24    From Discouragement to Delight

The personality of a spirit will generally be the same one they had in human form. For example, if a person is shy and quiet on earth, they will be shy and quiet from the other side, possibly making it a little more difficult for that spirit to send signs. Of course, if that person was outgoing on earth, the signs coming from them in spirit could be obvious and plentiful.

Pam has lived in her current home in Massachusetts for twenty years. For about the first nineteen of them, she’d never had an electrical issue. The wiring had been updated. The bulbs were standard. But that changed when she returned home from Connecticut after her mom died.

“I noticed that a light went out. Okay, no big deal,” Pam said. “But then another one went out. And another. And another. I had the electrical checked. Nothing was wrong, they said. Then the lights upstairs would flicker, go dim, and then brighten.”

That was just the beginning.

“My son, Nicholas, heard a noise in my office in the middle of the night. He found that my printer was on — and everyone else in the house was sound asleep. It was making that eeeent-eeeent-eeeent noise, as if it was printing something, but no paper was coming out. When it stopped, he went back to his room, where a lantern dimmed and then brightened. I’m not sure he slept well that night. We had no explanation for what was happening.”

Pam came to me soon after for a reading.

“Once I spoke with Bill,” she said, “I absolutely knew that my mom was behind all of it. She and I had a very strong bond, and this was her way of letting me know that she was with us. So, what had been inexplicable and even a little scary became very warm and comforting. When the lights would flicker or the printer would kick on by itself after that, I’d just say ‘Hi, Mom’ and they would stop, which confirmed for me that Bill was right. It was good to know that even though she was on the other side, she was still with us too.”

Pam’s mother also had a very strong bond with Nicholas, and it continued after her death.

“Nicholas recently started his freshman year in college. It was a big step that included a lot of adjustments for the entire family. He is majoring in history and hopes to become a teacher, which is what my mom was for so many years. She was so happy when he told her before she died that he would be going into that field. He is also minoring in theater, which is his true passion, but he knows that teaching is much less competitive in the job market.”

One of Nicholas’s first auditions was for the play Twelfth Night. “He called me afterward, and I could tell by his voice something was wrong. It was cracking, like he was on the verge of tears. He told me he completely choked during his audition; his mind had gone blank after a couple of sentences. When the words just wouldn’t come to him, he took a bow and left the stage. He was so distraught. I spoke to him at length trying to encourage him, but also to help him understand that life, unfortunately, does come with disappointments. After we were finished talking, he told me he was going to walk over to the café to see if he could meet up with some friends.”

About fifteen minutes later, Pam’s phone rang.

“It was Nicholas. His voice had completely changed; it was full of excitement. I thought that he’d somehow gotten the part, but that wasn’t it at all. He said as he was walking to the campus café feeling down and asking himself why this had happened, he looked up to see the streetlamp flickering, just like the lights and lantern in our home. It was repeatedly flickering, dimming, and then becoming the brightest white glow you could imagine. In fact, he was standing there watching it go through that cycle while he was on the phone with me. He eventually blew a kiss up to the sky and said, ‘I love you, Grandma.’ Now I was the emotional one.”

Pam had tears in her eyes listening to Nicholas tell this story.

“I know that was truly a sign from my mother to make Nicholas feel better and to encourage him to never give up,” she said. “To hear the complete delight in my son’s voice after he was so down and discouraged just minutes before, and all because of my mother’s sign from the other side, made me so happy. My mom faced many challenges in her ninety-one years of life on earth, and I always admired her strength, courage, and unending willpower. I think that may be why it is almost ‘easy’ for her to come through with the signs we see so frequently, no matter where we are.”

I would agree that a woman with that kind of personality probably finds little difficulty sending signs to this side.

I’m always touched when someone shares a story like this with me. Knowing, through signs, that their loved one is around them brings solace, easing the heaviness of what seems like the finality of death. When we remain open to these little signals from spirits, we can rest assured that there is more waiting for us as we pass from this life to the next, and we can be comforted that the ones most important to us are still around us, just in a different form.