Do Dead People Walk Their Dogs? (15 page)

It’s not
always
the case, but usually the Dead do choose to use subtle means, not big stuff. But be honest, if your mother gave you the choice, “Do you want me to show you the bird I used to love best, or would you prefer to have a piano dropped on your head?” how many of us would pick the piano? If you want to think of it another way, when we are here on earth, it’s like we’re in school, and what do they teach you at school? To pay attention and use your head and look for your answers. In
The Wizard of Oz
, Dorothy wasn’t handed her answers—she needed to experience them. Nobody said, “Let’s just cut to the chase, Dorothy. No point in making that journey when all you’re gonna learn is that there’s no place like home.” She had to go and find out. It’s the same for all of us. We need to experience; we need to learn and come to
know
. For example, your own little hometown is so nice, you have bingo nights, there are lots of civic events, etc. And what do you think?
Boring!
Then you spend some time away, and all the stuff that seemed quaint or not that exciting, now you remember how sweet it was just to be around family and friends and have a shared sense of belonging. You couldn’t be told that; you had to learn it. Our loved ones, as much as they want to connect with us and comfort us, aren’t going to wave a literal flag in our face. Your mother will allow you to use yourself, let you learn to rely on things beneath the surface. Keep your eyes open to look for small signs—pennies that always seem to turn up in your pathway as you go about your daily life, a butterfly that is hanging around your house on a special day. Keeping yourself open to seeing some sign and not ignoring the little things is the way to build a connection. You’re not going to get a letter from your mother, some postcard with the news: I am here!

This question came
as a response to my newsletter from a gentleman named Patrick, and I have to say it is not a question I’ve been asked before, and I have to say that even though I immediately knew the answer I had a difficult time figuring out how to say it! But here goes: Since my communication is between here and the Other Side, if someone was already back over here, I would not be able to reach them. In that case, it would be like trying to telepathically communicate with someone I didn’t even have any idea who or where in the world they were. The simple answer is actually twofold (but still simple, now that I’ve unraveled it). 1) I just would not be able to reach them. 2) This wouldn’t happen. From everything I have been told, those we have known and loved who have crossed before us will all be waiting on the Other Side to meet us when we cross. The glory of God is such that He wants us to have the opportunity to all be together again. We don’t reincarnate until all of those who belong together have reconnected, so there wouldn’t be anyone here looking to find someone there who has already come back.

Just to be
really clear, again, a soul mate might not necessarily mean “husband” or “wife.” That understood, sure you can. But you likely won’t need your mother’s help because that individual is either already in your life, or is destined to be at some point. If the latter, even with your mother’s help, you might need to wait. But usually when I’m asked this question (or
one
similar), what is really meant is, can I get my mother’s help finding me the right guy or gal—a mate, not a soul mate, who might even be their brother or sister in this lifetime. You definitely can ask the Other Side for help with this so long as you also are doing your part to be open and out there. It’s not impossible, but it’d be pretty rare for that person to literally come knocking on your door (not ruling out the UPS guy), so give your poor deceased mother half a chance by going out and doing things you enjoy. Then, for goodness’ sake, keep your eyes open—pay attention when that guy with the nice smile accidentally upsets your latte at the local Starbucks, or when that cute dog in the park has an interesting somebody at the other end of the leash. “Meeting cute” doesn’t just happen in the movies!

Your mother (or
father, grandfather, nana, or whichever loved one you have on the Other Side) is with God and God has the Book of Life open in His lap. He wants to help you (just in case your mother doesn’t—just kidding!). She and God are creating the calendar of events that bring your love to you. And here’s something else to think about: If you know in your heart what a great catch you are, but can’t find the right person, don’t you think that there’s a great person here who also has somebody on the Other Side who is looking to help them out? So really, you have two teams of angels working together to bring you and that special person together because it will be a beautiful thing for
both
of you! But you have to do the work, too. You have to trust and believe and be open. There is no case too tough for the Other Side when it comes to love. It’s true: Some people aren’t getting any sex in the city. But a lot of times that’s because they aren’t open to it. They’re so sure it’s hopeless, or sometimes their standards are all out of whack—they are imposing a standard on a potential mate that they themselves don’t even meet.

I really am so lucky to have found John, and I really believe that the Other Side had something to do with putting us together. I don’t know what he’d say about this, but from my side, he and I are the perfect match. He’s so calm and patient. He doesn’t get upset about how much I talk—I talk so much it’s like someone put a quarter in my back! And can you imagine if I was married to a funeral director or something like that? Yikes!

My mother used to say that for every pot there’s a lid. In other words, no matter how much of an odd duck a person is, there is another person out there who will be the right fit for that person. But living life to this point, and running into some pretty strange folks, I’m not so sure there really
is
a lid for every pot. Some people may just have to use tin foil!

Yes, to a
degree, it is. There’s a basic plan. It depends on the particular soul’s journey. Normally when and where a person leaves this side has to do with when they complete the job they came here to do. Whatever our job is, it just takes the time that it takes. When we go to the Other Side, it’s a big homecoming party, so that’s something to look forward to—eventually! However, even if the job isn’t finished, if a person’s body or mind becomes depleted, or if that person finds themselves in a situation where they are limited or stopped in their ability to grow, then they can choose to go. All is rooted in free will.

When I tell someone that the Other Side has told me something is going to happen—it could be a marriage, a birth, getting a new car or job—I’m never quite sure about the timing. Often I’ll be given a clue, but it’s nothing definite. They’ll sometimes try to convey that it’s right in front of us or right behind us, but they can’t really tell me it’s gonna be this Tuesday at 7:24. At one of my recent big shows, I was doing a reading for a woman, and three brothers and her mother came through. I was a little shocked that she’d have three brothers on the Other Side already, since she didn’t look that old to me. I knew they were trying to tell me something about time and I couldn’t figure it out. I had just said to her, “They are telling me that you are in good health and will have a long life.” She was a little surprised by that, but I guess I didn’t notice right away because they were still talking and I said, “Are you seeing some particular time on your clock all the time? Are they maybe showing you a time to let you know they are around you? Because I’m getting something about time and I can’t quite figure out what it is.” She said, no. She told me that she knew what they were referring to but it had nothing to do with numbers on the clock. They still were trying to reinforce for her that she was going to live a long time. She had been obsessing over the number fifty. Neither of her parents and none of her siblings had survived past that age. They were trying to let her know that she would.

Some people have
a very strong sense that they know how long they’ll live, whether that comes from specific premonitions or just a gut feeling. But still we have free will, and will always have opportunities to complete our soul’s journey for this lifetime. There are times we can, in essence, renegotiate an exit point, even if we are very ill and death seems imminent. I’ve heard numerous stories about someone who was old or very sick who would be contacted by the Other Side, maybe seeing or hearing a loved one who had crossed, telling them that their time was near. If that person feels strongly there is still something important they must do, they will sometimes be given an “extension.” It might be a spontaneous remission, or it might be some other sort of intervention that gives them a new lease on life.
Usually
it’s only brief, and it does differ from person to person—I don’t know the reason why.

It is possible
that you may be receiving a true psychic message about the person. But unless you have a history of being very psychic, or really, even if you do have this background, my feeling is that I would not say this to a person. It does seem like a double-edged sword—damned if you do (the person might be scared or angry) and damned if you don’t (you might end up feeling like you didn’t do something when you could have). But in almost all cases, it is not our place to interfere in this, to put our oar in, or try to steer someone else’s destiny. The fact is, you could be wrong—your feeling, if it’s “true,” might just mean that the person is going to make some kind of change or is about to have a new life experience that will, in a way, “end the life” of the way they have been or what they have been doing. What you could do is just ask the person if everything is okay with them. That much you can do. They may seem on the surface like all is great in their life, but there may be something that you don’t know about that they are keeping hidden and might be the reason for what you are picking up on. As a friend, you might be able to help that person without saying, “I think you’re going to die.” When I am doing a reading for someone, if I am getting this kind of message, I will not say, “Oh, they’re telling me that they are coming to get you soon.” But I might say, “They want you to do
X
for yourself,” something that they know will make that person happy in the time they have left, or, “They are telling you that you should organize your things,” which isn’t saying “you’re outta here” but does give the person the understanding that their time now is more precious than ever. If someone asked me directly: “Are they saying that I’m going to die now?” I would give them a direct and true answer, but that is very different from my taking it upon myself to say it. For someone who is not a psychic, I think you need to tread very lightly in this territory, and above all, ask for spiritual guidance. This is a question for God, not for me.

I had a man visit me for a reading one time who was very emaciated. Also, his stomach was distorted, and it was very pronounced on his extremely skinny frame. It was clear that he was not a well man. I heard the Other Side telling me that he didn’t have long at all, but wasn’t clear whether he already knew this. Even though I was getting strong messages, I was conflicted as to whether I should tell him something directly. So I made the focus of the reading all about his welcoming committee, all the relatives of his who had crossed who were describing how beautiful it was and how happy they were. I left it up to him to ask me, or not, about his own condition. Finally, he did ask, and I did tell him. Later, after he had died, not three weeks later, his family told me how happy and at peace he was when he died. Knowing that where he was going was beautiful and perfect and that other family members who he loved and who loved him would be there had made all the difference to him.

I don’t think
there is any magic recipe for convincing someone of something they don’t want to be convinced of. In my work I meet far more people who do know the truth of the Other Side’s existence than I do nonbelievers, but there are also those who just show up to try to prove that they know better, that all the others are deluding themselves or that I’m such a fabulous actress that I have them all fooled with my performance. I’m very happy that I don’t see too many of these guys. They should know that I’ve already been put to the test, so to speak, by my own husband, who, while he never disbelieved in me, did definitely “reserve judgment.” I sometimes have said that John was an atheist when I met him. That’s not quite true. I know that John always left open the possibility that there was some kind of higher power. He always would say, for example, that we are all made of energy and energy can’t be created or destroyed, so he didn’t know what happened to us when we died, but he wasn’t convinced there was such a thing as Heaven, a place like the Other Side. I think with John, he just wasn’t into man-made religions and all the stories and myths that are part of them.

But each person is different in what will speak to them or convince them. For John it was a reading I was doing for a woman at one of my big shows. Her husband came through and what he wanted to tell her was that she could get rid of the fish table. This woman went white as a ghost. Once her friends revived her, it turned out that her husband had had a table made with some kind of fish—I don’t recall if she said exactly how the fish was part of the table. But apparently, even though he intended it as a nice thing, she’d never liked this table, yet felt like she had to keep it. After her husband died, she kept it because it reminded her of him, but probably she’d also have felt guilty getting rid of this thing that he’d loved so much. Or, who knows, maybe now she actually cherished it because it reminded her of her husband. So here he comes now from the Other Side to say, “Go ahead, honey, get rid of the fish table—you don’t have to keep it anymore.” Well, in all the readings I’ve done there has been many a dramatic story, but for whatever reason, this is the one that reached my husband. As he tells it, it was because it was so ordinary: an ordinary guy, an ordinary woman, an ordinary marriage. In every marriage there are these things that annoy one or the other person, and yet we put up with them because it’s part of the package. In a marriage there are things you do for love, to please the other person, even if you have to grit your teeth to do them. In this marriage, it was putting up with the fish table. But now that he had the perspective of the Other Side, this guy wanted to tell his wife, “You don’t need to put up with it on my account, you don’t have to keep the table.” And you know what else? Nothing is that important, nothing material really matters. In the scheme of things, a fish table—or anything else for that matter—is meaningless. This was so simple, so ordinary, but it’s the thing that turned John around and really made a believer of him. It was so minor, but so specific. As he told me, even from a skeptic’s point of view, it was a thing just strange enough that no one could have come up with it just guessing.

As far as the skeptics go, who knows what will convince one or another? Each person has a different little button that once it’s pushed there’ll be no going back. Truthfully, even though I really love it when it happens, I’m not out there even looking for those buttons. I’m just doing what I do. Every now and then, I’ll meet someone at one of my shows, or I’ll get a letter from someone like the one I got recently from a sixty-two-year-old man who told me he wasn’t “into” mediums, but his wife put my book on his bed table where he keeps his nightly reading, and he picked it up just meaning to move it off his table, but then just started reading and didn’t stop and felt like he really learned something and was convinced. And sometimes someone will tell me about something that had nothing to do with me that they experienced firsthand, which turned on the light for them, and that’s why they are now coming to one of my shows. I don’t really mind skeptics, so long as they do have an open mind and are willing to see the truth. The only ones that really bug me are the ones who are simply contrarians and even if they do see the truth will call it something else.

I always tell skeptics, “I don’t have all the answers. I have
some
of the answers and I just try to do my best with what I’ve got.” I love it, though, when I get something right—even if the real credit goes to the dead guys over there. One day I’d like to see a little Concetta doll—you’d pull the string in the back of her neck and she’d say, “I told you so!”

All kidding aside, it means a great deal to me when I do win over a skeptic. Not because I need them to believe in my abilities, but because I know the peace it gives most people to know for certain that their loved one is always with them, if not in the flesh, in spirit. After a show at Mayfair Farms in West Orange, New Jersey, I was signing copies of my book for those who had purchased it. A gentleman who I’d done a reading for during the show came up to me in turn and I remembered our exchange. He had lost his daughter, and she had come through with a number of validating messages, among which, she’d said that she knew the family cruise was planned and that he’d been thinking he didn’t want to go—he didn’t feel it would be the same without the whole family; he couldn’t imagine being able to enjoy their traditional gathering missing her. His daughter knew this and urged him to make the trip. She told him that she would absolutely be with them. She would always be with him, wherever he was, in spirit. This man said to me, “Concetta, I have to tell you something. I did not want to come to your show today. I didn’t believe in this stuff, that the Dead are living and that we can hear from them. But when my daughter told me to go on the cruise, I lost it.” He was getting choked up, and so was I. We both had tears in our eyes. He said, “Concetta, you don’t know me, but I love you.” I said, “You’re right. I don’t know you. But I love you, too.” It’s our tears that connect us. That’s what makes us all human.