BORN IN 1940 - Written with Assistance from Beyond?

Back in November, 2024, a friend with whom I'd just shared some extraordinary family anecdotes said to me: "You really should write these down so that they are recorded for posterity!"

Her words set me thinking and her advice suddenly seemed to suggest that immediate action was needed. So that same afternoon I went to my computer and these words came straight through  me: 'I was born in October, 1940, just as a bomb dropped yards from the maternity ward of Farnborough Hospital. That's Farnborough, Kent, not Hampshire and thankfully the bomb failed to detonate. So I lived to tell my story, such as it is.'

Well, from then on there was no stopping the flow of words. Not just words, but memories long forgotten that returned so vividly it was as if I were re-living the years from birth to the age of twenty-one.

Names and faces from the past filled my days and many of my nights. I couldn't have escaped their impact even had I wanted to do that. I had an absolute certainty that relatives and friends, long dead, had assembled to assist me in my quest.

Perhaps the oddest thing is that I couldn't do it again. Once the last full stop had been put in its place those who had peopled my pages withdrew, leaving me with a manuscript that would bear my name but which I couldn't honestly claim to have written.

That I'd been the scribe rather than the source was, and still is, a very comforting thought. I know now, more even than I knew it before, that death doesn't separate our loved ones from us. They are not lost. Far from it. The love we once shared, we still share and will for eternity. It's our earth-bound sight that limits our vision along with our blinkered perception of 'heaven'. 

We simply aren't meant to know all there is to know until we're equipped to understand things currently beyond our understanding.   

SOMEWHERE A NEW MORNING DAWNS

 

Yesterday I came across these wonderful words from Patience Strong:

'Light is fading, darkness falls, but somewhere it is dawn. Here it is the eventide, but somewhere it is morn ... As upon the world's red rim the sun sinks out of sight - in some far and distant land, it rises, warm and bright.

When the touch of death has stopped the heart and closed the eyes - our loved ones seem to fall asleep, but somewhere they arise ... We who watch stand in the darkness, blind with grief and pain - But somewhere it is morning and they wake to life again.'

I hope that if you have 'lost' a loved one you can find some comfort in Patience's words, realizing that 'lost' is the wrong term. Far from being lost, they've simply gone - temporarily - beyond our limited sight.

FREEDOM

 It's natural to be sad as we say our 'goodbye' to a loved one who has died. But letting such sadness direct our subsequent life is to deny that death, rather than an end, is the beginning of a new phase of existence.

Vera Lynn, back in the war years, used to sing "We'll meet again - don't know where, don't know when, but I know we'll meet again some sunny day."

The singer was referring to the expectation of sweethearts being reunited when the war ended, but surely she also meant a reunion in heaven in the event of death - death being an ever-present threat during those turbulent years.

Sadness after a death is natural for a while, but if we can focus on the freedom being experienced by our loved one - who has perhaps been released from a pain wracked body - we can, I'm sure, before too long feel glad in the knowledge that our shared love lives on.

DEATH IS JUST A DOOR

 It isn't far from life to Paradise - it's truly no distance at all!

On passing through the forever door, there's a sense of oneness like never before; there's wonder, too, at the simplicity of it all.

If this is death, then let's celebrate and tell of the release felt when the soul soars from a body, now obsolete.

END OF THE WORLD?

 Our perception of things is interesting, isn't it? These wise words from Richard Bach caused me to pause and think. Maybe they'll do the same for you.

The caterpillar has to experience a kind of death before experiencing a new life as a butterfly. Can you relate to that in respect of dying and finding a new kind of life on the 'other side'?

DEATH IS NOT THE END

 You've gone beyond my sight but, oh, the memories you've left behind!

We always said death wouldn't be the end - and it isn't!

I know that now because last night you stood at my bedside and said: "Nothing has changed, my love, but for the veil now between us. That's all it is and it's intangible. So simply think it gone and you'll see that I am here - just as I ever was."

 

LIFE AFTER DEATH

Do you often look, as I do, at Nature's gifts to us and marvel over all the evidence we see around us of life after death?

Plants and trees that seem to die in winter return to life in the spring. Flowers wither, but will bloom again on a new stem.

We are surely no different. I was just reading a feature about Britain's most accurate medium, Gordon Smith, who has written the book 'Intuitive Studies: A Complete Course In Mediumship'.

When Gordon was seven or eight a friend of his mother's passed him on the street and stopped for a chat. But when he told his Mum about this she became very upset - because the man in question had died the previous week!

Thanks to his mother's reaction, Gordon learned to keep quiet about his subsequent experiences - until his early 20s, when a friend's brother died in a house fire.  At 3 am he appeared in Gordon's bedroom, but had vanished through the floorboards before Gordon could speak. It turned out the next morning that he had died at that exact time.

I find nothing strange in such manifestations of life after death. It seems to me an absolutely natural process that our spirit lives on when we leave our flesh.