Do Dead People Walk Their Dogs? (2 page)
Read Do Dead People Walk Their Dogs? Online
Authors: Concetta Bertoldi
When I accepted
an offer to write and publish my first book, there was no title that immediately came to my mind. As the one answering the questions, not asking them, it was hard to know what to focus on—there would be so many subjects covered, so many stories, that I couldn’t really think of anything that from my perspective really “said it all.” But when I sat down with my editor and agent to toast the new deal, it turned out they both were thinking the exact same thing. I have to say I loved it right away, and since the book has come out I’ve heard from so many readers how much they love it, too! People from all over have written to me, or sent e-mail messages, about their encounters in the shower and other places with some very lively ghosts.
Really, this concern about ghosts seeing us naked completely cracks me up. If it’s not the shower, people are worried about spirits looking over their shoulder (and other body parts) when they’re in bed. It really makes me wonder what they’re doing that they’re so concerned! What? Are they afraid that cops will break down their door waving handcuffs and shout,
“Cut that out right now! We just got a complaint from a dead person!”
?
A woman named Diane sent a message to my website:
Many years ago (twenty-five, to be exact) I went to see a medium for the first time and was going to ask about a cross-country move. She immediately asked if my father had crossed over and I was shocked and said yes, and told her that I was uncomfortable because now I will think he is watching me all the time. She said, “He says, ‘Don’t worry—not in the shower.’” I laughed because she had pinpointed his personality with that comment.
Needless to say, the title of my book piqued Diane’s curiosity and she found herself picking it up!
It’s hard to express how exciting it’s been to see my first book come out and to have it be so well received. I don’t know why writing a book was so important to me—a dyslexic who has always had trouble reading. But I’ve always loved books and have bought and read so many by other mediums over the years, especially when I was trying to make sense of my own abilities. And I’ve long collected books on Marilyn Monroe, who I adore. So books have always been special to my heart. Having my own opened the doors to meeting so many more of you through shows I did at some really wonderful bookstores and libraries—RJ Julia bookstore in Connecticut; Book World in Caldwell, New Jersey, where more than one hundred people showed up even though it was pouring rain and flooding so badly you practically needed a boat to get there (I told my husband, John, that only ducks would show up, but I was wrong); The Book Loft in Hackettstown, where the crowd exceeded the store’s capacity and we had to go across the street to the Comfort Inn; Book World in the Rockaway Mall; and the Borders in Wayne, to name just a few of these fun events. And now the book is being published in other countries, too! When John and I were traveling last year in Germany, I was browsing a book shop in Frankfurt and suddenly I “saw” my book there, in that store. I’m sure many a new author has had such a daydream, but lo and behold, when I got back home, my agent called to tell me that German translation rights had just been sold, so my vision would soon become a reality!
Even though I’m psychic, I never could have predicted what I’ve been seeing lately as an incredible, growing acceptance of the truth that we never really die. Even ten years ago this idea would have been considered “fringe.” Now everywhere you look there are books, TV shows, and movies whose subject is the Other Side. Sure, some of them still portray it as someplace eerie, populated with evil spirits, for the sake of entertainment, but many now take a more realistic perspective, that there truly is nothing to fear. With this growing popularity, people are more comfortable thinking about the Other Side and that seems to have opened a floodgate of questions.
One area that I don’t think I covered well enough last time concerns our dear four-legged friends. As you probably guessed from the title of this book, I want to get to a lot more questions about our beloved pets this time!
So, here I am again to answer even more questions about the Dead, tell more stories that I’ve been witness to or that my clients have told me, share more of my karmic experiences with my friends and relatives. Yes, my mother-in-law is still a rock in my underwear. Yes, she still treats me like a bastard child at a barbecue. But to put a spin on Abraham Lincoln’s famous words: You can please some of the people some of the time, you can even please most of the people most of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time. Just can’t be done, so get over it. But before I drop the subject, I have one thing I must say about my mother-in-law: For eighty-five years old, she looks fabulous! She really is beautiful. It’s true. I have to declare it.
Okay, we’ve got a lot more questions to get to here, but before I move on I just wanted to say that it was never my intention to make anyone afraid to pick up the soap. I was in King’s, a grocery store in Boonton, New Jersey, one day and a woman came up to me and said, “Are you Concetta Bertoldi?” I said, “Yes,” and she said, “Well, thanks to you, I always shower with one eye open now!”
Me? I pray in the shower—I’m not worried about it. God knows it all anyway.
One time I
was doing a reading at one of my big shows and the questioner’s mother-in-law came through. Unlike my own situation with
my
mother-in-law, they had been very close. Most of the time I can validate who the spirit is by asking them the means of their crossing, how they died, which the person is able to confirm. But in this case, her mother-in-law didn’t want to talk about that at all. She kept saying to me, “Just say T—she’ll know what it means.” Well, I sure didn’t know what it meant. Was it an initial of somebody? The first letter of a place? Who knew? But the spirit was insistent so I told her, “She’s saying to just mention the letter T and you’ll know what it is.” She looked puzzled. She said to herself, “T? T?” then she laughed. She said, “Oh! I get it! Tea! Like you drink, a cup of tea. After my mother-in-law died, her daughters and I had to go empty the house so it could be sold. In Mom’s kitchen were boxes and boxes and boxes of Lipton’s tea! No English Breakfast or peppermint or Darjeeling or chamomile. No. Every time we opened a cupboard, there was more Lipton’s tea! My sisters-in-law and I still laugh about how much tea Mom had.” Clearly they weren’t the only ones laughing—her mother-in-law on the Other Side was enjoying the joke, too.
I think even souls who were very sober when they were here lighten up when they get to the Other Side. We’re all different so not every dead guy is a comedian, but when they see the big picture they just get a little lighter. And they appreciate it when we can be lighter, too. I had four women come to see me for a group reading. They didn’t look anything alike so I was guessing they were friends, not sisters. It didn’t take long before I saw, standing behind all four of them, the spirit of a woman who told me she had died of cancer. When I asked why she was claiming all of them, did they know who she was, they all nodded somberly and told me that she had been a well-liked coworker of theirs named Viola. Viola had a big smile for one of the four women and I said to her, “Why is it that Viola is telling me that you were the funniest one of the bunch? And what is it she’s showing me, like this?” I picked up a pen that I’d been signing books with and pointed it at her. Finally that got a smile out of her. She told me that while Viola was still able to work, sometimes she’d have a pretty bad day and to get her out of her mood she would shoot rubber bands at her with her pen. If Viola was having a
really
bad day, she’d take the whole box of rubber bands and empty it on Viola’s head! So silly, but such a loving gesture at the same time—we all appreciate that kind of thing, don’t we?
If we’re just
looking at the external evidence, it sure can seem that life is not fair! So it shouldn’t be surprising, I guess, that this is one of the questions that I’m asked most frequently. Why does this guy who treats everyone so badly get the promotion and pay raise? How come that nipplehead wins the Mega Millions or the 50-50? Why doesn’t it go to somebody who really deserves it? He doesn’t even need it! What’s up with that? Well, the guy who got the promotion might have been kissing up to the boss, for one thing, but I know what you mean. It always seems like those who have, get more, and are frequently the least deserving. But the answer is this: When you see someone who looks like they have plenty and doesn’t even appreciate what they have getting more, you can be sure that it’s God giving them another chance to learn a lesson—what it’s like to be generous, to help someone less fortunate. That’s the simplicity of the Other Side—if we’re paying attention, we get opportunities over and over. God doesn’t need our gratitude;
we
need to experience gratitude. We need to experience sharing.
When we share, what we receive back is so much greater than what we’ve given. Some people never seem to learn that one. But God keeps giving them chances. I don’t know if there’s ever a point where, if the lesson is ignored or failed over and over, that God will cut them off—at least for this lifetime. I’m just not sure about that. Being human, I’d like to think He would, but that’s me making a judgment—
I’d
cut ’em off—and that’s not my job. That’s His job. None of this stuff we have here belongs to us—not our cars or our clothes, our homes or our cash. All we have that is real is our love for God and for each other. If we don’t express our love by sharing our so-called material possessions with others, we’re gonna get an F on that test and the next lesson is guaranteed to be a harder one.
We also need to practice generosity of spirit, to be giving of ourselves, not just of what we have. We need to make a circle of sharing. People who have trouble receiving attract people who have trouble giving.
