Tag Archives: family

Last Chat

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Once I moved back up to Michigan from South Georgia the summer of 1999, I’d go to my dad’s house and we’d visit. We’d chat back and forth, often debating issues of the day. My stepmother said she hated listening to us because it sounded like arguing.

I’m not sure she noticed the gleam in his eye during these discussions. He’d gone to college intending to become a lawyer, but after one year was drafted because of the Korean War. He served in the states, repairing the electronics in planes, along with radios and televisions, which is how he ended up selling and repairing them once he was discharged, returning to Michigan with three small children born during those four years on base. He’d had polio during that time, as well.

Surprisingly, it took some persuasion to get him interested in computers. By that time, he’d been in the food industry for several decades and wasn’t as interested in electronics. Computers wouldn’t last long, he said.

Finally, he invested in one and started writing his own programs, eventually repairing them for his friends and family. Much of our discussions then centered on DOS, disks, and drives, new programs, installing RAM and other hardware, and software.

When he’d been down visiting me in Georgia in the mid-90s, he had a heart attack. Later, he discovered he had diabetes. Having been a pipe smoker all his life, the combination of the heart attack, polio, diabetes, and smoking all took a toll in his last decade on his appearance, his health, and his ability to walk without an aid.

I lived in a neighboring community through spring 2003, where I was working and attending a community college. Despite long days of full-time retail, then accounting and secretarial work and full-time school, getting my AA and BA, I’d visit frequently.

Then in July 2003, I moved closer to the university since I’d be going to school full time on scholarship and teaching four college classes each semester. In 2006, I received my MFA.

Between semester breaks, I’d go visit. He listened while I talked about going back and getting my Ph.D. Everyone at that point thought I was wasting my time at 58, but since my employer was paying the tuition and I’d always wished it, why not?

Even though he didn’t say the words, I could tell he was proud of me for doing it, but he had this strange look on his face. His thinking-about-the-past look, I called it.

One of my last chats with Dad occurred just after I’d started taking my first class for that last degree. He was becoming frailer. We both knew what was happening and talked about death frequently.

He laughed when I told him he’d be contacting me. I could tell he didn’t fully believe me. Oh, he’d heard my various stories and events regarding other spirits, but he’d never comment or ridicule me like other family would. And, he’d get the thinking-about-the-past face. I always wondered if he was recalling family now gone ever having contacted him in the past but was something he never talked about it.

That particular day, we talked about many things. At one point, he looked at me and said, “You never did go down the normal path, did ya’?”

“You’re just figuring that out?” I asked. He had a twinkle in his eye. While he wasn’t saying it, I knew he was proud of the path I had taken, was taking–even though he had never really agreed with it much of it at the time. When I was younger, he’d always suggest safer, more practical routes for me to take. I told him I knew what I was doing and why.  

That’s when he started talking about a few of his regrets. How he let fear stop him. My stepdad said the same thing shortly before he died—how he wished he’d lived his own life instead of everyone else’s expectations.

I understood then what some of those thinking-about-the-past expressions had been about. He’d been thinking of the roads not traveled, the paths not taken.

No doubt Dad’s limitations were because of us kids. But my stepdad had no children; his limitations had to have been his parents. For much of his life, he lived with them and continued to live in that house until he needed daily assistance.

Even though Dad wasn’t alive when I received my Ph.D., I knew he was watching. I could tell when he’d visit, usually late at night as we were both night owls, because he’d mess with my VCR or my TV turning them off or on, doing the opposite of what I was trying to do. He was playing with me. I could smell his pipe tobacco or his morning toast when he was around, too.

About a year after he died, a medium told me that Dad was one of my guardians and that he was saying how I had shown them all on how to get it done—the education, the writing, to finding paths that would fulfill my passions. That they were all learning from my experience.

I can tell he’s in a happy place with deceased family he’d been talking to in his last days. The relatives are reunited, having a grand ole time together, like they did when I was young.

He hasn’t been around as much these past couple years, but when I smell that toast or tobacco, I get goosebumps knowing he’s here, watching, checking in.

We’re still chatting.

Spiritual Readings

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It was 2001 and Halloween was approaching. A good friend was helping her boyfriend host his annual Halloween party, but this year was different. She was adding fun events to raise money for a charity near and dear to her heart.

During the past two years, particularly the past year, she was witness to my premonition skills, both in how I could see and sense upcoming events for people we knew, always telling me, “No way!” and then because she was dealing with a life-changing event and was asking me what I was seeing. She was shocked as the events played out just as I had seen them.

At first, I didn’t want to share what I was seeing, but she told me that knowing comforted her. So, I told her. The events unfolded just as I’d seen them.

For her party, she wanted me to come out and act as a reader for people she and her boyfriend knew but who were strangers to me. I said no because I had never performed publicly. I didn’t feel comfortable doing it. What if I was wrong? My premonitions were always personal and focused on people I was close to. I’d never forced my insight before, not like this, anyway. The things I felt and saw came on their own.

I wasn’t sure I could manage the humiliation if I was wrong, but she stated it was just for fun and that no one would expect anything from me.

Right away, I knew that statement wasn’t true. How many times had I gone to a reading and had huge expectations?

I decided I needed to stop focusing on myself and let go of those feelings. Instead, I focused on the group of people, as a whole, who would attend and how they would see it as just a fun activity.

Two weeks before the party, I told her I was sensing that someone at the party was either being horribly abused or was in the process of ending an abusive relationship.

“You can’t tell anyone that!”

“I don’t plan to,” I replied, but I had wanted her to be aware of the situation. Since most of my premonitions dealt with the terrible things that happen to people, and which I usually always kept to myself, wrote in my journal, or confided to a good friend, I had no intention of relaying this information to a mere stranger. I would focus, instead, on little mundane things like favorite foods, colors, movies, and such.

During the two weeks up until the party, I kept receiving this person’s energy. I had a sense that everything was turning out okay.

The night of the party, I was ensconced in the bedroom, the room dark, with only a few candles lit, the curtains open against the pitch-black night and my back against the door to prevent any other energies from coming into the room even though the door was closed during our reading. On the table was a basket of objects I’d collected over time and which, for me, held positive powers:  stones, crystals, twigs, an acorn, a chestnut, and some feathers.

People trailed into the room, one at a time. Some people I immediately connected to and had a sense of something happening that I could convey. I was able to provide readings that were fun and mostly true, even surprising for everyone other than one man, because he had put up such a wall of disbelief that I could not get beyond. His disbelief was forefront with everything else about him stored safe from observation…or so he thought.

He was instant that I read him, and I tried. But, all I could tell him was that I couldn’t read him because of the wall he’d put up.

When he returned to the party complaining that I was a fraud because I couldn’t read him because he was blocking me, they laughed at him, telling him I had completely read him true.

Late into the night, I was done, rising from my seat when my friend entered the room and asked if I could do one more reading.

I was exhausted, as I’d been reading for four hours without a break. She pleaded, and I said, “Okay,” affirming this one absolutely had to be the last one. She agreed.

My back to the door, she entered the room. Immediately, the energy changed. It was charged, filled with electric sparks.

A woman, who appeared to be in her 30s, sat down opposite me and said in a soft-spoken voice that she had just moved. Her face was in shadows, so I couldn’t see her clearly. Chills ran up and down my legs, down my spine, and across my back and neck. “You’re the one,” I whispered.

She stiffened in surprise, then said, “Tell me.” I sensed that consciously, she wanted the unvarnished truth. I could feel her spirit pleading with mine to reveal what I knew. Immediately, I knew it would be wrong not to tell her the truth.

“You’re either being abused or just came out of a horribly abusive relationship.”

She gasped in surprise, then sagged in obvious relief. “No one knows this, and you don’t know how much I’ve wanted to tell someone. I knew I had to leave in order to save my life and didn’t know what to do. Two weeks ago, all of a sudden, I knew it would be okay as if someone was looking out for me,” she said. We talked at length about her fear, about finding her strength. When she got up to leave, she said, “I don’t know how you knew, or when you knew, but I believe your knowing is where I got my strength to move out.”

Mike McGuire’s Send Off – January 19, 2016

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We said goodbye today (Jan 19) to my second cousin, Michael David McGuire, who died suddenly last Wednesday, the 13th.  The service was beautiful, the memories bringing both tears and laughter for family, friends, and his beloved working family from the Michigan State Police community throughout many locales.

My father’s family is large.  While I know my first cousins once removed (my father’s cousins) well, I don’t know my second cousins the same way.  I was the first born of the second cousins, which easily number several dozen or more, some I’ve yet to meet.  My aunt and uncle were only three years older than me, with some of dad’s cousins only eight or ten years older.  As a child in the middle of this big boisterous family, I preferred listening to the adult conversations, sitting in a corner of the big farmhouse kitchen, than playing in the parlor with the little kids.  The adults’ laughter was always infectious.  Still is today.

As for all of the second cousins’ kids, well, I can’t keep track of them all.  In fact, I’ll confess that due to my living in the South for a decade and a career kept me away from a number of reunions and family gatherings, I have a lot of catching up to do.

When I was growing up, from time to time, because I was older, I was asked to babysit for my second cousins, which included Mike and his younger brother, Robert.  The job was always an adventure, as they were close in age, would collaborate with each other and hide from me or be investigating something they shouldn’t.  They were always in action.

The next time I would saw him, over 20 years later, he was an adult, married, and with kids.

Unfortunately, because we are a large family, there are many funerals and today was one of those days.  While we always enjoy reuniting with family members and being introduced to kids and spouses we may not have met, we never like the circumstances, such as was today’s event.

I attended Monday’s visitation and while driving home, I sensed Mike’s presence, but I didn’t hear anything.  Just a comforting presence.

The next morning, however, when I got up, I keep hearing the word, “Giddy up!”  All that morning I heard it said as a gleeful exclamation.  Not a part of my everyday vernacular, I knew I was hearing Mike’s voice.

During the service, that included a bagpipe, the Michigan State Police guard,  who additionally provided a flag to Linda, his wife, recordings of favorite music, there was one particular silence where I felt the urge to say “Giddy up, boys.  Giddy up.”  The urge was strong and I sensed it would bring laughter, but I refrained.  As confident as I was that this was Mike speaking, I questioned the timing.

As fellow troopers got up one-by-one and started telling stories about Mike, including hearing he would tell them to “Saddle up,” as they rolled out on various duties, I discovered he was all about making people laugh, that he enjoying laughing as much as he enjoyed his family, fishing, and his work.  Saying “Giddy up” in that silence was something Mike would have done.

Mike was a marine who served in the Gulf War, with a commanding presence due to his height and demeanor.  He served undercover, provided governor protection, to name a few of his various teams, and had been a medical first responder with his local fire department.

The love and affection his family, friends, and police brethren have for him was easily felt.  Deemed as a tough guy, he also had a soft heart for his family, friends, and the people he served, and anyone who needed help.

Mike was only 52, far too young to be gone.  The service was truly a celebration.  As a collected group, we provided him a fitting, loving send-off, which was surrounded and sheltered with his presence.

Giddyup, Mike.  Giddyup.