psychic friends network

So lately, I've been talking to dead people. Well, not too often, and just to my father and my father in law.

I spoke with my father in November or December of 2006. He died on April 1st, 2006. That was just the kinda guy he was. Total joker.

My friends, my crazy internet friends the BEER (Bitchy Evil E-mail Ring) had a star named for my dad on his death. I knew nothing about it, and the package with the framed international star registry certificate and other goodies showed up at the house when my husband, daughter and myself were on vacation last summer. It was a great big cardboard box and as I wasn't expecting anything, I immediately sat down and started tearing into it.

It was the star. And it came with one of the nicest notes ever. I don't know which one of the evil bitches thought this up, but I'm forever grateful to all of them. It just goes to prove that you can't always get what you want...

Later that year, I got out of the car at night, in Christiansburg, and it just so happened that Dad's star was right over our house. I glanced up and said "Hey, Dad." and in response I got "Life's a bitch, kid, and then you die." And some cosmic giggling and nothing. (No bamboo, girls.) It was something that my dad totally would have done.

And, I might add, the star is the only grave marker my dad has, and probably ever will have. Right now, what's left of him is sitting on a table at my mother's house wrapped up in burgundy paper with a gold ribbon. It amuses me to no end that the funeral home wrapped my dad's ashes.

Yeah, talking to my dad was pretty normal. I seriously doubt it'll happen again. I think he's now headed off to wherever the peacefully dead head off to. Or is in line for reincarnation or something.

My husband's dad, however...

I was sitting at my husband's godmother's table in New York City writing in my journal one evening. I'd been doing my morning pages for quite some time for The Artist's Way and was just writing away with a stream of consciousness type of thing for a while, when suddenly Bruce Sr. started to have a pretty intense conversation with me. I've got it all written down. This happened about five weeks ago, and I haven't really been able to write or talk about it much. To his credit, when I told my husband, Bruce Jr. about it, he just took it in stride. Asked "Oh, how is he?" and didn't really freak out or anything.

Bruce Sr. seems a little tortured. He's feeling guilty about how badly he treated his family while he was still alive, and about some specific things he did. He wanted to know if his children had forgiven him.

I told him that I think he did the best he could under the circumstances, which were pretty rough. I also told him that I knew Bruce Jr. had forgiven him completely, but I wasn't sure at all about the other siblings. I don't think that J or S have forgiven him, but E is a different story all together. She was too young to have harbored much resentment or hatred of him, and she was raised by Bruce Jr. so she's a pretty mellow kid.

That was the gist of our conversation. I was pretty tripped out for a while after talking to him, as that sort of thing has never really happened to me before. Well, obviously one sentence and a giggle with my dad, but no actual conversations. Then again, my father wasn't much of a conversationalist when he was alive, so there's no reason for that to change after his death.

Bruce Sr. was a talker though.

So that's it. It feels really normal. I've been having some other all the hair standing up on my body gotta do or say something RIGHT NOW experiences, but they've seemed relatively inconsequential. Although you'd better read that book SOON, Stacey.

I'm very grateful for these experiences. I think that the entire universe is conspiring to rid me of any last prejudice that I might have.