A little over a year after my son passed away, I traveled to Arizona to participate in a small group reading with a well-respected medium. You see, my dreams became unusually active after Tommy left—and no matter how often I felt his spirit communicating with me during the night or the day, my human mind sought constant validation from those who were trained in such obscure matters.
When I arrived at the hotel outside Phoenix, I joined nine others between the ages of 40 and 80 who had flown in from all over the country and were now sitting in a semi-circle waiting for this medium to deliver messages from loved ones they dearly missed.
I promptly found a seat, engaged in the medium’s opening mediation, and listened closely as she began delivering messages around the room as if she were conducting an orchestra of spirits.
20 minutes or so into the session, the medium lasered-in on a woman sitting directly across the semi-circle from me. She said she had a message from the spirit of this woman’s grandmother, whom she accurately described as a former model from Chicago with a large hat collection and a snobbish air about her.
When the medium conveyed a personal message that meant nothing to the rest of us in the room but made this woman nod her head and weep, I started thinking about my own grandmother. She, too, was a former model who had also passed away a few years earlier, was from Chicago, and could be quite the snob herself.
“Who is Elaine?” the medium asked her.
The woman responded, “I don’t know.”
Without skipping a beat, the medium swung her head around to look straight at me.
“Who is Elaine?” she asked, posing the question to me this time.
“My grandmother,” I responded, somewhat taken back.
Then, out of nowhere, she asked, “Did you lose a son?”
“Yes,” I answered, surprised by the sudden focus on me.
She then proceeded to communicate intimate details about me and Tommy that both surprised and delighted me—like how popcorn and lemonade were two of his favorite foods; and how I had recently purchased a photograph of a lion for my home.
“He’s just giving me obscure details of your life, so that you know it’s him,” the medium explained.
I smiled to signal that her information was correct, and then she switched topics.
“Your son keeps playing music. Did he play the keyboard?”
“Yes,” I responded, impressed that she had specifically referenced his “keyboard” and not a more traditional “piano.”
Then she said something no one but me knew.
“Your son visits and communicates with you through songs in your dreams.”
“I know,” I responded, catching my breath. I mean, I didn’t really know. I thought that he did—but when she said it, it felt true.
Since the day Tommy had left, music had been streaming into my dreams so loudly during the night that they were waking me up.
“Love will keep us alive,” sang the Eagles.
“Shower the people you love with love,” advised James Taylor.
“Think of me,” pleaded Christine from the Phantom of the Opera.
Every song was about love. All of them were from my childhood. And each one communicated important life lessons while serenading me in the stillness of the night.
Once in a while, songs would drop in like practical jokes that reflected Tommy’s humor, like the time when Miley Cyrus belted out, “I came in like a wrecking ball,” over and over in my ear until I woke up laughing and crying at the very same time.
“You sure did, T,” I whispered, before promptly writing the lyrics down in my dream journal I kept next to my bed.
But one night, a song I hadn’t heard since the mid-eighties streamed into my dreams that confused me. When it repeated over and over, getting so loud it woke me up, I felt compelled to research it. I was so surprised by what I learned that I mustered the courage to tell my very practical husband who “rarely dreams” all about it.
So, as he was making his coffee that morning, I told him: “A song called ‘Think of Laura’ by Christopher Cross played in my dreams last night and woke me up.”
“I remember that song!” my husband exclaimed.
“Did you know it was written about an eighteen-year-old college student in Ohio who played lacrosse, and was fatally shot by a stray bullet while her father was driving her home after a game?”
“Nope,” he responded.
“It happened back in the early eighties,” I continued. “On April 17th.”
“Hmm,” he remarked, taking a sip of coffee.
It was clear he hadn’t yet grasped what I was trying to tell him.
“Don’t you think it’s strange a song dropped into my dreams last night that I haven’t heard or thought about in nearly 40 years, and it happens to be about someone’s daughter who passed away on the same exact date we learned Tommy passed away?”
He picked up his phone, did his own fact checking, and then sang the song’s chorus out loud:
“Think of Laura
But laugh don’t cry
I know she’d want it that way…”
“I think Tommy wants us to laugh when we think of him, not cry,” I said, wiping away fresh teardrops.
We talked about the possibilities, shared a few laughs about the craziness of it all, and then my husband went off to work while I continued to research dreams and whether it’s possible to connect with spirits in them.
“Dream visits are undeniably real,” author and psychic medium Suzanne Giesemann assured me in the resources posted on her website.
A former U.S. Navy Commander, Giesemann is not religious, did not grow up seeing ghosts, and never gave much thought to spirituality. It wasn’t until her stepdaughter unexpectedly passed away that her senses expanded in a similar way to how mine did after loss, and she dedicated her life to developing them so she could spread healing and hope that “our loved ones are eternal.”
“Those you love who have passed will take advantage of the dream state when your mind is not so focused on the physical, to let you know they are still with you,” Giesemann further explained to me.
I believed her. And given her four-year-long waitlist for private readings, it seems a lot of other people do, too.
Of course, I didn’t tell any of this to my husband at the time—nor did I reveal it to the medium in Arizona that day who had moved on from the topic of music in my dreams to tell me I would “write a blog.”
Now, I had no desire to write a blog at the time. In fact, it had never even crossed my mind. I was on a healing journey to heal my heart—and that was all.
“It will be in about three and a half years, though,” she had continued, a timeframe that was impossible for me to foresee.
As I sat down to write this article, however, and referred back to my notes from that session in Arizona, I was reminded of how she had said I would write a blog that day, and I was absolutely stunned to see that true to her words, I had started preparing for it exactly three and a half years after her reading.
Today, people often ask me if I still receive signs and messages from Tommy. The answer is “yes.”
Not as often. And not always in obvious ways. He was such a busy kid in life, I like to think he’s also a busy soul in spirit.
As the sixth anniversary of Tommy’s departure approaches this week, on April 16th (the day he went to sleep) and April 17th (the day he didn’t wake up), I don’t know yet what I’ll do.
Of course, I will shed some tears and wish he could be here physically with us. I will honor him in some way I think he’ll like. And I will thank him for all that his love continues to bring to my life.
And if I’m lucky, then maybe when I fall asleep at night, he will visit me in my dreams—perhaps through a song.
Because whether it’s his spirit or my imagination, all I know is that my dreams at night make my life a lot more interesting during the day. And when I embrace them, my heart aches less, my wonder for this world grows more, and I simply feel better—both inside and out.
P.S. If you missed my Instagram LIVE session with Anthony Mrocka (one of my favorite psychic mediums) you can still watch the recording HERE. He’s not the medium in today’s story, but one day I will write about some of the incredible readings he has given me. Until then, I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did!
