ADC

ADC – After-Death Communication

The hugely popular  movie, “Ghost” with Demi Moore, was a big success because millions of people yearn to connect for one last time with a loved one who has passed on.   I happen to be one of those persons and I want to tell you more about the topic of After-Death Communication.

Husband and wife team  Bill and Judy Guggenheim have been studying After-Death Communication (ADC)  since 1988 and have established a foundation to do their work. They assert that we indeed are contacted by the dead regularly but fail to notice the communication.  Their book, Hello from Heaven,  is divided into chapters based on the type of interactions we may have.  You may feel their touch,  catch a whiff of their scent, get a split-second full or partial appearance.  They  appear in our dreams or they  send us butterflies when there should be none around or they  send us a rainbow.  There are 23 chapters in this book so there are many, many ways we may be  contacted.

When I was given their book,  Hello from Heaven,  what  I innately believed was confirmed.   My son Robert drops by every so often.   I feel him lean over me.  Sometimes I hear his voice say hello .   When his Funeral Mass ended and we left the church on that very gray and cloudy day, someone shouted, “Look up, look up!”   People were pointing and calling to one another.  “Look up!  Look up!” Everyone was taking cell phone photos, so I would have the picture and never forget the sight on that day.  There over the cross of the church steeple was a hazy oval-shaped sun (my son had a beautiful oval face) and under it was an inverted rainbow.  His big colorful smile, told me he was all right.  The grief I had been feeling vanished and a joyful calm washed over me.  He is in a good place, I thought.   I was given the gift of peace and a beautiful farewell; something I never got to do, having been informed of the motorcycle accident and death by the police.  I had a photographer enlarge the photo for me and I called it Robert’s smile.

One of the chapters in the Guggenheim’s book was about telephones and dreams.  My best friend Debbie’s mother passed away and she was taking it very badly until one night shortly after the burial.  She was asleep and she clearly heard the telephone ringing.  It rang so loudly she reached over to answer.  The voice said, “Debbie, it’s Mom. I just wanted to tell you I just love my new place.  It’s beautiful.”  Debbie answered, “I’m so glad,” and hung up.   When she woke up that next morning she could not remember if it was a dream, and if the phone really rang and she answered.   All she knew for sure was that she was filled with a peace that she did not have before that night.  She felt somehow her mother was telling her that she was all right.

The Guggenheims speak of receiving pennies from heaven, visits from birds (especially cardinals) and even animals, finding mementos from them in the most unlikely places.

My tiny family was in Aruba enjoying the sand and surf last spring.  We were there with my beautiful 10 month old grand-daughter.  If you are a grandmother you know that when you are invited to vacation with your children and grandchildren, you’re the built in babysitter.

My husband and I didn’t mind.  My petite Natalie was a lovely baby and she took two hour-long naps a day, so it was not hard.  In fact, we just loved minding her on the beach or at the pool.

One night my daughter and her husband went on a twilight cruise and we took Natalie to dinner.  We were given a rather long rectangular table and my husband and I sat across from each other and Natalie was on the end.

Once our meal came she was grabbing at the food and half went on the ground and half in her mouth. On the ground she had quite a menagerie of birds, big and small, surrounding her high chair, and eating her scraps.  One large black bird with beady yellow eyes arrived when we sat down.  It decided to sit across from the baby at the other end of the table.  This bird sat and twittered and whistled but did not make a move to eat anything on the table or on the patio floor.  We wondered just how long he would hold out before he would start picking at all the crumbs just as the other birds were doing.

Chatting like mad, this black bird did not move from his seat on the backrest of the chair until we finished our meal, paid the check and put Natalie in the stroller.  Then it hit me.  It was Natalie’s uncle Robert who had come for a visit.

Not many people get to see a visual manifestation of a ghost as Whoopie Goldberg did in the movie.  Nor do many people get to experience the intense meeting Demi Moore had when her husband came back for a visit at the very end.  However, I do believe that the Guggenheims got it right when they say our loved ones visit all the time, we just don’t  realize it.