A Gentlemanly Suicide

In other posts on this web site, I have given accounts that show how the experience of each suicide in the afterlife is different from the next. In all my years as a medium, working with suicides and their experiences, this account stands alone for its creative character, its ease, and its ultimate purpose.

Not so long ago, I was contacted by a woman whose brother, a man I will call John, had just killed himself. The family has given me permission to post his experience but asked that the exact matter of his death not be disclosed. John’s children, his wife of more than five decades, and his sister, were paralyzed with shock and grief. The merest inkling that he might take his own life was unthinkable. But he did.

Unlike most mediums, I am never content to just channel information, but make every attempt to connect survivors with their deceased loved ones directly. Once they make that connection, the survivors have the inner reference points of contact. And once that is in place, they can make contact on their own, whenever the need arises.

John had been in great pain from a variety of converging illnesses and was already advanced in years. He was a kind man, creative, and infinitely patient. His main career was in the fine arts. He was frequently hired to paint large-scale scenes on public buildings and walls.  Because his wife suffered from her own problems, both physical and mental, and could no longer help him, he began to see himself as adding to burdens already too heavy for her to carry.

The solution was to leave.  He waited for his daughter’s visit from out of town. As she sat in the living room with her mother, he did away with himself as neatly as possible in the bathroom. As in the best of death scenarios, he had the presence of mind to make sure his wife was not alone.

So the family is bereft, caught in a net of confusion and anguish, feeling helpless and betrayed. And what is he doing? Sitting in a hammock with a gin and tonic in one hand and a book in the other, reading and sipping, with one foot on the ground to rock him. A pile of books stood by him on the deep-green grass.  He was already younger, in full health, and seemed carefree at last, or almost. He was fully aware of the pain his manner of death caused. He explained that while still alive he was just entering a downward spiral which would have resulted in many months of agony and unbearable degeneration before his body was weak enough to let go. He knew his suicide cut short the hardship for himself and for his family. And he was right. In the meantime, he is helping them He is watching over his children, nudging them in directions that he believes are the most constructive. And he frequently visits his wife in dreams. I had the feeling he was preparing her for her own passage.

The second time his sister called, about a week after he passed, we were able to see his progress. No longer lazing about, he was now charged with that impossibly vital energy characteristic of the afterlife and its inhabitants. The sky was a glitter in several hues of blue, with glowing pink and yellow streaks on the horizon. He was enthralled by the magic of his self-made environment. He showed us how—just by thinking—he could create a mural that stretched along the entire horizon line.  He made one for us by way of demonstration. It seemed as long and as high as the Great Wall of China. He then showed us his new architectural achievements, a big, rambling, old-fashioned white house fronted by an open veranda. There was no landscaping yet. He asked his surviving sister to help him plan the gardens.

He invited us in. Apparently his mother often stopped by to sit with him and talk in what looked to me like a very spacious kitchen. Through mental projection, his sister and I began roaming around in this newly created house. He was delighted to show it off. When I asked his sister what she was seeing, her descriptions of her brother’s afterlife house, the colors of the walls, the type of staircase we were mentally climbing, the rooms that we saw and their placement, showed that she and I were clearly seeing the same things. The brother was thrilled by our ability to participate and perceive his construction with such accuracy. This to me was a great achievement, three people, one dead, two alive, sharing the same afterlife event. All of us knew that what we were perceiving as physical was rather fabricated from thought, as are dreams, of course, and our material reality as well, for that matter.

I have brought many people into the environments of their departed loved ones. When inside their afterlife experiences, so much is revealed. It broadens our awareness of the multi-dimensional aspects of reality too, for what occurs in the afterlife has correlates in other dimensions. But more about that later. Now back to John’s house.

Upstairs were the bedrooms with heavy wooden four-poster beds, high fluffy mattresses covered by colonial style white bedspreads. John had chosen classics, order, simplicity and grace. He wanted the life of an Anglo-American gentleman.

He also had an artist studio on the upper floor. However, he preferred being in his downstairs office, a large room with French doors that opened out onto rolling super-green lawns. The office was the very model of a gentleman’s private room, all leather and oak, a huge fireplace, a giant desk in front of the glass doors. Here he would sit and write about the life he had just lived. He was especially concerned with the impact of World War II on his generation. It was his way of having a life review, through creative writing. With great enthusiasm, he presented his microscope and asked me if I would like to look through it. Of course I would. He was gleefully insistent, as though pushing me toward something that would truly surprise me. The microscope was focused on a single drop of water resting on a glass plate. And here was the surprise he had in store for me. In the drop of water, I could see the whole universe.

A little more than a month later, his wife died. Clearly this man had set up a situation in the afterlife that would bring her immediate comfort and healing. Now that’s a true gentleman.