The Miracle Child

This story is from Jeff D’Antonio, and originally appeared on his blog. He gave us permission to post it here. It’s about miracles, synchronicity, spirit contact, and the incredible endurance and resilience of an infant. We’ve shortened it and provided some of the background material.

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When Jeff was six years old, he met Jill, who climbed into his tree house and introduced herself. From then on, they were best friends. He was there when she learned to ride her bike,  when her father died, when she left for college, when she graduated, when her mother died, and on the day she got married. He was there the day that Katie, Jill’s daughter was born, and there on the day that Jill‘s husband passed away. He was also there on the day that Jill was diagnosed with breast cancer and there on the day that Jill knew the cancer would beat her.  He was there for Jill the day she asked him to take care of Katie, and there on the day that Jill died. His moving tribute to her is here.

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In the winter of 2007-2008, Jeff’s wife, Jenny was pregnant. She was in the second trimester of what had been a difficult pregnancy. It was the snowiest winter on record and the weather forecaster were calling for “the blizzard of the century,” with a total of 30 inches of snow expected.

“The howling wind was blowing the snow around so hard I couldn’t even make out the tree line at the far end of our back yard. A great day to stay home and sit by the fire drinking hot cocoa and reading a good book.

“That’s what I was hoping, anyway. Then I heard Jenny calling me from upstairs. I could tell by the sound of her voice that something was very wrong.

I ran up the stairs and found her sitting on the bathroom floor with blood running down her legs. She was in the second trimester of what had already been a very difficult pregnancy, and there had been several scary moments in the preceding weeks. Fearing the worst, I grabbed my keys and prepared for an emergency trip to the hospital. In the middle of The Blizzard Of The Century.

“I knew there was no way an ambulance would make it up the mountain, so we were on our own. I loaded Jenny and the girls into the Jeep, and off we went.  We made it to the hospital in record time, over winding, unplowed mountain roads, in the middle of a blizzard.

“Turns out she had a placental abruption, which meant the placenta had torn and partially detached from her uterus. The baby was okay for the time being, but the damage to the cord and placenta meant she was still in great danger. She was barely at 5-1/2 months, so it was way too early to deliver. They kept Jenny at the hospital on complete bed rest, and told her she would have to stay there until the baby was born. We hoped and prayed for our baby to stay in there as long as she could. Every day counted.

“Four days later, I was sitting by Jenny’s bedside while she talked about how hard it was going to be to stay in bed for that long, when suddenly her eyes rolled back into her head and she lost consciousness. Machines started beeping wildly, alarms were going off, doctors and nurses rushed into the room with carts full of strange looking equipment. And then they told me they had to deliver the baby right away.

“It’s too soon, I protested, but the doctor quickly explained that the uterine tear had progressed, and if they didn’t get the baby out NOW, they would both die. Jenny almost bled to death on the way to the operating room. After they got the baby out, they couldn’t stop the bleeding and they had to do an emergency hysterectomy. They saved Jenny’s life, and I will forever be grateful to those surgeons for that. That was the most terrifying hour of my life. The thought of losing her almost killed me.

“The baby was 3-1/2 months premature. I didn’t even get a chance to see her before they put her on a cart and whisked her away to the NICU. Jenny was still in danger, so I stayed with her. If ever there was a moment when I wished I could be in two places at once, it was that moment. After what seemed like forever, the NICU doctor finally came and told us what was happening with our baby. As soon as he came into the room, I could see in his eyes that he didn’t have good news for us.

“He told us that she would die within hours. He didn’t say “might die.” He didn’t say “maybe,” or “possibly,” or “probably.” He said she will die within hours. Her lungs were too underdeveloped, and there was no way for her to get enough oxygen to survive outside the womb. We begged him to tell us that there was still a chance, no matter how remote, but he was all but certain. He said it was only a matter of time.

“We were heartbroken. After six years of waiting and hoping and praying for another baby, and coming this far along through a very long and difficult pregnancy, we just couldn’t believe we were going to have to say goodbye to her now. It was the most horrible moment of our lives.

“Then they asked us what her name was, so they could write up the birth certificate. And then the death certificate. Up until then we always just called her “the baby”. We hadn’t decided on a name yet. We always thought we had more time. It felt so strange giving her a name, knowing that she was going to die so soon. We had to think about it for awhile before we settled on the name Christina.

“We sat with Christina in the NICU, watching the respirator breathe for her; watching the heart monitor record her weak and often unsteady heartbeats; watching the blood oxygen monitor register values way too low to keep her alive. She was so tiny she would have fit in the palm of my hand if I were able to hold her. The nurse stayed with us through the night and tried her best to reassure us that Christina couldn’t feel any pain or discomfort. That nurse was an angel. How hard it must be to sit with parents under those circumstances. Jenny and I held each other while we waited and watched and prayed and cried.

“I can’t even begin to describe what it feels like to sit there waiting for your baby to die. There are no words.

“But Christina’s heart just kept beating. Her blood oxygen level held steady – low, but steady. The nurse said she couldn’t believe Christina had made it through the night. At one point she called the doctor in to see what he thought. They talked for a few minutes and then brought in another doctor to consult. I remember hearing them talking, and thinking how strange it was that their job was supposed to be to keep people alive, and yet they were standing there discussing why she wasn’t dead yet. It was surreal. Part of me wanted to punch them. Another part of me wanted thank them for giving us just a little more time with her.”

For weeks, Christina just kept getting stronger. Every medical expert who examined her couldn’t understand why she was still alive. “Then one day a neonatal pulmonologist who was visiting from Boston asked us if we believed in miracles, because he had seen her chart and he had no other explanation. This was one of the best doctors in his field in the entire world, who had seen probably thousands of babies die with lungs in much better condition than Christina’s – and he had no explanation except a miracle. He said it was almost as if she was getting oxygen through some kind of invisible umbilical cord that none of us could see.”

Four months passed and finally, Christina was ready to come home. On January 18, 2010, Christina celebrated her second birthday. “There is no doubt in my mind that someone was helping her along in that NICU. There is no doubt in my mind that we witnessed a miracle there.”

“Doctors had been telling us for years that she wouldn’t be conceived. And when she was, doctors told us she would never be born alive. And when she was, doctors told us she would die within hours…and when she didn’t, one of the best pulmonologists in the world had no explanation other than to call it a miracle. Something allowed her to be conceived when doctor after doctor said it was impossible. Something allowed her to survive in a damaged womb that provided her with less than half of the oxygen and nutrients required for her to survive. Something allowed her to survive those first hours and days and weeks in the NICU, when all the medical knowledge of some of the best doctors in the world said it was impossible.”

Move ahead to September 2010. Jeff and Jenny were looking through old photo albums with their daughters.  “Christina was pointing out pictures of people she recognized and telling us who they were, when she came across an old picture of Jill, who was 21 or 22 in the picture.

“Jill was wearing an old pair of jeans and a tee shirt. Her hair was longer then, and that’s the quintessential image of Jill as I like to remember her. It’s the version of Jill I see in my memories more than any other – the clothing, the hair, the facial expression, all perfectly capture the essence of who she was. Even though Jill was gone before she was born, Christina knows who she is – there’s a picture of her in Katies’s room, and we speak of her often by name. But she was younger in this picture in the photo album, her hair was longer, so I guess she looked different enough that Christina didn’t recognize her as Jill.

“As she turned the page, Christina’s eyes fixated on this picture of Jill, and she said, “That’s the lady from the hospital. The one that held my hand and told me to keep breathing.”

Jeff and Jenny were stunned.

“She comes into my room sometimes and tells me stories before I go to sleep,” Christina said.

They pressed her for more details, but she refused to say more.

“From the very beginning, I’ve always believed there to be some kind of connection between Jill and Christina. Her birth was a miracle, her survival was a miracle, and I’ve always felt as though Jill had a hand in that somehow. The grown-up, scientist guy in me says that’s preposterous.

But my heart so wants it to be true.”

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Animal Orphans

For us, the synchronistic message in this video is that there are still plenty of wonderful people in the world

Posted in animals as messengers | 5 Comments

Our Cassadaga Trip

We make it to Cassadaga about once a year. Our last trip there was after a book conference in St. Augustine, which we wrote about here. This time, it was after a book conference in Daytona.

We left in the middle of the afternoon and the drive south was uneventful. No synchros. But we’d had several at the book conference, so we were feeling pretty good about things. This time, we had decided not to stay at the Cassadaga Hotel. Our last stay there in 2009 was, well, awful. The hotel has deteriorated. The rooms are dingy and smell of mold, the beds are hopeless, and for what you get, it’s ridiculously expensive. It’s also an unsettling place to stay – weird noises in the middle of the night, disturbing dreams, restless ghosts. This time, we booked a room at a bed and breakfast in nearby Lake Helen. It was delightful. Trish and Megan had stayed here during a stop while looking at colleges in Megan’s senior year.

Friday evening, we walked around the camp, stopped in the local bookstore to see which mediums were listed on the bulletin boards, bought a couple of books. We decided to return the next morning for readings. The British woman who owns the bed and breakfast, had suggested some good restaurants in nearby Deltona, and we ended up eating at a country club that was part of a vast development of homes on a golf course. It was really kind of ironic. We’re not country club type people. We couldn’t quite wrap our heads around the fact that the place existed just five miles or so up the road from one of the strangest communities in Florida.
On our way back to the bed and breakfast, we noticed a new sign posted in front of the Cassadaga camp: Camp Closed from Dusk to Dawn. Not a single car in the hotel parking lot – i.e., the hotel is empty. There’s undoubtedly a story about that weird sign, but we don’t have a clue what that story is. Cassadaga always seems to be involved in some sort of feud with the “uncertified mediums,” who have set up shop outside of the official grounds of the camp. 
The B and B was comfortable, the bed was great, and the breakfast the next morning, included in the price, was fantastic. And it cost less than a night at the Cassadaga Hotel. 
So that morning we set off in search of readings. In Cassadaga, this search is a process. You either spend time walking around the camp, waiting to see which house, which sign on a front lawn, leaps out at you, or you walk across the street to where the uncertified mediums ply their trade and pick a name from a hat. Usually, we stop in to see our friend Helen Burly, a fantastic medium, but she wasn’t at home. So Rob selected Ed Conklin, one of the old timers in Cassadaga, one of the “certified” mediums, which means that somewhere along the line he had to pass a test. 
Rob recently lost his cousin and wanted to see what, if anything, Ed could pick up. After his reading, we had lunch at the Lost in Time Cafe and Rob went through his notes. “Not so good,” he said. “Really general.” 
Disappointment. We’ve done this enough over the years so that we know when a medium starts talking about your Indian guide and that tomahawk, he’s floundering. However, Ed did have a couple of hits about Rob’s grandfather, but was it worth the money for the reading? Where was the info about his cousin, his father, friends who have passed on? Where was the real meat of this thing?
We were going to head home after that, but decided to drive back to Lake Helen, to a new age bookstore the B and B owner had recommended. According to her, the store was started by  a couple of women who had broken off from the camp. Ah. Rebels, revolutionaries, great. Let’s try it. 
Enchanted Soul of Cassadaga smelled good when we walked in, like a lot of New Age bookstores do.Incense, candles, whatever it is, the atmosphere was pleasant. One woman was behind the counter and two other women hovered nearby. The woman behind the desk asked if we wanted readings. “That depends,” Trish said. “What does it cost and what are the techniques?”
Two choices: a crystal/rock reading or an angel reading, Trish chose the stones. Rob sat down to wait for her and  he and the angel lady struck up a conversation.
Trish:
I was amazed at what can be divined from stones. I’ve never had this sort of reading before. Becky (a Leo and a former accountant) must have spread out a hundred stones – tiger’s eyes, lapis, quartz crystals – I don’t know much about stones, so my choices were strictly intuitive, whatever caught my eye. Through my choices, she was able to tell quite a bit about my relationships with people from my childhood (parents, sister), my goals, my family now. She didn’t know I was a writer until I told her, but said that the Esperanza series would be at least 7 books (we’ll see!) and that there would be ore books on synchronicity (that was the weekend we got our offer for the second book). There were some definite hits.
Meanwhile, Rob ended up getting a reading from Starr Morgana, the angel lady, as they sat there talking. Before we left the store, she insisted on doing this interesting interactive thing with us, a healing activity, in which our palms got so red that we could actually see the blood flowing into our fingertips.
This trip didn’t have anything that was earth shattering. We got home to kitties who had peed on the bathmats, to a dog who had eaten our neighbors’ glasses and children’s toys, to calls from our daughter about boyfriend problems. But Cassadaga stays with you. It’s a place that offers you a peek, however obscure, into your own psyche, your own present and future. It confirms what you feel about where you are in your life and  really, how much fun is it to have a choice of psychic readings? Mediums, tarot, astrology, past life, angels and stones: it’s all there for the taking.
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Synchros, 33, and the Chilean Miners

The 33 Chilean miners are finally being brought to the surface. Huffington Post has live coverage. So we have the 33 miners, it took 33 days for plans to be put into place about how to rescue them, and will supposedly take 33 hours to rescue all of them. In the I Ching, hexagram 33 is retreat. 70 days underground certainly qualifies as a  retreat!

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The Tooth

                                  Joan Miro

This syncho is an odd one from  Daz, an Australian who comments frequently on the blog. It’s about how a dream of a tooth predicted someone’s death.
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I remember the night one of my favorite Aunties died, I had a dream that I had lost a front tooth in my upper set. In the dream, I couldn’t stop poking at the gap with my tongue for what seemed like hours.When I woke up,I looked through a dream dictionary and it said:

“Teeth falling out in a dream can be interpreted as sense of loss, such as a death of someone close to you. Falling teeth can represent worries about getting older – loss of youth and vitality. If a single tooth is lost it could mean loss or change of something important to you.”

I don’t usually recall my dreams and found this one quite disturbing. Minutes later, my mother rings me to tell me her sister had died unexpectedly in her sleep after coming down with a bad case of the flu

Posted in death, precognitive dreams | 6 Comments

Eternal Inflation

No, this phrase isn’t about the economy. It’s about physics and space and time.

According to an article in New Scientist, this theory contends that “different parts of space can undergo dramatic growth spurts, essentially ballooning into separate universes with their own physical properties. The process happens an infinite number of times, creating an infinite number of universes, called the multiverse.” 

The multiverse is depicted in this image by physicist Andrei Linde of Stanford University. Each colored ray in this image is an expanding universe.But apparently if you mess with the laws of physics in just about any way you can imagine, life as we know it would not exist. In basic physics, atoms consist of protons (an electrically charged particle within the nucleus of an atom), neutrons (according to wisegeek.com: a tiny subatomic particle found in nearly all forms of matter), and electrons (a negatively charged particle).So let’s say that if protons were “just .02 percent more massive than they are, they would decay into smaller particles. Atoms wouldn’t exist and neither would we.”
So how did we, this universe, just happen to have all the life-friendly properties that allow us to exist? Physics apparently doesn’t have all the answers. In fact, physicists seem to be as clueless as the rest of us. Short of attributing it all to some ultimate source, an ultimate creator, writes Tim Folger in an article in Discover Magazine, “many physicists see only one possible explanation: Our universe may be but one of perhaps infinitely many universes in an inconceivably vast multi­verse. Most of those universes are barren, but some, like ours, have conditions suitable for life.”
So what is this multiverse? Is it the same as the Many Worlds Theory of quantum physics? It seems to be. Writers of fiction have tapped into this idea for years.  For anyone who watched Lost, the idea of a multiverse is depicted in a sideways storyline that illustrated a parallel universe where the passengers of Oceanic Flight 815 lands in L. A.and the island where the plane crashed is now underwater.Stephen King’s Dark Tower series is built on the premise of a multiverse that is centered in the tower. Michael Crichton’s Timeline enables his characters to travel  back to Medieval times. In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe every possible timeline is depicted somewhere.There are others Philip Pullman’s brilliant trilogy, His Dark Materials; the TV show Slider; the movie Sliding Doors.
So what does any of this have to do with the lives we’re living in the here and now? Well, from my non-scientific,  novelistic point of view, this could mean there are multiple versions of every major choice you made. Your divorce? In some timeline, it didn’t happen. You and that spouse are still together. Your marriage? In some timeline, you never even met that person. That beautiful child/children in your life? In some timeline, you were childless. And on it goes, the choices, the repercussions. In the multiverse, they all aren’t just possible, they exist.
But then you come against a book like Biocentrism and its premise that all is consciousness, that there is nothing without consciousness. And you’re left beneath a star-studded sky, contemplating your own navel, your own awareness. It’s humbling, to say the least. In the end, maybe what we perceive to be god, all that is, the ultimate authority, whatever your term, is simply a consciousness that grows and expands as we do. Maybe this grand consciousness sweeps through all probable universes, endowing all of us with the free will to find our own way through the strangeness that is life, truth, the universe, and everything else.
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Just a note. We’ll be on the road the next few days, but checking in.
Posted in andrei linde, multiverse, quantum physics | 12 Comments

Hey, Man, Talk to the Hand

Posted in psychic protection | 4 Comments

Psychic Protection

We’re both  working on our next synchro book, which is called: Synchronicity and the Other Side: Your Guide to Meaningful Connection with the Afterlife. Plans are to publish the book next spring, so we’re very focused on the writing. Amazing we have time for the blog.

But a synchro occurred yesterday related to the book that is worth mentioning. It’ll also be in the book. I was working on a chapter  called Hauntings and had just written a section on how to create a psychic shield when encountering negative energy, whether it’s coming from a malefic spirit or a living person tossing a negative thought-form your way. I’d written about a well known method that involves surrounding yourself in a protective bubble of light that can’t be penetrated by negative energy. I’d detailed how to create it in a meditation, but the section still felt somewhat short. Regardless, I’d put it aside to work on another part of the chapter when Trish returned  from the grocery store.

The first thing she said was, “Wait until I tell you the story I just heard in the parking lot.”

Keep in mind that Trish didn’t know that I had been writing about psychic protection. The story came from a woman who bags groceries and often wheels Trish’s grocery cart out to the car. Her name is Marina and she’s from Cuba, where she was a medical doctor before she fled her native land. Since she doesn’t speak English and isn’t licensed to practice medicine the U.S., she took the minimal wage job. (Trish grew up in Venezuela, so she has no trouble communicating with Marina.)

When Trish mentioned the book that we’re working on now, Marina stopped and gave her a startled look. She then proceeded to relate a ghostly encounter she had in her home the previous night. Marina, who lives in an aging condominium, had turned off the light and was sleeping when she abruptly woke up to the sound of a woman groaning and weeping as if she were in great pain. She was certain the sound was coming from her bedroom, not another condo. “She was right there next to me in bed, and I was terrified.”

Marina immediately realized that she needed to protect herself from a psychic invasion from this troubled spirit. She recalled a method she’d learned from a spiritualist in Cuba. She got up and took a small wooden cross from her nightstand and went into the bathroom where she filled a clear glass with water. Then she plunged the cross into it, and began reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Just as she finished, her husband came home and turned on the lights, and the frightful haunting was over.

I immediately incorporated the story in the section I’d just written on psychic protection. So if you were wondering how synchronicity fits with a book on contact with the other side, there you have an example!

Posted in hauntings, psychic protection | 23 Comments

Karen and Rick and Afterward

 First, I confess to having taken this image from Gypsy’s blog. (Thank you, Gypsy.) It struck me as the perfect image for this story.

Our post on September 29, Ghosts as Tricksters, resulted in some amazing comments and reactions. This story comes from Karen Algrim at Maggie’s Secret Garden, and embodies many elements of both synchronicity and spirit contact.
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As I have shared in a previous post….some of you may know that my husband was killed in an auto accident by a drunk driver a few days before the holiday of December 1989. On that night I already had a sense that something had happened to him before I actually got word from the police.

I had a vision of what was to come while in surgery the same year…it was what I recalled a holographic look into my own future.

The night it happened the kids and I sat waiting for him to arrive home from work. At around 8:30 in the evening, we heard a boom on the front door, almost as if a big gust of wind had hit it. There was no wind that night. My daughter and son moved onto the chair I was sitting and…they weren’t scared at all…rather my daughter said she felt sick to her stomach. I felt from that moment on that I was recalling the holographic scenes I had while under anaesthesia.

We went through a rough patch after that night….and then not more than a month went by when we all started noticing things. I’ll list them….it will be easier.

First…
The kids started telling me they saw reflections of their dad in the windows from inside the house.

My daughter said she saw her dad getting into bed with my youngest child. She said she knew it was her dad by the chain and medal on his neck. She was 8 years old.

We all started hearing our names shouted in a loud whisper into our ear at very close range. None of us shared this until my youngest child did…and then we all realized we were having the same experience.

My TV turned itself on in the night time. It happened often. (I wish I had paid more attention to what was on the screen…I fear I have missed a message)

My bedroom light turned itself on more than a few times.

We all heard heavy footsteps on what seemed the roof…the footsteps sounded as if they were running across the whole length of the house.

We started seeing a ghostly form of a man sitting on the toilet in the upstairs hallway nearest the kitchen. The kids are only 8,7, and 18 months old and they told me about this at random times.

We all saw quick flashes of movement out the corner of our eyes often.

I was using the hallway bathroom very late at night with the door open (pardon my manners), the house is dark except for the light above the stove in the kitchen. I see a shadow of a person walking by on the wall outside the bathroom door.

I decided it was best for us to move into a different home. While I moved, the old house sat on the market for 1 year. During this time I let a family in need of a place to stay have the house. I never told them of my experiences. On the day they moved out, they asked me if I had been coming in while they weren’t at home. Of course I wasn’t and asked why they thought I was. Their story? While cleaning the hallway bathroom, they closed the door to keep the cleaning solutions smells from escaping, went out to eat, and on their return the bathroom door was open.

They also told me of noises heard from the attic above the foyer. They thought it might be critters, so her husband went up to check. No sign of critters.

After getting back the keys from this family, I got into my car to leave and made it halfway down the block before my car went into neutral while it was engaged in drive. I’d push down on the gas pedal and there was no drive. I figured it was my transmission. I had it towed. The dealer could find nothing wrong with the car. In hindsight I think it may have been my husband warning me to stay in the old house. And he would have been right in that decision given our economy today.

At my new house. I am reading in my room one night when I see an orb around the size of a tennis ball appear above my bed. It just sits there for most of an hour, moves only slightly, and then just dims out like a light bulb. I searched for every possibility of what it could have been, but know in my gut…I truly believe it was an orb.

When my granddaughter was born we all went into the birthing room after she had arrived. We were all shocked at how her eyes were looking at us with recognition of who each of us were. As each person spoke, her eyes would look directly at the person speaking. I should tell you that her eyes are the same color and shape as my late husband’s. We took pictures and in a few of the photos we captured some orbs above my daughter’s head; he had just given birth to my first grandchild.

I instinctively feel my granddaughter is the incarnation of my late husband.  I now know we travel in soul groups. My granddaughter looks a lot like my late husband. And I remember that when he was alive, he used to jokingly say that he wanted to come back as a beautiful woman. He thought beautiful women had it easy!

I also remember that about a year before his death he had a premonition that he would be killed in a car accident. A friend of ours was lost in the same way earlier and I remember my husband saying,”That’s how I’m going to go.” I know now that he may have created this scenario for himself.

I have investigated and learned many other things I would have never even been interested in if it wasn’t for these experiences and for this I am most grateful. I also don’t feel him around me anymore. But I do think his leaving date has left a message for me…..December 21st. I look forward to seeing what is in store for me on December 21, 2012.

I know now that we made a pact back in time, to pass this way with each other, and it has allowed me to understand my purpose for this life. And I’m so grateful to have had the opportunity to experience these things. These experiences have brought me to a place of better understanding.
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There are so many details in this story that suggest spirit contact: the sounds, the orbs, the problem with her car, the sightings. And then there’s her granddaughter’s birth that hints at her husband’s return. Interesting, too, that the date she mentions – December 21, 2012 – is when the Mayan calendar ends. Lots of speculation on what that means.  But for Karen, it’s undoubtedly going to be very special.

Posted in spirit contact | 26 Comments

Synchronicity and Symbols

What do Will Rogers
and

Kurt Vonnegut
and

Anne Sexton
and

Philip K Dick
and

Sugar Ray Leonard have in common?

Read on.

Synchronicities multiply during periods of transition – a move, a marriage or divorce, a career change, a change in employment or financial status, a birth or a death.  Here are some of the most ironic synchros we’ve run across related to death: .
Will Rogers, actor, humorist, and writer, died in a plane crash with his aviator buddy, Wiley Post, when they were taking off from a lagoon in Point Barrow, Alaska.  Rogers’ typewriter was found in the debris and the last word he typed was death.
Jim Fixx, whose 1977 bestseller, The Complete Book of Running, triggered the jogging craze, died of a heart attack while running.
James Heseldon, who bought the Segway company, died when he drove his Segway over a thirty-foot cliff on his property and into the river below.
The last movie that John Huston directed before his death was called The Dead.
The last book of poetry that Anne Sexton published before she committed suicide in 1974 was entitled The Death Notebooks.
At the time of his death, Philip K Dick was working on a novel entitled The Owl in Daylight. In esoteric traditions, the owl is considered to be a messenger between the living and the dead.
In a 2006 article in Rolling Stone about author Kurt Vonnegut, he claimed he had given up finishing his anticipated novel, If God Were Alive Today. “I’ve given up on it… It won’t happen… The Army kept me on because I could type, so I was typing other people’s discharges and stuff. And my feeling was, ‘Please, I’ve done everything I was supposed to do. Can I go home now?’ That’s what I feel right now. I’ve written books. Lots of them. Please, I’ve done everything I’m supposed to do. Can I go home now?” Less than eight  months later, Vonnegut got his wish: he died from complications of a fall.
The last song that Hank Williams Sr wrote was Angel of Death. When he died, he had a hit single at the top of the charts: I’ll never Get Out of This World Alive.
The night before Sugar Ray Robinson fought Jimmy Doyle in 1947, he dreamed he killed his opponent with a single left hook. According to ESPN’s Larry Schwartz, Robinson was so shaken by the dream that the next morning he said he couldn’t fight Doyle. “But the promoters brought in a Catholic priest who assured Robinson his fears were unfounded. Robinson hit Doyle with a textbook left hook in the eighth round. Doyle was carried from the ring on a stretcher and died the next day.”

There are probably dozens if not hundreds of synchros like these. Just poke around on Google. You’ll find them. It’s almost as if the spirit of the individual teams up with the spirit of the universe to make a statement.  Ray Grasse, in The Waking Dream, Unlocking the Symbolic Language of Our Lives,talks about  how the way someone dies – the specific circumstances – may “summarize key lessons or aspects or his or her life.For example, only hours before he died by electrocution while sitting in the bathtub, famed Trappist monk Thomas Merton had proclaimed to an important meeting of religious leaders that the times ahead were electrifying.”

This is on a par with Will Rogers’ last typed word as death. Maybe it’s the trickster at work here. Even so, there’s something at a deeper level in all this that deserves exploration. Grasse delves into why peaceful individuals like Gandhi died by assassination by a political extremist. Or why Josef Mengle, a Nazi doctor, died of natural causes. “Looked at deeply, every death has some significance symbolically.”

Posted in celebrities, death, writers | 21 Comments