Taps on My Shoulder: How to Awaken to Spirit

Chapter 1

A Short Drive Home

It was only a short drive back home. It should be fine, I thought to myself. I had just gotten into the car with someone I had never met before. Something you would not normally do I suppose. Earlier that morning, I had taken my company car to the dealership for some repairs. They could give me a ride home, no worries. I could get back to work for a few hours. My company’s office was in Cleveland, so being that I lived two and a half hours away, working in my home office was a benefit that I enjoyed three to four days a week. My mother would come to my home at seven in the morning to get my three children off to school. I would hole myself up in my office upstairs and go about the business of the day. This would be good, I thought. No interruptions. The daily grind would continue to grind.

He was maybe 19 or 20, or so I thought. We got into the car and I put my seatbelt on. As we left the car lot, he began to drum on the steering wheel, like he was playing to music inside his head. Brenda, you just got into the car with someone you have never met before, I thought to myself. How do I know he is a good driver? How do I know that he is not on drugs, or had been drinking, or that he just may be a bad driver? It would only be a short drive home. It will be ok, I reassured myself. Then the words entered my head, spoken clearly and with purpose: Tell him to put his seatbelt on. These were not my words, not my thoughts, not my voice. I had heard this voice before. I argued back to the voice inside my head: I am not his mother. I am not going to tell him that. At that very moment, I also noticed a strange sensation happening inside the car itself. It felt like all the life force energy was being sucked right out the top of the car–strange feeling–almost felt like the air was being removed, but I could still breathe. What was going on? This was at the very least unnerving to me, and my answer to this sensation was some light conversation with the driver. So how long have you been doing this, and You really seem to like your job, flew out of my mouth. He did agree that he really liked it, and that he had been doing it for a few months. As we got closer to my house, I heard the voice again. "Tell him to put his seatbelt on." I just shook my head to myself. As he pulled into my driveway, I thanked him and told him to have a good day. He smiled, said thank you and drove off. What was that? I thought as I entered my house. Then I put it in the cupboard as I like to call it, which means I decided not to think about it anymore for that moment. I said hello to my mother, and went upstairs into the office, back to the grind.

The next morning started out no different than most mornings. Alarm goes off, get out of bed, hit the coffee machine, and so on. My mother comes through the front door, ready to tackle the day. I grab my coffee, making my way to hop in the shower. She nonchalantly says, Pretty sad about that boy in the paper this morning, huh? At that very moment, time seemed to stop, and I am suddenly back in the car with the young man driving me home from the dealership. I can again sense that feeling of the life being sucked out of the car, like a giant vacuum, watching him as he drums on the steering wheel. My stomach feels like it is dropping to my feet, like a roller coaster ride, as I instantly know who she is talking about, even without seeing the newspaper. My throat chokes up as I utter the words, Oh no…Don’t tell me that he worked for the Ford dealership in town. My mother then confirms my fear, my knowing, as she offers the newspaper to me. I feel like I am in slow motion as I begin to read the article. Not 30 minutes after I thanked him and wished him a good day, not 30 minutes after I had heard the words and ignored them, the young man was in an accident involving a tractor-trailer and had died. I stood there in my dining room, frozen, feeling a mix of emotions, as well as a flurry of questions all buzzing around in my head at the same time. Bewilderment: Did this really happen yesterday? How could this happen, and happen to me? Guilt: Why did I not tell him to put his seatbelt on? Why did I not listen to the words in my head? Remorse: Was it my fault that he died? If I had told him what to do, would he have lived? Was I given a job to do and did he die because I did not do it? By now, I was sobbing. My mother was beside herself, asking me what was wrong, not understanding, as her inconsolable daughter was melting like an ice cube on the kitchen counter on a hot summer day, right in front of her eyes.

Chapter 2

A Step Back

I grew up in a very rural, one blinking stop-light town. We lived a good distance from our school and friends, so we spent a lot of time at home, occupying ourselves with nature, crayons, and games. I was a sensitive child, meaning that all it took was a disgruntled look from my mother to upset me and correct any misbehavior. I would lay in the grass on a summer day, watching the clouds, feeling a connection with the sky, the birds, and everything around me. Night-time was not a favorite, as I remember feeling that there were people in my bedroom. These were people I could not see. I can’t remember if I could hear them. I just knew they were there, and I could feel them. At one point, I thought if I slept with my head at the bottom of my bed under the covers, if they tried to hurt me, they would hit my feet and not my head. I don’t remember if I told my parents about the people. If the topics of ghosts, mediums, or other worldly things came up, we were shushed, and the conversations were shut down. Being raised Catholic, we didn’t talk about those types of things. We were told it was against our religion. I feel that I must have been discouraged in some way, as it wasn’t until I married that the experiences began to return. At first, I attributed them to wow, that was weird, or I must be crazy. As they grew in intensity and occurrence, it became clear that something was happening.

Grandpa

The first incident that I remember was having a dream soon after my maternal grandfather died. I dreamt that he was holding up a baby. I remember visiting my grandmother, telling her that I dreamt of grandpa. She seemed very interested, and very happy that I did. Soon after (about two months), I became unexpectedly pregnant with my son. At times, I could smell my grandfather’s pipe tobacco inside my car while I was driving. My grandfather and grandmother had given my husband and I a beautiful painted clock, carved out of a slice of wood for a wedding gift. When we moved to our first home, a little more than an hour away from the families, we hung it on the wall. After my grandfather died, that clock would move and be off center all the time. Finally, one day after being annoyed that I had to straighten out the clock yet again, I said aloud, Grandpa, I know you are moving this clock! I love you, but I am getting tired of straightening it out! That was the last time I had to fix it. Now I believe that my grandfather just wanted me to know he was around, and when I validated that, he could stop moving the clock. Maybe you have had a similar experience with a loved one that has passed?

A Sweet Goodbye

Aunt Clara could be a formidable force of nature, and yet sweet, loving, and giving at the same time. In her 80’s, she came to stay with the family due to illness. Her body had been ridden with painful arthritis, and she was no longer able to stand completely straight, and would often gesture at you with her crooked index finger as she spoke. She had been extremely gracious to us, and we moved into her upstairs apartment when she moved in with the family. When I would come to see her, the way she would hug me would be from behind, cupping her hands under my elbows and giving me a body squeeze. We had moved away for a work opportunity, and on our two-year wedding anniversary brought home our baby boy. Only living about 70 minutes away, we would often travel home and spend the weekend with both sides of our family. Our son was the first grandchild of the family, and Aunt Clara was smitten. She could not wait to get her hands on the baby as soon as we arrived. Give me that baby, she would say. It was a cold day in January when I received the phone call from home late in the afternoon that Aunt Clara had been taken to the hospital. She is not doing very well; you need to come home, my mother-in-law said. I immediately called my husband and told him just that. He was at work, was going to come home as soon as he could, and we would be making the trek back to New York. I commenced packing up our overnight things and took the baby into his nursery to get him ready to leave. As I stood over his changing table, I began to sense a very familiar feeling. This sensation was located behind me, and seemed to embrace me. It was when I felt the sensation underneath my elbows, that I realized who and what it was. Once I recognized that it was Aunt Clara, her vibration, her soul, the feeling intensified. It was almost as if she knew, that I knew, it was her. Once I recognized it was her, a feeling of love swept over me bringing tears to my eyes. As I felt these emotions, I looked down at my six month-old and expressed, Aunt Clara is here; she came to visit us. She must love you a lot, honey, to stop here on her way home. In that moment, I knew that Aunt Clara had passed away. We no longer had to rush to get to New York. I walked out into the kitchen and glanced at the clock on the wall. It was about 6:30 PM. When my husband got home, I was reluctant to tell him of what I had experienced. I felt that I needed to share with him, as he scurried around the house in a hurry getting ready to leave. As I sat him down to tell him what had transpired, I began with, We don’t need to rush anymore. He was not happy with my words. When I had finished, his reply was, Why would you say something like that? He told me not to say anything to anybody. We traveled to New York, barely saying a word to each other. Once we arrived at the house, we walked through the door and everyone was crying. The family announced to us that Aunt Clara had passed away. This was not news to me, and I glanced at my husband to see if I could catch his reaction to the announcement. I asked, What time was it that she passed away? I was told Just before 6:30. At that moment I looked at my husband, and the look on his face was as if to say You better not say anything. And I didn’t. While everyone else was so sad, tears flowing, words of remembrance being spoken, I sat alone in my amazement, comforted in the knowing that love transcends death. I had felt her love, and her sweet goodbye, as Aunt Clara made her way to wherever and whatever is waiting for us.

Blink Your Eyes

It was February of 1988. We were living in a very old two-story home in a college town. I was in my eighth month of pregnancy with my second child and had been sleeping downstairs on the couch. (If you have ever been pregnant, no explanation here is necessary, right?) I would start out each night sleeping upstairs, but usually by midnight, I had made it to the couch in the living room. It seemed like just as soon as I would get to sleep, my pregnant body would demand attention again, a trip to the bathroom. This night, my ritual would be very different. As I opened my eyes to get up from the couch, my sight was drawn to the upstairs stairway, next to the dining room. At first glance, it just appeared like a big area of mist hovering on the stairway. As I was still half asleep, I made myself blink my eyes to gain clarity of sight. The mist had actually taken form. There she was, a younger woman (less than 40), wearing a dress from the late 1800’s, early 1900’s time period. It had a high neckline, almost up to her chin, frills down the front of her, and sleeves that came down to her wrist. The dress also had a slight bump to the backside, and flowed all the way to the floor. She