Last night I had my first experience with a medium. Well, it wasn't my first experience with this particular medium. In fact, I have known Christy since 2001. She is my sister Cori's best friend, I used to babysit her kids (and her eldest daughter has now has babysat my daughter, so I am getting old...) but Christy is only recently decided to actively peruse feelings, dreams, and visions she has always had her entire life. I asked her if she wanted to come with me last night to my very first official meeting with Anoka Paranormal Investigations, not only to take some pics of the group (she is also an excellent photographer) but to also meet some like-minded people who won'y think she's a weirdo or insist on her seeing a therapist. We had a great meeting, got so cool pictures taken and Christy got to chat with some great people (because API is all great people) about her abilities she is trying to cultivate. She even got some great advice for next time the three nasty demons she dreams about show up. Whistle or sing. Knowing Christy, she'll probably try singing some Motley Crue.
After the meeting her and I went back to my house armed with some wine and ordered a pizza. As we sat and chatted I told her I wanted her to look at the house across the street from me because that is were Claire lived. Claire killed herself in January by walking into traffic on busy Highway Ten, which is right up the road from my neighborhood. Claire's death really hit me hard, and I am still trying to make sense of why. I would have in no way considered myself her friend. I thought she was a really weird woman. She dressed like a teenage boy, she was, what I thought, super inappropriate with the kids in the neighborhood. She had them come into her house, she would let them sit in her car in her garage and just hang out, she would give them sodas and let them listen to her headphones and that type of behavior, for a single adult, man or woman, with no children of their own, threw up a red flag for me. So I was less then willing to let my stepson go over there and hang out with the other neighborhood kids because...I just was. Even when I would tell him..."Okay, you can go over there as long as so-and-so is over there with you but NO going in her house and NO going in her garage." I would still look out my bedroom window and watch my stepson over there and his body language told me he was uncomfortable and apprehensive, and he never stayed for long.
I would talk to Claire very rarely. A friendly hello on the way to the mailbox. She came and talked to me when I was pregnant about having a baby. When you saw her close up and looked at her you could tell she just wasn't 100 percent mentally, something was missing. Last time I talked to her was a day on one of the last few warm months before she died when I was out on my front steps with my cats. "Oh, I have a cat too!" She told me, which she had told me before, but I wasn't going to correct her. Also, like she had warned me before, there are hawks and other large birds I should watch out for when I have my cats outside because they could swoop down and grab them and fly away with them (good luck, birds, my cats are fat and sassy.) I nodded politely and listened to her go on. She then told me how old her cat was and how her vet told her "the only reasons your cat is still alive is because you both love each other so much." I thought that was very sweet. And that was the last time I ever spoke to her. Like I said, we weren't friends.
Claire died at the end of January, but no one knew where she went until March. Me and my husband Jim would speculate that she was out of town or maybe sick. Jim then pointed out to me that her garbage can hadn't been at the end of her driveway for weeks. As we were leaving one afternoon a van parked in her driveway and a man and a woman both got out carrying paperwork and a clipboard....as much as Jim and I wanted to sit in the car and gawk, we didn't. A few weeks after that a man showed up to her house, opened the front door, and stood in the doorway staring out into the street with his hands on his hips looking confused. I called my sister, "I think Claire is dead." I am not psychic and it wasn't a feeling I had, I am just really good at putting two and two together. The man, Jeff, who turned out to be Claire's brother, caught me outside later that day when I was out with the dog. He introduced himself and told me what happened to his sister. I was floored, not only because I knew about the person walking out into traffic on ten (my in-laws called us to make sure we were okay because they drove by the accident and it was so close to our house and I was out on ten on that exact same spot not fifteen minutes before it happened.) But also because that night I spent so much time mulling it over for some reason, and trying to imagine the guilt I would have felt if I had hit someone on the highway. It really bothered me. And then my sister also found Claire's online presences, and it was devastating. She talked about her mental illness, her many suicide attempts, the fact that no one cared how ill she was. She had no one. It crushed me.
Eventually her family cleaned out her house, I got into a fight with my other neighbors about them basically stealing her stuff and the fact that I watched them do and so I called the police on them (which you can read all about here, if you like) I figured if I wasn't her friend in life, the least I could do was make sure some low-level criminals didn't ya know, steal her identity in death. Her brother left, he said goodbye to the neighbors who helped him out (me, Nice Old Lady Jan, etc) and we went back off to his part of the world. I even talked to Nice Old Lady Jan about the who situation and she even told Jeff "Well, if you have a memorial service or something for her, let us know." Her family didn't even do that for her. Ugh.
So, last night, as I was telling Christy all this and I was in tears because this affects me so much, this whole situation and I don't know why, Christy suddenly said, "Well, she's here. Your emotions and energy have brought her here, and she thanks you." More tears came out of me, and I started to go off about the thug neighbors who were stealing her stuff "She says that nothing in that house meant anything to her, it was just stuff." "I know," I said, "But it's still not right for those people to do that." I managed out between my blubbering, "She really appreciates that, Rox." Christy said. Now Christy wanted to test herself, "Don't tell me what color her car was. I want to see if she will tell me." So we sat quiet for a bit, then Christy said, "Was it green?" which it was. I wasn't freaked out about this, it actually made me feel better, but I was still upset, "If I had known how depressed she was or how alone she was, I don't know, maybe I could have done something to help her." Christy shook her head, "She says there is nothing you could have done, and she's patting you on the head right now. She also understands why you weren't her friend. You had nothing in common, and your responsibility first and foremost is to protect yourself and your family." Christy also said Claire is getting the help she needs and she is being taught that the way she acted was inappropriate with the kids, but she is also learning why it was and why some people might have thought she was strange and she's learning. And she's not in hell because she committed suicide. She actually had a moment of clarity before the car hit her, a moment of regret, and she also had some other kinds of drugs in her system too when she decided to do this. She is now learning and growing now that she's dead, and things are better for her, and apparently she appreciates the feisty little neighbor across the street defending her stuff. Also, her cat did die around the same time she did, which was my first thought when I learned that it was Claire who died on the highway. I figured she just didn't want to live without her cat.
Christy and I then went outside to look at her house. "She's not there." Christy said, "She's not attached to that house. I have a feeling her whole family shut her out and that really broke her heart too." I nodded, that seemed about right. Her family wasn't flippant about Claire's death, but they didn't really seem all that broken up about it either. Someone (I suspect Nice Old Lady Jan) put a stone angel statue on Claire's front step after her family left for good, "She wants you to have that angel." Christy told me, I said there was no way I was going to go over there and take it from her house, "Well, if you find yourself coming across something similar to that, just know that it's from her."
I dried my tears after we went back into the house. I apologized to Christy for being such a spaz about the whole things, and poured myself another glass of wine. The way Claire died (and frankly, the way she lived) still makes me very sad for her, but I do feel a bit better knowing that she is finding some kind of peace and it is also a huge relief for me to know, since I always believed this anyway, that people who commit suicide don't go to hell. Why would they? If they are in that kind of mental and emotional anguish while they are alive that they feel their only option is to take their own lives, why would they be forced to suffer an even worse fate after their deaths? That is not the kind of God I believe in.
When Christy left last night she assured me there were no more spirits in my house (she also picked up an adult male presences, which me assumed was my Grandpa since I was holding his prayer book my mother gave me for protection as I embark on this little journey I am taking with API) but he didn't stay long. Christy also tried to do a "read" on me to see if I had any spirits that stayed with me all the time, but I don't. Apparently they only show up when I am sobbing uncontrollably about them.
We did have a good evening and the API meeting went great and I have so much content now to add the the website and Christy got great pictures of the group and individual ones, and it's nothing but onward and upwards from here on in for Anoka Paranormal Investigations! Oh, and Christy was also invited into the group. Woop, woop!
Oh, quick update on our garage sale! Yesterday was the last day and at the end of the day a very nice man came in, bought all of my sister's kinda slutty shoes, a long leather coat, a keyboard, and some wine accessories. Turns out, he was totally a porn director! Like, a travelling porn director! He had the whole thing set up in the back of his van. Ha!
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