on this side.

The lesson for the rest of us is to remember that just telling someone their loved ones are in a better place does not mean they will stop hurting even if you convince them. Hearing a loved one is in heaven is great news, but we still go home to an empty driveway, an empty bed and a loneliness that is bone deep.

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