Surviving Death (2021) s01e04 Episode Script

1
[woman 1] At the moment of death,
are we actually just dead,
or is something else going on?
[man 1] Whatever this consciousness is
that we have in this life,
it was also there in another life before.
[woman 2] It's not,
"Do we believe in ghosts?"
but the fact that we continue
to report them and see them.
[man 2] There are things
that science can't test,
but it doesn't mean they don't happen.
[woman 3] How good would it be to know…
there is life after death?
[sirens wailing]
[Mike Anthony] Death is this thing
that every human being on the planet
has to deal with.
After my dad died, I was in such grief,
and then I got
what felt like a direct sign from him,
and it made me start to wonder.
Maybe there is some sort of afterlife.
I am a bartender on Broadway
and Penn & Teller come to do a show.
Penn & Teller are magicians
and they have
real animosity towards mediumship.
These performance artists are,
in a very real sense,
motherfuckers.
[Mike] They believe that there's
no such thing as paranormal anything.
Penn does this bit
called "The Psychic Magician," I think.
At the beginning he says,
"Just so you know,
everything you are about to see
is bullshit."
Now, ever since my dad died,
I'd had this thing with butterflies,
right?
I feel like I see them
in crazy places at crazy times
and I'm fully aware
a skeptic is gonna say,
"Butterflies have always been there.
You're now assigning a meaning to them."
Ah, totally, maybe that's true.
Maybe it's just absolutely coincidence.
-But I'm watching Penn…
-[applause]
…and literally at the moment
that he says…
"This is all bullshit…"
I see, up in the lights, this fluttering.
And I look up and it's such a flutter
that there's now
a titter in the audience.
People were like, "Aww!"
Like, "There's this butterfly."
There's this fricking butterfly
in the theater!
The Marquis Theater,
inside the Marquis Hotel.
You have to go in circular doors,
then you gotta go up an escalator.
You go in other doors
and then another set of doors
to get into the actual theater.
To get into the theater,
which is in the middle of Times Square.
How many times, Ma, have you seen
a butterfly in Times Square?
You don't see butterflies…
It's not very common.
My chest welled up.
I was like, "Oh, my God.
It's like my dad is saying,
'This is not bullshit. No, it's not.'"
And then, not long after that,
I was back in my theater, at Hamilton,
and I'm telling my friend Marie
about this butterfly.
"Man, you know, it was just crazy.
Have you ever seen a butterfly
in a theater? It's crazy."
We're behind the bar and this
thing goes and we're like, "Oh, my God."
And there was a butterfly in our theater.
Up in the chandelier.
There's no proof.
No scientist would ever say that's proof
that my dad is still alive, right?
But when it happens to you,
it's profound.
And there are things
that science can't test,
but it doesn't mean they don't happen.
[Laura Lynne Jackson] Our loved ones
on the other side are always looking
for ways to communicate with us.
They want to send us signs and messages
that they are with us, they love us.
Sometimes, It's putting coins in our path.
Pennies, dimes, nickels.
[Mike] Hey, Dad.
I asked him for a sign
and this light is flashing.
[Laura] They love
to mess with our electrical devices.
Flicker our lights, mess with our TVs.
-[chirps]
-[woman 1] Hello!
[gasps] You're looking after him.
[Laura] They also love
to send us creatures.
[woman 2] Who are you?
Are you watching over me?
[Laura] Cardinals, hummingbirds, eagles,
dragonflies, ladybugs.
[man] The watchguard over my mum's grave.
He's escorting me to my mum's grave now.
It just likes to step on my mum.
[Laura] Signs and messages are not
a unique experience
that happen to a few people.
They are things that happen
every single day.
Learning to recognize the signs, I think,
is greatly important.
So I always encourage people
to come up with very specific things
that they would like their loved ones
to send them as a sign.
-[woman 1] Happy then, too. Smiling.
-[woman 2] Mm-hm.
-Yeah. Okay.
-Her little hand.
[woman 1] And this one.
[woman 2] This is my favorite.
[woman 1] My sister and I would come and
visit my mother in Virginia twice a year
when she could no longer
come visit us in California.
And we would all go bird-watching.
And I would see the birds
that we don't have in California,
and one of 'em was a cardinal.
I would say, "Mother, now,
could you send me a cardinal?
Send me a cardinal when you get to heaven,
then I'll know that you made it."
And so she would always say,
"Oh, I'll try," or, "If I can, I will."
She was 97 when she died.
She didn't wanna go. She loved her family.
And she said, when she was in the hospital
about a month before she died,
she said, "I wanna go to heaven,
but I don't wanna leave, not yet."
A day after her service, we were
all sitting around playing canasta.
She was… Kind of her favorite game.
And all of a sudden,
we heard something hit the window.
It was a cardinal,
and we were just like, "Oh, my gosh."
-Debbie!
-I think this is it.
-We never thought of it this way.
-No!
That's… You know, I always thought, well…
it would be some way I never thought of.
It is Mother!
[laughing]
[Jeanne] We held it. We petted it.
We just…
And it was just content, you know,
in our hands.
Here we go, Mama.
-It might still be stunned.
-Fly away.
[Jeanne] So, after a while,
we decided we should go outside.
And my sister held up her arm
to let it go.
Come on, baby.
[chirping]
-Oooh!
-Oh!
[both laughing]
[Jeanne] And it just flew
and flew right back to her.
You know, it doesn't wanna go.
Oh, my gosh, I cannot believe it.
-[Jeanne] So we were all just…
-Oh, Jeanne!
…amazed and thrilled,
and saying, "Well, this is the sign,
you know, that we asked for."
Well, it's just the love of my mom.
She wanted us to know
that, you know, she loved us,
and didn't wanna leave.
[man] He's not afraid.
[woman] Can you set him on a branch?
[woman] We were just in awe.
The prayer for a cardinal…
specifically a cardinal.
To have it in your hand.
I mean, how many times
do you hold a miracle in your hands?
-[Debbie] Watch this.…
-[chirping]
-Oh, there he goes! Yay!
-[woman] Oh! There he goes.
[Chris Roe] After-death communications,
often shortened to ADCs,
are those experiences that people have
that they regard as encounters
with somebody who has died
and has come back to them in some form
to communicate to them
that they continue to exist
and that they are happy and healthy.
My first interest in ADCs
came from supervising a PhD project
that focused on the impacts of ADCs
on hope and well-being.
It's since evolved
into a multinational study
where we're looking at French and German,
as well as English accounts
of experiences that people have had.
We got over a thousand completed surveys
from people
who went into great detail describing
their experience and its impact for them.
People can experience an ADC
in a variety of ways.
The most common type
would be a visual apparition,
some sense of seeing the departed person.
Perhaps their face reflected in a mirror.
They also might experience them
auditorily.
-So, they hear a voice.
-[whispering voices]
Perhaps even their name being whispered
or something like that.
Sometimes, people might have a sense
of the smell of the person.
Tobacco, or a perfume
that's reminiscent of the deceased person.
It's not uncommon for people to feel
the sense of the caress
or the touch of another person
as if they're being hugged
or enclosed by that person
in a way they might have done in life.
The problem is human beings are incredibly
sophisticated at meaning making.
We can discern pattern
in complete randomness.
So it is absolutely very likely
that, on occasion, people are mistaken.
They see things as signs
or portents of things,
when they're not really that at all.
[cicadas chirping]
[Leslie Kean] I had heard about studies
of people who had received things
that they interpreted
as a sign from someone who had died,
but I figured a lot of it
was extremely subjective.
And then when I had my own experiences,
I got to understand the--
the kind of personal impact and emotion
that's involved
when you actually have one yourself.
During my first reading
with Laura Lynne Jackson,
my brother had come through.
It happened to be my birthday that day,
but Laura didn't know that
and I didn't tell her.
My brother, all of a sudden, said,
"Happy birthday,"
and Laura said,
"He's handing you a red balloon."
She said, "That's gonna be your sign
from your brother. A red balloon."
At the time, I didn't think it was likely
to happen or really mean much at all.
And then, about two weeks later, I spent
an evening really tuning into my brother
and asking him
for some kind of physical sign,
telling him,
"I just need something physical
to show me that you really are there."
Got up in the morning
and looked out my window.
Right outside my window,
in the tree branches,
there was three red balloons
and a black balloon
caught in the branches of my tree.
And… it just bowled me over.
It felt like a response
to what I asked for.
It was sort of this expansive experience
of feeling connected
to some kind of bigger reality
that involved
the consciousness of my brother.
But it also felt like a connection
to something bigger than that.
[wind gusting]
[birdsong]
[dog barking]
[man] I thought that there was more
to human existence than physical reality.
But I never encountered it
in a way where it was an imperative,
where I had to know what that "more" was.
But then my son Gabriel passed,
and I thought, "What does that mean?"
The week after Gabriel graduated
from college, he went to the bank.
On the way there, a school bus
veered into the side of his car and…
after four days, he died.
My first experience was utter confusion.
He's there, he's not there.
How does that make any sense?
How is that possible?
Well, I always believed
in life after death.
But then, here's my son.
You know, here's Gabriel, so…
It's easy to-- to believe those things
when you're not facing it.
For me, the belief in the afterlife
was kind of an abstraction.
I didn't have a context
where I could make sense of it.
Pretty soon after his passing,
Jan went to a medium.
The medium said to Janet
that Gabriel would leave us dimes.
So I said…
"Uh… What does that mean?
Now you're just gonna look for dimes.
The person's implanted
this unconscious concept,
and you're gonna find dimes everywhere."
I was skeptical.
[seagulls cawing]
[Janet] A few days later, our daughter
Emily and I were at the beach.
We were in the water,
and I remember seeing this dime
floating in the water between us.
We were in bathing suits,
we didn't have dimes on us in--
in any way,
and here it was, floating in the water.
How does that happen?
Jan came home and told me the story
and I said, "It's a coincidence.
It's still a coincidence."
The next morning,
I woke up early in the morning
and I looked over the floor in my room
and I saw a coin that must have been
about eight or ten feet away.
I said to myself, cynically…
"Maybe it's a dime from Gabriel."
And then I heard him.
It was as clear
as anything I've ever heard in my life.
What he said was, "Aha,"
which was our signal for a joke.
"Aha, it's a penny. Check the date.
It's a 1981."
1981 was his birth year.
Picked up the coin, went to the bathroom
where the light was strong,
and I couldn't see the date.
So I woke Janet up.
And I said,
"Janet, what's the date on this coin?"
She looked at me
like I'm out of my mind.
And she looked at it and she said,
"It's 1981. Why?"
I broke down.
At that point,
I still didn't know what to make of it,
but I said, "It does seem
like there's something there."
A few days later, I began
hearing him again, but not clearly.
It was almost as if I could
understand thoughts,
but there was no audio component to them,
so hearing is a strange term.
I began to say to myself,
"Just write out…
what it is you're hearing."
And I would write letters
from Gabriel to us.
I really wondered
if I was just simply losing my mind.
"Is this something that I'm doing
to adjust to the fact
of something I can't adjust to?"
I said to Gabriel,
"If it's you and it's not me…
how will I know?
Tell me something
that I couldn't possibly reason to.
Tell me something
that makes no sense to me whatsoever."
And he said very clearly,
"I am red." R-E-D.
And I laughed, because I said,
"That's something I would not have said."
I spent a lot of time in the next
two or three weeks looking it up,
asking people
if they knew of any significance,
and no one did.
I came downstairs one morning and I said,
"Janet, I guess
that I'm just making all this stuff up.
That I'm writing as a way of coping,
and not as a real way of communication."
She and I just sat there
for a few minutes, and the doorbell rang.
Parcel Post or Federal Express
brought a package.
We opened it up and it was a painting
of this figure in red…
that came from a parent in Janet's class.
And she wrote, on a quick note,
she had no idea why she bought it.
She just felt that she had to,
and that, somehow,
even if we couldn't use it,
she was supposed to send it to us.
In the box,
there was a note from the artist,
explaining why the red was the color
she chose to paint.
"Dear mother who loses a child.
This story in magenta
is connected to God's mercy and hope.
Magenta is a color
so close to the pure human soul
that, when a young person dies…
the pure love is released
in this rosy magenta color."
That is a color that young souls emit
when they've passed from this world,
uh, prematurely,
and it's the color of communication
from the dead to the living.
What this told me
was I'm writing for real.
It's not just me coping.
I'm onto something true.
And I thought,
"Gabriel's at work." [laughs]
I said, "I don't know how he managed
this one, but he's at work somehow." Yeah.
One of the wonderful things
about after-death communications
is just the joy
that they bring into the person's life,
especially if you're grieving.
And if you feel,
through these signs and communications,
that you are connected to that person,
and you can maintain that connection
even after they've died,
it-- it helps tremendously
with the grieving process.
[cheering and applause]
[woman] Welcome, everybody, to our annual
"Love Knows No Death" grief retreat.
I'm Phran Ginsberg and I'm the director
and I'm one of the co-founders
of Forever Family Foundation.
Hiding behind the wall here
is my other half, Bob Ginsberg.
Our purpose is to provide you
with many methods
by which you can learn to foster
and facilitate your own communications.
So the entire weekend experience
is designed
to allow you to understand
that death is not final.
After my daughter passed,
I was, uh, a total basket case.
I just, uh, wanted
to crawl up into a hole.
Now, I was a notorious left-brain thinker,
right?
The notion that you could survive
physical death, to me, was ridiculous.
Gradually, I changed…
some vague hope…
into belief.
And if you're lucky enough,
you turn that belief into a knowing,
where it's no longer a question.
And once you reach that knowing stage,
that'll stay with you, and you'll--
and you'll be able to heal from it.
[Phran] Bob and I started
Forever Family Foundation
after our daughter Bailey passed.
We were absolutely devastated.
We were searching. We were searching
for meaning, you know, and purpose.
Bailey was the youngest of our three kids.
She was 15 when she and my son Jon
were in a horrible accident,
September 1st, 2002.
It was right in here
where the accident happened.
The kids were coming this way and another
car was coming in the opposite direction.
The kids had nothing to do
but to make a sharp left
and to get out of her way,
so they ended up here, but she ended up
hitting the passenger side of the car.
Jonathan was airlifted to one hospital,
and Bailey was taken by ambulance
to a more local hospital,
'cause they did not wanna
move her that far.
[Bob] Bailey did not survive her injuries.
She passed away in the hospital.
See, it's been a lot of years,
and it's still… [chuckles]
Mm.
People react in so many different ways,
you know, when it comes to grief.
Phran found great comfort
in going in Bailey's room
and sitting on her furniture
and looking through the photographs.
I couldn't go into her room for six years.
I was torturing myself.
I even wrote down
all the decisions I could have made
that would have changed
the course of events,
guilt eating at me and eating at me
and eating at me.
The only thing that I eventually thought
would give me any relief
from the hole that I was in
was believing that Bailey still existed
in some form.
I was searching for tangible evidence
that our consciousness,
or you could call it our soul,
went someplace when this body,
this shell, you know, disappeared.
Phran and I went to a few meetings
for bereaved parents,
and every time we would bring up
the subject of an afterlife,
the moderator would shut us down
and he'd say something like,
"This is not the purpose.
We don't discuss that here.
Our purpose here
is just how to cope with grief."
And I thought that was odd.
After the meeting was over,
the parents would talk for an hour,
sometimes, you know, freezing
our behinds off in the parking lot.
We discovered people were having
all of these direct personal experiences
with their deceased loved ones.
People would see movement of objects.
People would have a sense of presence.
Sometimes, they would smell
a perfume or a cigar,
you know, from their loved one.
It wasn't through a medium.
It wasn't through any third party.
It was just something that occurred
that you could not explain
by logic or reasoning or science.
Phran and I thought
that it would be a good idea
to set up some sort of an organization…
where the subject of an afterlife
would not be stigmatized or labeled
or put in the religious category,
but free and open discussion.
[woman] This is your dream kit.
You have three badges.
One for tonight, one for tomorrow
and one for Sunday.
[Bob] We have a very wide spectrum
of people at these retreats.
Some people come here, it's raw.
It's only been two, three months
after the passing.
Some, it's been a year.
Some, two years.
There are also people
on their tenth year here.
They come here,
they wanna know two things.
"Where is my deceased loved one,
and are they okay?"
I figured after a year…
it would get better, but, in all honesty,
I don't feel like it did.
I felt like a year…
it was even worse.
When I lost my daughter
two and a half years ago,
I didn't really think about the afterlife
that much.
But I just couldn't believe
that her vibrant, energetic personality
was gone completely.
[woman] I had lost my husband recently,
and I was told
that we would learn techniques
to be able to access our loved ones
ourselves.
I'm gonna teach you
a little mindful meditation.
[woman] I'm very fascinated
by this whole afterlife thing.
I just don't know the details,
how it works.
You know, how do you call upon them?
I don't know what's going to happen.
are two seemingly unrelated events
that come together to form meaning.
[woman] My son, he and his girlfriend
were hiking in Capitol Peak in Aspen…
and they fell to their death.
Just still a nightmare.
I feel the more I explore, the more
I research, the more proof I have…
that he is still here,
and that gives me comfort.
How would our loved one
want us to be living right now?
[woman] My mom passed away
on Mother's Day this year.
I know she's somewhere
just beyond my comprehension.
Coming to something like this is just like
affirmation that she's still out there.
It feels kinda like--
like gettin' a hug. [laughs]
[Phran] Okay,
let's go on with the show. Bob.
[Bob] Okay.
When it comes to the topic of after-death
communication, what are we talking about?
We say, "After-death communication,"
we're talking about
information, communication
with those who are in the spirit realm.
See that video in the middle?
Phran and I walk into our kitchen…
That's our kitchen.
[laughter]
Oh, my God!
[woman] Yeah.
[Bob] I take that as an example of a sign.
[light buzzing]
[Phran] One night, we were working
very, very late into the night,
and as soon as we stepped
into the kitchen…
the ceiling lights started to do
this unbelievable dance of light.
It was just absolutely amazing.
And there's Bob walking through the video,
his usual skeptical self, saying…
"Okay, so let's figure out
how this happened." [laughs]
[Phran] It's finished telling us
whatever it had to tell us.
[Bob] I immediately called an electrician,
got him here the next day,
had him take off all the switches,
'cause I had to know
whether this was real or not.
And I-- I concluded it was real,
because he said, "Absolutely nothing wrong
with the switches."
Phran and I were convinced
this was a sign from Bailey.
To me, Bailey was saying,
"Yeah, Mom, I'm here."
[Bob] Signs are such a broad category.
Anybody wanna share an example of a sign
that you've gotten from your loved one?
You know when your mom
strokes your head, kind of thing?
I was like,
"I wish she could do that."
This bug kept smacking me
in the back of the head.
[laughter]
[woman] My mother brings me clouds.
There'll be a particular shape that's
related to something going on in my life,
and I would just know it was her.
There were lights going on and off,
and I thought it was my son.
After he passed away…
the lamp went on randomly.
I know this is my husband. [laughs]
I wanna emphasize that statement,
because that is exactly what I said.
I started with no belief, no knowledge,
completely skeptical, lost.
The death of my oldest daughter
by suicide
changed my view about death.
As a psychologist,
I knew all of the psychotherapies
that you might be able to use to apply to
that kind of excruciating emotional pain.
And none of it came close to helping me.
And so it sent me on a journey
to find a better way of healing.
I was very, very fortunate
to start getting some messages
from Monique early on.
And you know what?
I'm an ordinary schmuck, okay?
I'm not a psychic. I'm not a medium.
I'm an ordinary person.
I woke up one morning,
very shortly after the loss.
It was as though her words
were in my mind when I woke up.
And the words were,
"You have to change
your state of consciousness."
It was a very distinct message.
It opened my mind up.
That's the key thing, is once you open
up your mind to these things,
it builds on itself and you learn more
and more and you get more evidence.
If you think you're not getting messages
from your loved ones, think again.
'Cause you just gotta
open up your vista…
and be more receptive.
Get out of your head and into your body.
There's lots and lots of different ways
of using the breath to relax ourselves,
and this is just one.
It's called the four-eight breath.
Four is to the inhale.
So one, two, three, four, inhale. Hold it.
And then exhale to eight, so that you see
the exhale is twice as long as the inhale.
So let's give it a try. Inhale to four.
Hold.
Exhale to eight. Slower than the inhale.
Do that for two to three minutes,
and it's better than taking a Xanax.
-Trust me, it is.
-[laughter]
I was able
to work through the heaviness of grief,
the despair of grief,
the depression of grief,
and still feel my sadness and my longing,
but not to the extent that I was,
you know, huddled in a fetal position
or keeping my-- myself in bed all day.
[bells chiming]
That's why we teach people
to cultivate that sense of healing,
that sense of peace,
despite the tragedy of their loss.
[bells chiming]
[Bob] One of the things that we stress
at the grief retreats
is that people need to quiet
their critical mind.
So we teach things
like different meditations,
mindfulness, music…
All different ways that people can get
into an altered state of consciousness.
[owl hooting]
[croaks]
Today, I'm going to be
walking you through an exercise
where you'll be able
to connect with your loved one.
I'm gonna be going through
a quick meditation.
In the meditation,
the intention is that you'll
meet up with your loved one.
[inhales]
[exhales]
Dear God of love and lights…
we thank you so much
for coming here today.
We ask that our loved ones come close
and they blend with us.
And as you're sitting there
with your loved one…
you put their hand…
in yours.
And you see every single detail
of their hand…
in your hand.
And then, whenever you feel ready,
you open your eyes,
you take your pen in hand.
You're going to be writing a letter
to your loved one. You're exchanging love.
[woman] Stephen and I lost our 14-year-old
son a little over a year ago.
[man] We wanted to know that…
our son exists somewhere,
and that he's okay.
Courtney wanted to make sure
that he's not bored, 'cause…
he's so intelligent,
and tinkers, and makes things.
Um… Couldn't imagine him
just playing a harp forever.
[Courtney] Elijah was at Boy Scout camp
when he died.
[Stephen] A storm started quickly.
Elijah and two of his friends
took cover in somebody's tent,
and the wind picked up,
and then a 100-foot, probably, tall…
tree came down.
It impacted only Elijah
and pinned him underneath,
and the other two boys were able
to crawl out completely unhurt.
So he was pinned by the tree…
and couldn't inhale…
and suffocated.
I looked for signs,
I wanted to see signs immediately.
[shakily] I've been looking since…
I heard that he died and…
until this very moment now.
[Stephen] It's hard to know
if he hears, and…
it's frustrating… to not get some…
clear response or sign.
We've come across others who have had…
either unmistakably…
verifiable signs from their loved one,
and then, on the other side
of the spectrum, we've had…
people who take a lot of comfort in signs
that we frankly have a hard time
finding a lot of meaning in.
Like, "I saw this flower,
or this butterfly, and it meant so much."
The rational side of me says there's…
billions of butterflies
in the world, so…
how is this one, you know,
our son coming to visit just us?
And Elijah knows that.
He is just as scientifically minded
as I am.
He was asking all about black holes
and special relativity when he was ten.
And I told him…
"You know me.
You-- you know I'm gonna need…
-[Courtney sniffles]
-…a much clearer sign
than just some bird landing
on the front doorstep or something."
[woman] What was the very last thing
you daydreamed about?
I was talking to someone
who mentioned my dog's name,
and I daydreamed about my dog
on the couch without me.
I had a little daydream in my mind.
You can see like a medium sees
when you look at that vision
in your imagination.
I just wanna give you a brief example
of exactly how it looks to me,
so you know that when you see it…
you're really seeing it.
From your point of view,
wherever you're sitting, pick a flower,
and just look at it.
I don't care which one
or which piece it is, but one.
Stephen, describe to me
what flower you're looking at.
Give me every darn detail,
visually seeing what you see.
White flower with five petals,
slightly drooping downward,
fraying on the edges because it's made
of fabric instead of real petal.
[Rebecca] Perfect. Keep staring at it.
I'm gonna ask you
to close your eyes in a second,
and when you do, I need you to describe
to me exactly what you see.
Go ahead.
So the five petals,
a little speck of black that it had on it.
This is just kind of from memory, though.
-[Rebecca] Okay.
-Um…
A bunch of individual little… spires
that are coming out of the middle
and you can imagine
a butterfly landing on the center of it.
Um…
-Wait. Where did the butterfly come from?
-[laughter]
Keep goin'. Enjoy this.
-And, yeah, I'm picturing bees…
-[Rebecca] Yeah.
-…and pollination and going someplace to…
-[Rebecca] Wow.
Someplace else on the flower.
-[Rebecca] Yeah?
-And then flying off.
[Rebecca] Okay, you can stop there.
That's fantastic.
At any point in time…
I never want you to feel
like your imagination…
is just that.
[Stephen] I was able to do
Rebecca's visualization exercise.
I don't know if it was…
really that similar to mediumship,
the way she described it.
It seemed kind of just like imagining.
But perhaps there was something to it
that ended up benefiting me later
with an experience I had
around this idea of a door.
At work at one point,
I closed my eyes and thought of a door.
I opened the door and…
I just saw Elijah on the other side.
I saw his beaming face,
and it was just lit up.
His bright blue eyes
were just piercing through me.
And I felt such strong love
just permeating through me.
[Courtney] The text that Stephen sent me,
he almost had to recoil…
from the intense amount of love
that he felt…
-when he went through the door.
-Mm-hm.
[Stephen] I can't explain
how that happened.
[birdsong]
[Bob] We've got an exciting portion
of the program now with Joe Shiel.
He combines mediumship…
with art.
He'll be drawing the spirit
that he is connecting with.
-[Joe] How we doin'?
-[woman] Great.
[Joe] Okay.
I have a gentleman here…
who somewhat feels within himself
that he didn't always get things right.
This gentleman…
would have passed, I believe, of a cancer,
but his heart was also very weak.
There's a wanting to come to--
to someone here that's important.
[Joe] My goal is to give back
to those who are suffering
and see if I can't help them to understand
that there is life after this life.
I know the pain of death myself.
My mother was a portrait artist,
and she died when I was 12.
The way I see the spirit person
is I see them almost in a holographic,
dreamlike state in my mind's eye.
I can close my eyes and almost watch them
go across the screen,
and they'll come to me like this
and then disappear.
So I'll draw the picture,
and I don't stop until it makes sense.
Please, anybody understand
any piece of this so far?
-You do?
-[Yongmei] Yes.
My husband passed away
back in March.
Ever since that day…
I have stopped living.
-Recognize his face?
-[Yongmei] Yes.
-Yeah. Okay.
-[Yongmei laughs]
I would go days without…
I just don't wanna get up. Stay in bed,
and could not eat, could not sleep.
-It's my husband.
-Kinda lookin' at you like,
"Are you okay?"
Emotionally, in my heart, just…
Too much pain. I'm like,
"I don't care. Just take me, I'm done."
I feel like he was well loved.
-[Yongmei] Yes.
-But I don't think he had
total love for himself.
His self-esteem was a little bit
questioning himself all the time.
Why did you have to say that in public?
-[laughter]
-[Joe][ Oh, I'm sorry.
[woman] Aww!
No, it's fine.
-I'm sorry. We probably…
-Yes. He was struggling with…
-We should keep that out of this.
-Yep.
There's a tremendous amount of love
that comes towards you.
It's like, "You've gotta live.
And-- and live this life."
And then I just feel this tremendous
amount of, uh… almost like, uh…
looking for the funny stuff around you,
and that's him.
-Yes.
-Almost like he wants to kind of…
Like, the funny…
It made me feel like,
"Okay, I got your message.
I'm not gonna disappoint you."
I needed to hear from him.
I needed him to give me okay
to start living again.
I'm gonna give this picture to you
and I thank you very much for taking it.
-Thank you.
-[Joe] God bless you.
[sighs]
[whispers] Thank you,
thank you, thank you.
[Susan] All through the weekend,
there's been opportunities
to hear from my daughter,
and it's really hard
that she's not coming through.
I do feel that she's here with me.
So even if I don't hear from her…
um… I'm not giving up hope.
This weekend
was a whole new way of thinking.
Kind of, I guess,
maybe opens the windows a little bit more,
so that you're more open to being able
to communicate with your loved ones.
[singing]
It's just given me such hope,
where I had nothing before,
to be able
to still continue to love my daughter,
and for her to love me.
[Bob] We have a tradition…
every grief retreat, uh…
we have a closing ceremony.
[Phran] Everybody's gonna say
something that they came here with
that they're leaving behind,
and something
that they're taking with them from here.
I'm leaving behind a--
a little bit of desperation
and, uh… a lot of loneliness.
I'm taking home
the confirmation of my belief,
and also knowing that the people
that I really loved, who left,
they're still around.
[Susan] I'm leaving some doubt,
and I am, uh… taking home
a lot of loving, uh… new friends.
I don't honestly think
that I'm leaving with less doubt,
but I do think that I'm…
leaving with less darkness.
I'm taking with me the kindness of others.
[Bob] I'm taking with me the hope
that everyone here will leave just
a little bit lighter than when they came.
[seabirds calling]
[Courtney] Coming out
of the grief retreat,
I definitely found myself
looking for signs more.
At the retreat,
they told us, "Be demanding.
Tell your loved one
what you want your sign to be,"
and I had done that.
I'd said that I wanted to have a penny
that had his birth date on it.
And so I'm sitting there in the airport
and our flight had been delayed,
and I go sit down in a seat
that happened to have
a bunch of pocket change next to it.
And I looked at every single coin,
and none of them had the right date.
And so I found myself
feeling really deflated.
And that's one of the hardest things
I've found with grief,
is that you're looking
for all these connections,
and I think you have to get to a position
where you either say…
"Yeah, that's my loved one,"
or, "You know what? That's just somebody
that lost all of their pocket change,"
and that's it.
For the people out there
that can see a butterfly
and feel like that's their loved one…
I think that is amazing.
I don't necessarily think
that I'll ever be that person.
But in so many ways,
I wish that I could be.
[Stephen] After Elijah died,
we had to rethink everything
that we ever thought we believed…
about…
the afterlife, about death and dying.
I know that there's more to the universe
than we currently understand,
which gives us
a little glimmer of hope that…
Elijah exists somewhere…
and that he's okay.
[Courtney] It wasn't…
the philosophers or any religious doctrine
that comforted me.
It was… physics,
and knowing that Elijah's energy…
couldn't be destroyed.
That means that…
it lives somewhere
and that the same photons
that passed through him passed through me.
His energy has to therefore be…
all around us.
One day, I was standing at my kitchen bar…
[sighs]
And I smelled him.
I smelled him.
It honestly took me a second
to figure out what to do.
I remember thinking,
"Do I need to look around?
Is he… is he here?
Even though I know it doesn't make sense,
is he about to walk through the door?"
But I left the bar and went upstairs.
I thought maybe he'd be in his bedroom,
next to his urn or something.
And he wasn't there either.
[sobbing]
But I-- I know it was him.
I'm sure there are skeptics
that would come up with
many different scenarios
as to how I was able to smell something
that I tied back to him.
But it was actually
so much more profound than that.
It was like I was inhaling his DNA.
I can't explain it with science or physics
or religion or anything.
All I can say is that…
that it was real to me.
[birdsong]
[dog barking]
[boy 1] Yeah, watch this.
[Courtney] And then after you check it…
-[boy 2] Mom, why--
-…then go back and check it again.
[Courtney] The different signs
and communications that… [sighs]
…I've received from Elijah
were giving me more hope.
[boy] If I'm passing
all my classes, I'm fine.
[Stephen] No. As and Bs.
[Stephen] I still haven't hit the thing
that would convince me
beyond all doubt yet.
That's not that scary.
-But it gives us someplace at least to…
-[sniffles]
…channel our love.
-[Courtney] Okay.
-[boy] Bye.
[Courtney] We all miss Elijah so much.
But love is still there,
and his energy can't be destroyed.
-[boy] In a second.
-It's chilly.
[Stephen] That's what makes us able
-to be parents to our other kids.
-[Courtney] Bye, guys.
[Stephen and Courtney talking]
[Deborah] You live this life
full of energy and purpose
and love and hope and dreams,
and does all of that disappear?
Or is there a kind of echo that we leave,
or a cosmic imprint?
As long as there have been
human civilizations,
there's been reports of ghosts
and encounters with the other.
[woman] There were these curtains,
and they were billowing.
And in came my husband
and our daughter Cassie.
[man] Dying people
were being flooded by other experiences,
seeing somebody they loved,
and it brought them peace.
End-of-life experiences
have been described across cultures
and throughout time.
And I think
it's remarkably short-sighted…
to hang on to this notion
that we only can believe what we can see.