When Ghosts Speak - Mary Ann Winkowski [65]
He’d left his brother’s lighter on the ground and thrown the noose up over the rafters. Then climbed up and shimmied across the beams to the noose. Sitting up on the rafters, he bound his feet with tape, tied one end of the rope securely to the beam, slipped the noose around his neck, and simply jumped off.
“I guess I don’t hate either of you enough to let them think it was you,” the ghost said to his brother. “But I do still hate the both of you. It wasn’t worth killing myself over, I see that now.”
When I told him that I could make the Light and let him go to a more peaceful place, he couldn’t wait to leave. To me it was as if he were stomping out of the room and slamming the door behind him.
Even when folks think they are doing the family a favor by ending their lives, it can result in pain and misunderstanding. Some time ago the adult children of a mother and father who had died in a double suicide pact invited me to their parents’ funeral. Unbeknownst to any of the children, their father had been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. Knowing how short his time was going to be, he and his wife made elaborate arrangements to commit suicide. The wife went through the house and cleaned out all their possessions. She sorted them into piles to be given away and set aside special things for each of their four children. They organized all their financial concerns and prepaid for their funeral, right down to ordering the flowers. They left a long and detailed note for the children, explaining what they intended to do and why.
And then—and this is the part that amazes me to this day—they went out to their backyard, where the husband had rigged up a very complicated system with his shotgun. With the wife facing her husband, he managed to fire the gun so that the single bullet passed through his wife, killing her, and then lodged in his heart.
At the funeral, the kids were struggling to understand. They wanted me to ask their parents why they had done what they did. Of course I felt bad for the pain the children were experiencing. Yet when the ghosts explained to me why they had chosen to end their lives as they had, and I saw how bewildered they were that all their careful preparations weren’t more appreciated, I could almost understand how they’d thought they were doing exactly the right thing.
No matter how many spirits of suicide victims I have talked to, I still find it hard to comprehend what might drive people to take their own lives. Some situations I can empathize with more than others: cases of terminal illness or unremitting pain or mental illness that causes profound despair. But again, for every tormented spirit I talk to who has seen suicide as the only way out of tremendous mental or physical pain, I’ll meet another ghost who has inexplicably chosen to die simply to spite someone.
In case of unnatural deaths, whether by murder or suicide, I never know what I will learn in my conversations with these earthbound spirits. I don’t know if there will ever be a time when I am not amazed, shocked, or outraged by what I learn. In these difficult cases, I am often most deeply affected by the impact murders and suicides have on the living—on those who are left to sort out the reasons and details and secrets behind these deaths. And I try to do what I can to help these often troubled spirits obtain justice, repair misunderstandings, or explain their incomprehensible actions.
7
CHILDREN
How Young Spirits Are Different
CHILDREN ARE remarkably in tune with the world of spirits that surrounds us. My experience has taught me that most living children are able to see or sense earthbound spirits, as well as spirits who have crossed over into the Light, and even guardian angels. The information about ghosts that comes from children living in houses inhabited by earthbound spirits is usually consistent and reliable.
After