I know what grief feels like.  When my step daughter was struck by lightning
at age 27 and killed along with her unborn child, the pain was nearly
unbearable.  That’s why, when I received
an email from Irene Vouvalides, a grieving mother who expressed a desperate
desire to connect with her recently deceased daughter through a medium, I moved
her to the top of my waiting list. 

We conducted the session by
phone.  I had no idea what Irene or her
daughter looked like.  The only thing
Irene had told me in advance was that Carly had died of esophageal cancer.  This lack of details in advance is my
preference.  It meant that anything I
sensed would be directly from the spirit of Irene’s daughter.

A good signal across the veil is
never guaranteed, but the connection with Carly turned out to be the kind I
pray for:  “five bars,” like the cell
phone signal that connected her mom and me during that hour-long reunion,
complete with imagery, physical symptoms in my body, and a sense of presence
that left no doubt that Carly was on the line.

Afterwards, I went straight to my
computer, opened a browser, and typed in “CarlysKidsFoundation.com” as directed
by Irene.  When the homepage opened, I
sucked in a breath.  The banner showed an
image exactly like the one that had flashed through my mind’s eye early in the
reading. 

“I’m seeing little black boys,” I
had said to describe the fleeting image of a young blond woman with her arms
around two smiling African-American children. 
By this time I had already heard the word “teacher” from Carly, and
Irene had confirmed that her daughter’s degree was in education.  I correctly sensed that Carly held some kind
of administrative job, and asked, “Did she work in a system that was racially
inclusive?  There’s something about race.”

“Absolutely,” Irene exclaimed, her
excitement palpable through the phone. 
“She did service trips to the oldest African American Catholic school in
the Mississippi Valley, and that’s what the focus of our foundation has been.

“She got to hug some of those kids,
and it was her greatest joy,” I reported.

“Oh yes,” Irene confirmed.  “I have pictures of her hugging them.”

Staring at Carly’s Kids website
now, I shook my head.  Anyone who didn’t
know the value I place on integrity might have suspected I had Googled Irene
and her daughter before the reading.  To
do so is unthinkable.  I know firsthand
the immense healing and comfort that come from hearing verifiable details known
only to the family from a loved one we think is gone forever.  It was just such an experience with a medium
that led me to uncover my own ability to communicate with those who have
passed.  The opportunity to pay that gift
forward is one I hold sacred above all else.

Happily, Carly provided many
details in the session with her mother that could not be found on the Internet.

“She shows me you holding a teddy
bear against your chest, like snuggling with this … getting comfort from a
stuffed animal.”


“She had
a bear that she got when she was born,” said Irene.  “She slept with it every night, and now I hold
it to my chest and smell her in it.”

“She puts a ring on your hand … on
the right hand.”

“I do wear one of her rings on my
right hand.”

“It feels like she was cremated,
and there are hands in the ashes like you are sifting through them.  It’s very specific.”

“Yes, she was cremated, and my
husband and her boyfriend separated them into small containers”

“I’m seeing a big mountain with a K
… K sound to the mountain.”

“Her boyfriend was in Africa
climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro when she passed.

“He shouldn’t feel guilty about not
being there.  There’s a feeling that
she’d like to be more adventurous, but she was not quite matching him.  I feel like I just want to curl up on a couch
with a nice, soft blanket and be snuggled in.“That’s what she did.”

“I have
shooting pains in my head.  I’m
light-headed and dizzy.  Arterial
blockage.  Clotting of some sort.  It’s like I bled out.”
“Carly
fainted in my arms.  She suffered from
blood clots and ultimately did bleed out.”
 This was
the kind of evidence I pray to receive during a reading.   I could feel Irene’s joy.  It was several days after our session that I
discovered that one set of details stood out among the many Carly got
through.  

 “I just
got a picture of the Bible,” I had reported, “but then it turned into another
book that’s signed inside the cover.  Is
there a Bible?” I asked even as I heard Irene gasp.

Her answer carried a mixture of
laughter and sniffles.  “No.  I’m sitting with it now.  ‘My bible,’ I call it.  It’s George Anderson’s ‘Walking in the Garden
of Souls,’ and he signed it for me.”

“Most people sign on the right, but
this is on the left side.” I said.

“Yes, on the left side he wrote a
message about Carly, and on the right side is a prayer in Latin.”

As an author, I have signed
thousands of autographs, and I have quite a few autographed books from other
authors in my personal library.  The
signature is always on the right-hand page. 
That Carly would be so specific—and so accurate—about this “bible” being
signed on the left side just inside the cover delighted me.  This tiny detail gave her mother all the
evidence she needed to confirm her daughter’s presence. 

“I set my intention that if Carly
could come through, you would mention that book,” Irene stated in a follow-up
email.  “I call it ‘my bible’ and carry
it with me always.  George signed the
book for me.  He signed the inside left
cover as well as the inside right.  I
knew then without any doubt that Carly was present.” 

“Sleep comes to me now,” Irene
wrote after describing the nagging insomnia that had plagued her since Carly’s
death.  “I was right there in the room
with her.  You connected us with a purity
that words cannot describe.  I felt for
the first time since she passed how I felt whenever Carly and I were together.”

In my work as a medium, I have come
to know beyond a doubt that what love has joined together, the death of the
physical body cannot separate.  This
truth was evidenced in the beautiful spirit I felt with me during that reading.

“There’s a purity about her that’s
unusual … an acceptance of others … an all-inclusiveness.  There’s a feeling of my arms going out and
just embracing the world.  She loved
kids.  She loved people.  She loved you.  There’s a feeling that at times she couldn’t
hold it all in.”

“Everybody called her a love bug,”
Irene confirmed.

 “There’s this desire to sing
because she had this joy inside her that just wanted to come out, but she
really couldn’t sing.” 

“Not at all,” Irene laughed through
her tears, “We would joke about it all the time.”

And now she says, ‘Everybody would
call this—her death—a tragedy, but don’t see it that way.  I left my mark.  You’re carrying it on.”

Indeed, as I delved deeper into the
Carly’s Kids website, I learned that with the efforts of Carly’s family, her boyfriend
Mike, and the generous donations of many loving souls, the foundation has
accomplished much in the short time since Carly passed.  Ongoing support to the foundation will
continue to keep Carly’s memory alive, but thanks to a five-bar phone call from
Heaven, Carly’s irrepressible spirit is more than just a memory.  

I know from reuniting thousands of
souls that this life is not all there is. 
Our loved ones who pass are still very much with us, and we will see
them again when we, too, pass through the veil. 
Until then, they will go to great effort, as Carly did so well, to show
us that love does indeed last forever.