Beyond This Realm—2023
Tomorrow marks eleven years since my remarkable father passed away, just shy of his 88th birthday. Because my experience of his death and the connection I felt with his spirit was so profound, years later, when I wrote my introduction to Quest for Eternal Sunshine, I began the book with a description of his final days:
When my father was on his deathbed, I sat by his side with my mother and daughter. We listened to beautiful classical music on an old cassette player—tapes my dad had made throughout his life of the melodies he loved best.
Even though my father was lying in a hospital bed surrounded by bottles of medication in a room with a stained linoleum floor, I felt the magnificence of heaven. The air was different—charged with peace, light, and love. I sensed we were not alone.
Surprisingly, in the days leading up to his death, I’d developed a new relationship with my father. Although he could no longer speak and his body was beginning to shut down, it seemed as if his spirit was active and could communicate with me.
There was a day when I drove the few miles to my house to take a short break. I was relaxing in my hot tub under the darkening sky when suddenly my father’s spirit visited me, guided by a spirit that I somehow knew was his mother. They swooped down to share final blessings for our family. My father didn’t speak in words, but I heard his messages clearly with senses I hadn’t known I possessed—not the eyes and ears I had lived with for almost half a century.
When I went back to my dad’s bedside, the universe felt new to me. Boundaries I’d always believed in had dissolved, and I felt surprisingly fortified. My dad died peacefully a few hours later.
My daughter is a midwife, and this was her first death. She told me that the magic in the room felt the same as when a baby is born. The joy of my father’s release was tangible. I believed he was reuniting with members of his family who had died long ago—people whose names and stories I did not know. Not yet.
Two months after my father died, I had the opportunity to communicate with him through an incredibly gifted medium, Tina Powers. Because he’d suffered from Alzheimer’s disease for ten years before his passing, it had been a long time since we’d been able to have a real talk. Through Tina, I not only communicated with my father, I had one of the most honest and meaningful conversations I’d ever had with him.
In that first session, my dad appeared to Tina wearing a shirt that she described as highly unusual. “The entire front is covered with at least a dozen pockets. Does that mean anything to you?” I was blown away because my inventor father would only wear clothes that had a lot of pockets because he was perennially collecting odds and ends for the many different projects he was working on, and always carried pen and paper to jot down his ideas. My mother purchased his clothes, and had quickly learned that if the shirts and jackets didn’t have plenty of pockets, he would never wear them. The more pockets, the happier he was!
Tina Powers
Tina and my father spoke to each other in a language that included words, energies and symbols. Watching them communicate was fascinating. With her head cocked to one side while nodding frequently, Tina would listen to my father, then relay his answers to my questions, as well as other messages he was eager to share.
There was no way that Tina, born and raised in Tucson, Arizona, could have possibly known my father’s unique expressions, many of which traced back to his childhood in Poland, where he was raised in a Hassidic family that spoke Yiddish. There is no way Tina could have been privy to the unique nuances of our family dynamics that my dad addressed with much specificity.
A very successful news anchor before she began “reporting for the other side,” Tina’s clients include celebrities and business leaders from across the globe. She is such a highly sought after medium that it takes close to a year to book a session, so having access to her for 75 minutes is a rare opportunity. Our free virtual event—“Beyond this Realm with Tina Powers,” which will be held this year on October 7 at 10:00 AM Pacific—is always highly anticipated and very popular.
I’m especially eager to talk to Tina again because a close friend’s father recently passed, and I had the privilege of spending time with them during his dying process. Seeing this lovely 95-year-old man so close to death was sacred and moving. It reminded me of sitting by my own father’s bedside—the preciousness of that final time together; the heightened awareness of the impermanence of life; the boundless love, tenderness, and gratitude. This man had been the last living father of all my close friends, so deeply exploring the topics of death and the afterlife feels even more important with the realization that we are now the next generation in line to die.
My friend told me that soon after her mother passed away five years ago, her mother’s spirit would frequently appear at the foot of her dad’s bed. “It always happened in the middle of the night. He would wake up feeling her there.” When I asked if those visitations ever scared her father, she replied, “ Not at all. The visits were very soothing for him. They’d been married for more than sixty years. He missed her and loved seeing her. He never turned on the light because he thought that would make her disappear.” The two of them never talked; they simply enjoyed being together.
During the thirteen days that her father was unconscious before he died, my friend frequently asked him to visit after he passed, just like her mother had been doing with him. “Every day, when I said goodbye for the night, I would say, ‘Dad, please come visit me. Show up any way that you want, just please come visit me. I’ll always be waiting.”
When her father took his last breath, my friend was right by his side, along with her sister and daughter. She told me that all three of them literally saw his soul leave his body. “We watched his energy change, and witnessed the life force leaving his body. We could see his soul come up through his face and out of his head. My daughter instinctively went over to the window and opened it.”
Many of the topics I want to discuss with Tina on October 7 were inspired by my friend’s experience:
What happens to souls when they leave the body? Is it a similar experience for all souls, or does it vary much?
Do spirits care about how the body that is left behind is treated after the soul departs? Are religious rituals appreciated?
Can you explain the visitations my friend’s father experienced after his wife passed? Is this type of thing common? What motivates the spirit to come? What if he had turned on the light?
It’s been four months since my friend’s father passed, and she hasn’t yet experienced a visitation. What is your advice to her and others who have a similar desire to connect with the spirits of their loved ones?
My friend’s mother was healthy and vibrant when she died suddenly, at age 83, due to medical mismanagement. She was in a tremendous amount of pain for a week before she passed, and it left the whole family feeling traumatized. Are souls impacted in the afterlife by something like this? Would her mother be more at peace in the afterlife if she’d had a peaceful passing?
I’ve also received questions from attendees, including one person who wants to know if spirits that love us ever get angry at us, and another who feels the spirit of her departed dog and wants to know how the souls of pets differ from humans.
Myra recovering from COVID last year with the help of her best friend, Henry
The conversation portion of our 75-minute event will be followed by Tina guiding us through a visualization meant to open our hearts to receive messages from spirits of people we love that are now in other realms. Then she will welcome and share incoming messages from people who have passed. Please join us for this very special event!
FREE—Sign up for “Beyond this Realm”
To learn more about Tina, please read my blog that shares her remarkable life story and journey to becoming a “reporter for the other side.”
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