EXPLORING THE PHENOMENA OF “APPEARANCES”
About twenty-four years ago, Cliff and I attended a year-long class in New Testament Scripture, taught by a distinguished Biblical scholar. As are all such scholars, he was familiar with the ancient Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek languages. I remember he cautioned us to read texts that used the word “appeared” very thoughtfully, for he told us that word in the original Greek has a meaning that cannot accurately be translated into English. We tend to think that if something “appears” to you, you can run get your video-camera and record it for all to see. Having worked with those who are facing death and with the survivors of those who have died, over many years, Cliff and I have heard numerous accounts of “appearances,” and we do not doubt the validity of whatever we have been told. As stated in a previous essay, our sense of personhood is that its essence is an “energy,” and energy can be visible or invisible, but still remains energy, a “reality,” but in a different form and sometimes quite accessible.
Hours before Cliff’s mother died, he sat at her bedside, and she called out the name of Cliff’s sister who had died over a dozen years before. Mother Kenny apparently “saw” her deceased daughter. Cliff asked if she also “saw” his deceased brother, and she responded yes. There was pleasure in her response. For myself, I once went to a Cathedral and sat in a pew on the anniversary of my beloved foster-mother’s death twelve years before. I so longed to talk to her, to ask her why she had to leave me when I was only thirty. I saw nothing, but I was “aware” of a presence to my right-hand side, and I heard this explanation: “If I had not died when I did, it would not have been possible for you to meet Cliff when and as you did. He would never have said those magic words that told you where he grew up—the same region where Daddy Max and I had our summer home—and you would not be sitting here now. It all had to be!” I cannot describe the tender comfort those words brought to me. It has occurred to both of us that when people experience such “appearances” as Mother Kenny or I did, the intention of the departed one is “comfort” or the impartation of some form of wisdom.
I am privileged now to share, in her own words, the experience of my beloved second-cousin, Bonnie. Her deceased Dad was my cousin Jiggs. (Our family always gave “funny” names to family members.) Here is Bonnie’s precious account:
“When Mom’s health started to go downhill, Dad came to visit me in my dreams—first time, I was walking on the beach and Dad came right up to the shore in their fishing boat. He said he was there to pick up Mom. Now you know, I never, ever talked back to my Dad, but I told him that he couldn’t have her, she and I had things to do! The next time he came to visit, he simply said, ‘Tell your Ma the fishing is great on this side.’ Mom and Dad did love to fish. As Mom’s health got progressively worse, he came to visit more often, ‘just checking,’ he’d say.
“A couple weeks before God took Mom home, Dad was back—this time to say, ‘Tell you Aunt Leona the crabbing is pretty fine over here too.’ Now I didn’t know that Aunt Leona loved crabbing more than fishing, and I hadn’t a clue that she was ill.
A few days later I got a phone call saying that Aunt Leona had passed away.
“Anyway, the last couple weeks we had Mom, she was in a care center. Jim and I spent every day with her. She’d had a fall on Christmas day that put her in a coma for a week. We were so blessed that she came out of the coma for a week before God took her home. Anyway, we’d have her out in the wheelchair when she’d ask with a start, ‘What time is it?’ I’d tell her it was 3:30, then she’d tell me she had to get back to her room by 4:00 p.m. as Dad came to pick her up and they’d go fishing all night, then he’d have her back by dawn. Whew! Guess you know that was pretty heavy duty stuff for me, in light of all those visits from Dad. Mom would say the weather was gorgeous, the ocean was calm, not ‘lumpy’ as she called those waves, and the fishing was incredible. One day I asked her with all that lovely time she got to spend with Dad, was it okay if she decided to stay? You know that was really difficult, as I was having a difficult time letting go. She said she couldn’t go yet, because she couldn’t find ‘HER’ fishing pole, ‘And you know how your Dad doesn’t like anyone using ‘HIS!’
“About that time, when Jim and I were with her at the care center, she asked if I could see the angel at the foot of her bed—it was obvious that she was seeing and listening to someone at the foot of her bed; the next day there were two, then three, each day another one. I told Aunt Sharon about the angels surrounding Mom’s bed, and she said to ask Mom what the angels were wearing. I did the very next day, and Mom said, ‘Why they’re all wearing long flowing robes—and they have rainbows for belts!’
“I relayed this to Aunt Sharon that night, and asked her why she wanted to know. Aunt Sharon had been a pediatric nurse in Arizona, and her specialty was caring for terminally ill children. Every day at the end of her shift, she would give each of the children a hug and tell them she’d see them the next day. And to a child, as some lost their battle with cancer, each would say, ‘No, Miss Sharon, I won’t be here tomorrow.’ Aunt Sharon would ask why, and the little one would say, ‘Because that angel over there has come to take me home.’ Aunt Sharon asked what the angel was wearing. Each and every one of those dear children told her the angel was wearing a long gown, and ‘Miss Sharon, they have rainbows for belts!’ Now you know about the angels—I can’t tell you what a remarkable calmness came over me. We lost Mom a couple of days later, though the day before, she told me she’d found ‘HER’ fishing pole—right where she left it.
“Mom and Dad come to see me together now—always in the ‘Daisy Jane,’ their fishing boat, and Aunt Leona waves from the shore—she is indeed clamming! And one visit was especially wonderful. It had Grandma and Grandpa, Mom and Dad, [and here Bonnie writes all the names of her deceased aunts and uncles, my cousins, and includes the name of my Dad, her Uncle Allie] and they are all at a grand clam and fish bake at the Coast, and some of the men are having a beer as they tend the roasting pits! Of course you know that I had engraved on Mom’s and Dad’s headstone at the cemetery, ‘GONE FISHIN’!”
What a message of comfort and hope, and thank you, Bonnie, for sharing this with our readers!
I’m sure that I have shared before that I met Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross at a thanatology conference in Ontario 23 years ago. A few days after, I had an extraordinary dream, unusual because it was “in living color,” as they say. Elisabeth and I were in a cavern inside and at the base of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park. In the dream I kept thinking, “Why does this huge granite mass not fall in on us?” She was to my left with a treasure chest open in front of her, and I was standing behind what I knew was my open treasure chest. Then the dream was over, and I knew its meaning immediately. Elisabeth was, by her example, to show me what treasures I could find in my life, if I just worked with what was in front of me. The cavern somehow symbolized my sub-conscious mind, where everything is saved and stored. I even knew the meaning of the setting of Half Dome. That gorgeous flat face of granite was produced eons ago when a glacier of ice literally cut a huge dome in half. My sad relationship with my birth mother had been for me a glacier of ice that had cut across my life all the days of my life until then. Based on this dream, I applied to attend one of Dr. Ross’ workshops, after which I became her contact person in Ontario, Canada, for nine years.
Eleven years later, after she had retired and was living in Arizona, I called Elisabeth to tell her I was going to teach a class of student nurses that day about hospice care. And I added, “When I go to teach like this, you are always with me!” She responded, “And I will be always with you throughout eternity.” What a blessed promise, and it has come true. The only person I ever recognize in my dreams these days is the unmistakable image of Elisabeth with her glasses and her intent look!
Can I tell you, dear reader, with an absolute certainty that persons survive their physical deaths, and perhaps reappear to us in some manner? No. But I can tell you that survivors of the dead have told me on countless occasions that they experienced a vivid awareness of the presence of those loved persons who had died—perhaps the touch of a hand on the shoulder, perhaps a gentle whisper in the ear, perhaps a visage in a dream—but all of such impartations were for the purpose of comfort and sometimes guidance!
Thornton Wilder is one of my favorite playwrights. Here I want to close with one of the best paragraphs of his classic play Our Town : : “Now there are some things we all know but we don’t take’m out and look at’m very often. We all know that something is eternal. And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t even the stars—everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you’d be surprised how people are always letting go of that fact. There’s something way down deep that’s eternal about every human being.” Enough said! Thanks, Mr. Wilder for giving voice to a truism that can’t be proved but is as certain as our trust the sun will rise each morning!
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