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Kitchen Table Kibitzing: Is that all there is? [1]

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Date: 2025-04-03

Thirty five years ago. My sister-in-law wasn’t even 30 and she was dying of cancer, leaving behind two kids under 4. She lived on the opposite coast. We were close. I knew her death was near.

The night before she died, I had trouble sleeping. I went upstairs and started writing a poem to read at her memorial. I could feel her presence around me well into the wee hours of the morning when I finally fell into a fitful sleep. I read later that in the time before dying there are many cases of the person leaving their body to visit close ones. I have no doubt that this is what I was experiencing.

My brother called the next afternoon to let me know she had passed. We packed our bags but weren’t able to get a flight until the next morning. We stopped off to visit a friend who had a nursery in Stinson Beach right on Route 1.

As we were standing there, I felt a bolt of sheer joy pass through me. I knew it was her spirit coming to tell me she was fine. She was laughing. The moment was so powerful it almost shook me off my feet.

There was another time when I felt her presence. We were on vacation, my brother and the two girls and my husband, daughter and I. Upstate New York at Lake George. About five months after her death.

I was with the girls in a small amusement park. We were waiting to ride on the ferris wheel when I suddenly felt her presence around us. I told the girls when we were up in one of the carriages to reach their arms up to feel their mother’s presence.

These were my first two experiences.

Eleven years ago my father slept deeply, uncommunicative on his death bed for two days, surrounded by his children, grandchildren and my mother. The priest came twice, leading us in prayers and offering communion.

The only words my father said during this time were a weak whispered call to my mother: “Come with me.”

I’ve thought about these words so many times over the years. Come where? How?

I never brought it up to other members of the family. I don’t even know if anyone else heard the words, but it seemed to me my dad was indicating that he was on a journey between realities and that he wanted to proceed but not without my mother. He would hold on in the hopes that she would join him. And he did. For 24 more hours.

I wondered if he was experiencing a near death experience, traveling outside of his body. After all, how did he know that my mother was sitting on a chair beside him? It was obvious he was in a peaceful state, he wasn’t frightened or uncomfortable (Hospice had provided the cocktail of tranquilizers and morphine which had eased his agitation.)

The following night, after his death, my daughter and I went to a yoga class. When I closed my eyes for shavasana, there was a blinding white light. Pure energy. I felt my father’s presence. That night when I closed my eyes to sleep, the same pure white energy enveloped my body, so powerful it seemed to rock me in its presence.

That white light remained with me for a week or so and then became more of a pinch of white in the atmosphere behind my eyes. As if my dad had merged with pure energy which was moving far beyond this planet.

I don’t think often about life after death but in conversations about spirituality or religion I always remember these experiences. Occasionally, I share the stories.

How about you?

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