Open Writing

In my hunger for a deeper understanding of what I was experiencing I began to read voraciously on the subject of spirituality and the afterlife. My husband and son raised their eyebrows in joint surprise at the nature of the book titles which suddenly began to appear in the house whenever I returned from the library. Collaboratively, they teased me. It was obvious then that I would not be receiving any support from those two on the matter so I began to look around for it elsewhere.

I really was at a loss as to where to go and who to confide in. It was dawning on me that, seeing as it was those who were in another dimension who were trying to communicate with me, I needed a medium, someone who claimed to be able to speak to the deceased. But I am fairly wise to the ways of the world and I was fully aware that there is a whole industry of people out there who make it their business to prey on the spiritually vulnerable and curious. How would I be able to find a genuine medium? I couldn't go on word of mouth or recommendation because I didn't know anyone else who was experiencing the same phenomena as me.

In the end, it came down to finances and a spur of the moment opportunity. I was at the local shopping centre with an hour to spare before I needed to collect my son from after school sport. On my way to putting the groceries in the car, I wandered past one of those weird 'Living Energies' shops which sell peculiar things such as crystals and joss sticks. Before this day, I had always shaken my head in disbelief that such an enterprise could make sufficient money to survive. I certainly didn't know of anyone who ever admitted to going in there, let alone purchasing anything. I noticed a sandwich board outside the shop which had "Lorena. Medium. Conducting readings in store today" chalked up on it. Suddenly I felt that familiar vacuum beside my left ear and the crackling message in my right ear insisting, "Go in, Sandra. Ask how much. Go on."

Squirming with embarrassment and hoping that no-one had recognised me, I slunk in and enquired. It was surprisingly affordable, I had just the right amount of change in my wallet and Lorena was free right away. Feeling ridiculous, I made my way sceptically into the curtained off partition and sat down in front of a blonde woman who had remarkably swirling, grey eyes. This was going to be a test I decided, a test of authenticity and a challenge to those spiritual voices to prove to me once and for all that they were no figment of my imagination. I was fully expecting Lorena to come up with generic vagaries and I vowed to myself not to fill in the gaps for her or feed her any information of my own. I resolved to give only nods of affirmation, if what she said was true, and nothing else. I was grimly determined. Lorena would not be getting any help from me.

I was briefly disappointed when Lorena produced a pack of tarot cards and asked me to shuffle them and divide them into three piles so that she could read my past, present and future. I was under the misapprehension that only clairvoyants, those who claimed to predict the future, used these cards and I definitely needed a medium, a conduit between me and the deceased. I was not looking for a fortune teller. Lorena quickly reassured me that she was a bona fide medium and that she only used the cards as a tool of assistance and, in fact, she hardly used them at all, going instead into a semi-trance like state.

"I have your mother's sister here," she said. "She died young of cancer. She wants me to tell you that she was not ready to go."

I sat up straight away. This was correct and I was impressed that she hadn't said something vague like, "I have a female relative on your mother's side here." I carried on listening.

"She tells me that a friend whom you haven't seen in many years is writing to you at this moment" and Lorena gave me the first four letters of that person's name. I thought this highly unlikely and wasn't entirely sure who she meant but I put the information away in the back of my mind.

Lorena continued, "She tells me that your son is one of your soul mates and that he was so desperate to be with you in this life that he jumped the gun and tried to be born as your brother."

I was about to shake my head and vehemently deny this as I have no brother when I remembered that my mother had had an ectopic pregnancy before I was born. "She says that you needed him more in your life as a son than you would have needed him as a brother." This was true. My life in Australia would have been far emptier and lonelier without him.

Lorena went on to say that my son would be extremely wealthy in the future and that she saw him working very hard with numbers. Right now however, in present time, she saw him about to take a job without pay. I took the "numbers" bit to mean that my son was perhaps going to be an accountant like his father although I thought this unlikely as they are of different dispositions. I have noticed though, that over the past three years, my son has studiously had his head down over his maths books, determined to master this difficult subject so that it does not adversely affect the final mark on his school leaving certificate. I almost guffawed at the thought of my teenager working without remuneration as this seemed most out of character.

"I see a lot of sickness in your family," said Lorena. I imagined that this was about to concern my husband and his ongoing illness when she surprised me by saying that she had my father's parents coming through and she gave me the first three letters of my grandmother's name, B-E-T. My grandmother's name was Elizabeth but she preferred to be known as Betsy. Lorena added, "They tell me that they have been very worried about your father but he is okay at present. They are giving me a 'V-E-R' name." By now I was clutching the sides of my chair. My father had indeed been dangerously ill with heart problems but for a year or more he had been stable, and his name - his name is Vernon.

I left the shop floating on a cloud of ecstasy. It might as well have been the powered kind, I was so high. Intellectually, I could not refute that Lorena had produced facts about my life, facts which she could not possibly have known unless she was genuinely communicating with someone who knew me. I wanted to dance, to sing, to shout out to the whole shopping centre, "People, I have proof, at long last I have definitive proof that life and love continue after death!"

Instead, I restrained myself and went to collect my son. When he climbed into the car he said, "Guess what, Mum, I volunteered to be a house monitor at school today."There was my "job without pay".

The promised letter arrived five days later. Trembling, I ripped it open. The name and date were exactly as predicted.

I am still waiting for my son to become "extremely wealthy."