The mystery of the great transition.

Since I was a child I’ve been fascinated with Spirit, but unlike many children, I was never afraid of death or “ghosts.” I made my intention clear to God that I’d be happy to see ghosts ever since I was six and my grandmother told me that, as a child, she saw the spirit of her mother as a glowing angel.

It seemed very natural to me that a little girl’s mother would make herself known in a beautiful, loving way. I only wish I had the curiosity to learn more about Grammy’s experience. 


Knowing that my family wasn’t one for chatting about personal and emotionally charged issues, let alone supernatural ones, we never spoke again of my great grandmother’s ghost.  

I wondered why there was so much fear about a process so common as death? It just didn’t seem right. I believe in an afterlife of love and light, a faith that became solid when I began my mediumship development. Hell was so obviously a threat, a boogie-man land, a religious construct with no links to the spiritual contact I experienced first hand.

Perhaps because of the concept of hell, many people live in fear of death. But when that day comes, so often the dying are found in conversation with their previously departed loved ones who come to greet and usher them gently into the world of Spirit. It’s so normal, it’s often how hospital workers know that a patient is close to death.

As a near-death-experiencer, I enjoy reading various NDE accounts and recommend this paper by Dr. Bruce Greyson of the University of Virginia. It’s a report on deathbed visions of spirits who were recently departed, making their presences known to the dying person. In some remarkable cases, the spirits were of people unknown to be dead.

Scenes like these must have had an affect on surviving family members (I’d like to read a study about whether witnessing such an event changes the perceptions of non-believers present at the time). Skeptics say that near-death experiences are hallucinations. How can it be a hallucination when a surprised, lucid grandma mentions seeing the image of a brother whose death a week before was unknown to her?

“The mystery of the great transition” is how the Victorians saw passing into spirit. It was only mysterious due to the taboo of talking about death! As more people study and discuss NDEs, I hope mainstream attention leads the general public to fewer fear-based assumptions around death, especially for the dying.

(Painting by John Mulvany; tanka by Melanie Alberts)