Talk to Me (5 page)

Immediately after my conversation with Greg ended, Jim suddenly stood up and said, ‘Dot, I have the coin collection.'

‘What?'

‘I have the coin collection,' Jim repeated and then he walked away into the house.

I was stunned and had no idea what my husband was talking about. On several occasions I'd spoken to Jim about Allison mentioning a coin collection and he'd never said anything about it. There'd been no comment from him at all!

Well, a couple of minutes later, Jim came back outside with this large beige-coloured bag, the kind of money bag that you'd see in the game Monopoly or in a cartoon. And it was filled with coins and notes—lots and lots of them . . . Kennedy half-dollars and silver dollars, dimes, coins from different countries, all kinds of dollar notes. This was a serious collection.

‘Jim, where did this come from? Where did you get it?'

He casually explained that after my mum had a stroke and we got carers to stay in her house with her, he removed all the rifles and guns from my dad's closet. He also took the bag of coins he found there, and it had been safely stored in our house the whole time.

I was shocked that I'd known nothing about the coins—though obviously Allison did—and even more surprised that Jim had kept quiet about them. He did love to tease me! More than likely, though, Jim just plain forgot about the coins up until now.

But the most shocking thing occurred about a week later when my husband said, ‘You know, I might talk to a medium sometime.'

After I recovered from his startling announcement, I replied that I thought it was a good idea.

Then he said, ‘But it could only be Allison DuBois.'

I didn't want to discourage Jim but I didn't want him to be disappointed either. I said he'd probably have to go to a seminar first, put his name on a list of people wanting a phone reading, and then wait for an appointment.

‘No,' my husband said, ‘I have to talk to her in person.'

‘Oh God, Jim, you can't just talk to Allison!' I then tried to explain that Allison was extremely busy and didn't usually have time to do readings in person and so on. But Jim wouldn't be put off. So I started the process of emailing Allison's assistant about seeing Jim. Anyway, to make a long story short, things happen because they are supposed to, and are directed from places beyond our control. Allison did agree to see Jim.

My husband was a most private man and did not feel close to many people, although a lot of people felt close to him because he was a kind and compassionate obstetrics and gynaecology physician, and it is not uncommon for women to feel a bond with someone who takes care of them during that period of their lives. However, Jim did not readily share his feelings or expose his emotions to anyone. After 24 years of marriage, I was honoured to know some of his innermost feelings. I knew that dealing with this cancer was the most difficult thing he'd ever faced.

Many friends asked if he was ‘okay with the Lord'. Our family is Catholic so the answer was, of course, ‘Yes', but that does not mean someone is ready to die, especially someone who loved his life on this earth and had five children and a lot more living to do. Jim still had not walked his daughter down the aisle, he had golf tournaments to win, grandchildren to get to know. He just wasn't ready to check out.

I would say that before he met Allison, Jim was scared and uneasy about death, he had only dealt with life every day at work delivering all of those babies for as long as he could remember. Jim was surrounded by life and now he was being forced to become acquainted with life's distant cousin, ‘death'. He would say, ‘I hope I have been good enough.' And believe me, he was golden—more than good enough! But he just seemed full of doubt and uncomfortable with the life he had so enjoyed previously.

Allison met with Jim on 10 September 2010. I had gone out to get my hair done and do some shopping. When I returned to our hotel, Jim was the most peaceful, calm and content I had ever known him to be. It took a while for him to open up, but eventually Jim shared with me some of the things Allison had said.

Allison described Jim's father and their dog and some personal experiences they had, which convinced him that the messages were no coincidence. During the reading, Allison also talked about a grandfather who was coming through to him. Jim said in her ‘scribbling' she kept making dollar signs. Jim couldn't help chuckling over that because ever since he had to stop working we'd been getting royalty checks from gas wells that his grandfather had retained the mineral rights to. She also told Jim that he was the second person whom she knew to have pancreatic cancer, and the other person was her father-in-law, whose name was also James—as it turned out, this was another connection that was not just coincidence.

Jim did not directly ask Allison how long he had to live. He did tell me that Allison said he would be able to make what he called ‘my birthday trip to Hawaii', but it would be very, very hard on him. Jim said they had a nice hug as he left that made him feel pretty good.

In September we went to MD Anderson, the cancer treatment and research centre at the University of Texas. By the end of October, though, Jim's cancer had got much worse, and in the first few days of November his oncologist decided to change the chemotherapy and put Jim on treatment that was a lot stronger. This new treatment made Jim extremely sick.

A month before he had won the Victoria Country Club First Round Club Championship in golf. Now, all he could do was sleep. Until this point, he had not lost his hair, either. He had been proud that he'd had cancer for more than a year, undergone chemotherapy and kept his hair. But then he started losing his hair, and pretty much his self-esteem, and he was so weak he stayed in bed most of the time, often with a fever. He started losing weight, too, as he just had no appetite.

Just as Allison had said, Jim was most sick in November. We went back to MD Anderson for another dose of chemotherapy. One week later Jim's most recent tests came back and his cancer was escalating. So the treatment was changed again and now involved four different kinds of chemotherapy, one by mouth and the other three by IV. Jim was so sick. At one point, he even said that if this was living then he had to talk to the oncologist because this was not living. He didn't want to eat. He didn't want to talk on the phone. He didn't want visitors. He didn't want to leave the house at all.

December 8 was Jim's birthday, and I didn't want the day to go by unrecognised, for I knew this would be his last birthday on this earth. I wanted to have some kind of celebration. He was feeling a little bit better, so at the last minute we had some friends over. A few days before our trip to Hawaii, Jim seemed to be feeling upbeat. We drove to Houston on Saturday and he only had a bowl of soup that night; Sunday morning he had some cereal and milk. But that night when we boarded our flight he felt nauseous. Two hours into the flight my husband started throwing up. He told me he thought I was going to have to take him to the hospital when we landed in Honolulu. From the plane I called a surgeon we knew and he advised me to take Jim straight to an emergency department. However, even though he was still vomiting, before we landed Jim said, ‘Let's just go on to Maui and get the kids to the condo and see how I do.'

We were there for one day. Jim was trying to feel good. The next day he felt terrible, and shortly after midnight we went to the emergency department in the Maui hospital. It had great doctors who offered some forms of treatment, but Jim said he just wanted to go home because he knew he would really get the best care for himself there. That morning, around 5 a.m., I made the flight arrangements to leave Maui to get back to Houston. We left Maui around five o'clock in the afternoon on December 22 then arrived in Houston at six o'clock the next morning and drove home.

A month later, on 22 January 2011, my heroic husband passed away.

Thank goodness the Sunday before Jim died I had gone to the nursing home where Jim's mother lives and brought her to our house to see him. She has dementia but she's ‘with it' if you talk to her one on one; if you have three people in the room talking at the same time, she gets confused.

Even though it was late when Jim passed away, I told the kids to go to the nursing home to tell their grandmother the news. I knew it would be better for her to hear it from them. Jim was a well-known physician in our community, and it would have been terrible for her if someone said, ‘Oh, Mrs Hayes, I am so sorry to hear about the death of your son,' before we had told her ourselves and processed it with her.

The kids went to the nursing home at about 10.30 p.m. and discovered that Jim's sister had been there that day and moved their grandmother to Dallas. Allison had warned me that this would happen, and I think the prior knowledge helped me cope during a time when I needed all the help I could get.

Allison and I had talked about how death sometimes makes people do insensitive things, but at least I knew what to expect so I could roll with it.

So now I'm taking it day by day. I know Jim's around me, and that he's feeling good again. I miss our talks and sharing our daily highs and lows. I miss being part of a couple, but I will carry him in my heart with me through life, so I guess I'm not really alone after all.

MEETING JIM

Now that you have read Dot's account, I want to share with you how meeting Dot and Jim affected my life.

When my cousin Mark called and told me that Dot wanted to book a reading with me for Jim, I initially said no. This was because I bring through the dead, but I was being asked to counsel the dying, and that petrified me. What if Jim didn't like me or couldn't get past his professional background in medicine? What if I said something that made it worse for him? This wasn't my forte; it was unfamiliar ground for me.

On top of those fears, his name was ‘Jim', and he had pancreatic cancer, just like my father-in-law, the one I never met in life. Our daughter Fallon was born five years to the day that my father-in-law, Jim, had died in the same hospital. Our daughter Aurora was born two years to the day of my father-in-law's funeral and a day before Joe's birthday. I saw Joe still struggle with losing his dad all these years later. Part of me wasn't sure that this wouldn't affect Joe, seeing a man of similar age, name and illness pass through our home and our lives. Or maybe it could help Joe to process his father's passing, something he had never entirely been able to face. He missed him so much. I spent weeks thinking about this, weighing the possibilities and wondering, ‘Could we handle it?'

Fortunately, my cousin Mark is a very smooth talker and he's able to convince anybody to do just about anything—and that's what he did with me. In spite of all my reservations, I agreed to set my fears aside and read for Jim. He was dealing with a time issue here, so now was not the moment to lose my cool.

Jim came over on September 10, two weeks before the anniversary of my own dad's passing. I had many conf licting emotions raging through me.

The first thing I noticed was that Jim had the kindest blue eyes, and he was one of those guys you look at and
know
he's a doctor; he exuded the energy of a doctor. He sat down and we talked for a few minutes so that I could put him at ease. This was, after all, a unique situation. We talked about what happens when a person dies, how they can reconnect with the living, and how they can still participate in the lives of their loved ones. This seemed to calm his nerves a little.

During Jim's reading I brought through many of his relatives and I described their personalities and gave him names and other details connected to the ones he loved. The more details I conveyed to Jim, the less stressed he looked and the more at ease I was. As the reading progressed, he seemed more and more light-hearted and even amused by the information that was coming through from his family.

I razzed him, ‘See, it doesn't hurt a bit! This is a completely painless process,' and we both laughed.

I felt a bond with Jim for many reasons. It was a most precious experience, one that has changed me. Now I know that I can help the dying, too! Before my reading with Jim I was so afraid to face that fear, to feel his pain, his very life slipping away. But then I realised it really wasn't slipping away; it was simply changing forms. I also felt so honoured that with Jim's limited time, he chose to spend part of it with me, talking about life and death, talking about his wife and kids and how much he loves them all and savours every conversation with them, every moment. What a guy! For so many years he delivered babies and reassured their mothers that they would be just fine—he was an instrument of life. It made perfect sense why death and exiting the world didn't feel right to him, because it's not what he knew.

When we were finished, I hugged him goodbye, wanting to hold on to him and keep him here with us, but it doesn't work that way, does it? I know we all wish it did.

I saw Jim six weeks later. He looked different. He had lost some of the colour in his face, but he still looked happy. He was still among the living. We were at a fundraiser for—what else?—pancreatic cancer research. We had a lovely, yet emotionally draining evening. He and Dot dropped in the next day to give our family T-shirts from their favourite football team, the Texas Longhorns—such a sweet gesture.

January rolled around. It's my favourite month because I was born in it! We had a birthday party for me on the night of January 22, a Saturday, and it was that night when Jim let go. I remembered back to when I met Dot and how I kept seeing the number ‘2' connected to Jim. Then I realised it was because Dot and Jim were married on March 22, my dad passed on September 22, and now Jim on January 22.

Days after Jim passed away, Dot told me that Jim had said our meeting had made him less afraid to die. Can you imagine that? Being able to touch a dying man in such a personal way. Hearing those words was one of those rare moments that made my life profoundly worth living. People often ask me what their life's path is, and it's nice to know that each of us has the capacity to touch others' lives for the better. If we all tried just 10 per cent harder to help others, think of what a wonderful world we'd leave as our legacy.