Chapter 37
by Jenny Halloran
My friend Diane invited me and three close friends to join her for a healing circle and evening of meditation with Roland Comtois in December of 2011. Diane thought we could all benefit from Roland’s healing and channeling abilities. Roland was, after all, an internationally renowned medium with a reputation for spiritual healing who had touched many lives immeasurably. There were thirty-three others there as well, strangers who at night’s end would feel a connection to one another that transcended expectations. I didn’t know what to expect, but I came away with a gift from my friend Diane (who brought me to the event as a present) that could never be repaid. I could spend a long time describing the evening and what took place with the other friends I made that night, but I will stick to my story, my experience, and the priceless evening with my deceased brother, Jeff.
Roland singled me out of the group the minute we sat down. He told me I was surrounded by a lot of white light, which meant there was a lot of love around me. He asked me why I was there. I told him I really didn’t know; my friend had taken me and I was open to anything. He smiled and moved on.
A little bit later in the evening, he asked me how I was doing. I told him I was fine, but he didn’t seem to believe me. He kept looking at me and asking me why I came. He asked me why I spent all this money to attend this event. I told him my friend took me as a gift, and I had not paid anything. He continued to stare at me trying to figure out what I wanted. He repeatedly asked me if I was OK, and I repeatedly said I was fine.
Now let me clarify that when Roland welcomed us that evening, he made it a point to tell everyone he was doing a healing meditation, not a channeling session. If he got any messages, he said, he would pass them along. But he made it clear that he was not there to communicate with those who have passed on. So needless to say, I was not about to ask him if he could get a message from Jeff for me.
But he kept coming back to me, at least four or five times, to ask if I were OK, and what I had hoped to receive that night. I finally said I was hoping to hear from my brother. Roland looked relieved to finally be able to understand why I was there. As soon as I told him what I had hoped for, Jeff came through. The only thing Roland asked me was my brother’s name, and once I gave it to him, the communication opened up.
The first thing Roland felt was a feeling of someone being lost and struggling before his passing. After a few moments, he waved his hands and bounced on his toes and kind of mockingly said, “Look at me, I’m in heaven. I made it. I’m in heaven.” He then wanted me to know he was “not broken,” and with this, Roland seemed perplexed as to how Jeff had passed away. Once I told him that his lower arm had been amputated in order to save his life from a lethal infection, it seemed to make sense. He then communicated, “I know there was no time” and “I know there was no time to say goodbye.” He seemed to imply that the hardest thing for him was being unable to communicate. Roland put his hand to his neck and said the words were right here, but Jeff couldn’t get them out, “I could not tell anyone how I felt.”
“You had a terrible decision to make, but you made the right decision, so thank you.” We did have to make a gut-wrenching decision to stop taking more extreme measures to save his life because all quality of life would have been lost. One can only imagine the weight taken off our shoulders by him saying the words “right decision” and “thank you.”
He then said, “Finish what you started.”
My brother, through Roland, then proceeded to tell me he leaves funny signs, but I never see them. He implies he leaves me pennies, but I never believe they are from him. After Jeff died, I told my children that whenever they see a penny, pick it up; it means someone is thinking of you. So this reference made a lot of sense to me.
He was right too when he said I believed I never got any signs from him. My sister got signs, but I never did. Roland said that Jeff wanted me to know that “I leave you signs all the time, but you never believe them. I try so hard to send you signs. I want you to find peace.” I had to admit that ever since Jeff had passed, I asked and wondered why he never left me signs.
“My sister needs to know that I’m the one who sends her signs, right? I sat with you last night while you stared at my picture. I REALLY, REALLY love you,” he wrote through Roland on a cherished Purple Paper dated February 12, 2012.
Roland’s comments gave me pause. I started to think about the pennies. For some time after Jeff’s passing, I would pick up the pennies I found. I would check the date to see if it would be a reference to Jeff, and after a while, I told myself this was foolish. When we went to visit my mom in November 2011 for her eightieth birthday (Jeff had passed in 2005), I found a penny on my nightstand in the hotel room. For a brief moment I thought about checking the date. Then I admonished myself for even thinking about it, so I never looked at it.
When I got back from Roland’s event that evening of the meditation, I told my husband, Jim, about the pennies and how Jeff had said that he left me pennies. Jim proceeded to go to our bedroom and take out a penny that was stuck in our doorframe for years! I never saw it and didn’t know it was there. To put some of this in perspective, I had visited my mother on Tuesday, November 29. I went to Roland’s event a few days later on Friday, December 2. On Sunday the fourth, I went up to bed, physically and emotionally drained from my weekend and my evening with Roland. Sitting next to my tweezers on my window ledge was a penny. The date on it was 1982, the year I graduated. I said to myself that it had to be from Jeff.
I then realized what I had purchased in Florida earlier in the week, before my evening with Roland. When we were at the Edison and Ford Winter Estates, I purchased one thing in the gift store to bring home. It was a giant penny! I have no idea why I picked up this penny to buy. I remember thinking it would be great to put it in my son’s Christmas stocking, but really why I picked that out from all the Edison and Ford memorabilia was beyond me—until that evening. It all made sense.
And then I realized something else. My kids, all four of them, watch the movie Elf all the time. Even though it is a Christmas movie, they watch it year-round. They watched it in the car all fall. My son Connor and his girlfriend watched it over Thanksgiving. One of the songs from that movie is “Pennies from Heaven.” There are no coincidences. I have been left other pennies. Deliberately placed pennies, all in very odd places.
According to Roland, Jeff seemed frustrated I wasn’t finding the pennies he was leaving, so he said he would leave “five pennies next time.” I was hoping to come across a row or pile of pennies somewhere plain as day. I was in New York City the day after Roland’s event and thought for sure I would find my pennies. Instead, I found myself standing in front of a statue of Gertrude Stein in Bryant Park. All I remember from packing up Jeff’s apartment were all the Gertrude Stein books I packed up, and, embarrassingly, I didn’t know who she was. Now, here I was Christmas shopping in New York City with the girls from work, and I stopped to look down for pennies and saw I was at the foot of a statue, a statue of Gertrude Stein. Coincidence?
On Christmas Eve I was unpacking a bag of wrapped gifts to bring downstairs now that the kids were asleep. As I took off the top layer of presents, there sat a nickel (five cents, my five pennies) directly placed, dead center in the middle of a package. Now the funny thing about this package was it was for the dogs, and though the paper didn’t cover the end of the package completely, leaving about a square inch not covered in wrapping paper, I didn’t think it mattered—it was for the dogs. There sitting in that square unwrapped inch was the nickel, perfectly centered. Now, if Jeff were going to make an appearance, Christmas Eve would be the night. He always spent it with us.
Later in December of that year, I had dinner with my best friend Christy for our monthly girl’s night out. We were talking about Jeff and Roland and as our dinner was coming out, I ran into the bathroom. There in the middle of the rug was a shiny penny. When we stepped up to buy our movie tickets an hour later, another shiny penny glowed up at me from the middle of the welcome mat. I believe these were left by Jeff. Jeff knew Christy well since we had been friends since we were both four.
Through Roland, Jeff reassured me he is at all of my daughter’s performances. You see, Jeff and my daughter Hannah shared a love for musical theater. He said it was obvious he was there, and he mentioned sitting in seat 11. He told me to pay attention. It would be obvious he was there. That spring Hannah was cast in Around the World in Eighty Days. There were twenty-five actors, she was actor number eleven, in seat 11. The following year she was cast as Penny Sycamore in You Can’t Take It with You. The irony doesn’t escape any of us. Hannah said there was always a penny to be found on stage, and my other daughter Kelly often finds them as well.
Summer of 2012 found me in Brazil at a spiritual retreat for two weeks. The first person I met was a woman who told me she had recently lost her brother. After a brief conversation on the staircase, she told me, “It was nice meeting you, Penny. I will see you at dinner.” I felt remiss in reminding her my name was Jenny, so I didn’t. The owner of the posada and spiritual guide would yell out as she drove pass me walking down the street, “Penny, darling, would you like a ride?” When I purchased a bottle of water, she asked, “Now what room are you staying in, Penny?” I think Jeff was enjoying playing this game with me. He had told Roland he would send me funny signs and sounds—he had everyone calling me Penny.
During the evening with Roland, Jeff thanked my friend Diane for bringing me. Roland said he felt Jeff had a sarcastic personality. He said he felt a wit about him. “I know she’s a lot of work,” Jeff said to Diane through Roland, referring to me. “Well, maybe just a little bit of work.” He thanked Diane for being there for me.
He went on to tell me, “You are a better writer than you think; finish what you started. You aren’t as good as me, but you are not bad. Finish what you started.” Now the only thing this could mean is a poem I wrote the year he died called “Our Santa,” and true, I never finished it. It is the only thing I have written since he died that wasn’t for work or a card to someone.
Roland said he got the feeling Jeff was going to a gig. He kind of snapped his fingers and said, “I feel he is going to a gig and needs to get going.” His friends always said heaven was probably being blessed with a new musical. You see, Jeff was a lyricist and writer. He then said again to finish what I started and laughed. “Good luck. Finish what you started.” And he was gone.
Since that first evening with Roland, other members of my family have received messages from Jeff. He reached out to my husband to assure him that his brother Frank, who passed suddenly on July 5, 2015, was OK. The Purple Paper, dated just six weeks after Frank’s death, said, “Jimmy … I got him … Don’t worry.”
On subsequent Purple Papers, Jeff reminded me that he knows I “hear the music,” and he asks teasingly, “Can you still see me playing the piano? I am so glad you taught me everything I know (except the piano).” One of his best-known songs he had written was “Music Is Healing”; the synchronicity doesn’t escape me. And yes, I do hear the music. When visiting a sacred waterfall in Brazil, in the utter silence, I asked my friend, “Do you hear the music?” She said she did not. On a visit to Florida one summer, as my mother, the kids, and I were crossing the town green, an orchestra playing in the gazebo all of a sudden started “Pennies from Heaven.” My daughter looked at me and smiled. Yes, I hear the music, Jeff.
My mother passed suddenly on April 26, 2016. Her favorite flowers were daisies. That’s what I always sent her, and daisies were the only flowers at her small service. A few weeks before she died, I had purchased tickets for another one of Roland’s events and had planned to bring a friend with me. I never imagined that my mother would be gone then, or that I would get a message from her at the event.
But there it was. It was dated May 17, 2016, and it read, “It’s important that my daughter knows that I saw such a light and beautiful peace surrounded me. Yes, around me … I will leave one flower … I love you so much.” In the middle of the Purple Paper, there was the prettiest daisy you ever saw.
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Like Jeff, Mom has found her way to heaven and has also found a voice through Roland. The gift of eternal love just keeps on giving!
I still am not exactly sure why Jeff said, “Finish what you started.” Was it the poem, was it my own spiritual journey, or was it an awakening to so much more? Jeff also said more than once in communication with Roland, “Tell my story.” So Jeff, I am, I am telling your story through this book. I hope it brings peace to others knowing that love is eternal, love surpasses space and time. Signs can be found in a public bathroom, a windowsill, across the world in another country, and, if you are really lucky, in a Purple Paper.
And yes, music is healing, words are healing, signs are healing. If we stay open to it all, healing begins. We are all here to use our gifts, whatever form they take to transform lives through love and light. I am so very grateful Roland shared his gift with me that evening. I have learned to see the signs and stop and pause when I do, connecting with spirit and the love that surrounds it.
One of my Purple Papers said, “I know you hear the music. I try so hard to send you signs. I want you to find peace.”
Jeff, I have found peace.