Marcelle

Psychic medium Marla Frees was one of the people who spoke at the Dreamland Festival this June. During her talk, as she was contacting the dead relatives of some of the people in the audience, I noticed that Whitley, who was sitting next to me, seemed to be in a sort of trance. At first I thought he might have actually fallen asleep from exhaustion, but on closer inspection, I realized that wasn’t the case. Later, he told me what had happened.

In the days when we were having the Communion experience at our cabin in New York State, we learned that Visitor experiences were "catching"–if you got several Experiencers together, it was more likely to happen again. When someone who had NOT met the Visitors (but wanted to) came up, I would always invite a few people who’d had extensive contact along too, in hopes that this would give the novice a chance to have some Visitor adventures, and this often worked ("when two or three are gathered in my name").

It turns out that psychic ability can be passed on as well–at least to someone like Whitley who often sees ghosts anyway. When we were alone together after Marla’s talk, he asked me, "Did you ever know someone named Marcelle?"

Now, Marcelle was someone I met exactly once. She was my father’s sister, but my father was such a curmudgeon that I never met any of his family, who all still lived in the South, until one time when Marcelle and her children (I vaguely remember their names as being Pat and Nash) came to Ann Arbor to see us. Marcelle was renown in her home town for crafting exquisite jewelry out of ceramic flowers. I inherited some of it from my mother after she died, but I don’t have any now.

I couldn’t imagine that I had ever mentioned Marcelle to Whitley, since her visit didn’t loom large in my life in any way. Whitley often talks about his past and his many relatives, but I hardly ever do because my young life was so sad and lonely and I didn’t know any of my relatives, because my father was a bit of a hermit: He didn’t really LIKE anyone.

But Marcelle (who I’m sure is now dead, just like my father is) came through FOR my father, who (according to Whitley) was hesitant about coming through to him directly. She delivered the message from my father that he "honored me" and was proud of what I was doing. Since he was a scientist who always disdained the things I was interested in, such as art, I assumed this meant he approved of our edge science website and took the opportunity of Whitley’s catching the "psychic virus" to tell me so, through the intercession of Aunt Marcelle.

Whitley had a strong feeling that my father needed my forgiveness in order to go on. When my dead cat Coe took me to the world of the dead when I was first coming out of my coma in the hospital, I saw a "station" filled with people who were waiting for the next bus or train, all of them carrying overflowing shopping bags and suitcases, and I somehow knew that they would not be able to get aboard whatever was coming until they were willing to put their packages down.

But what were they waiting for? A trip to heaven or hell (or wherever we go after death)? If there is such a thing as reincarnation, perhaps they were waiting for a chance to be born into another body, but they would first need to divest themselves of all the traits that were weighing them down, so they could start afresh. Many of the dead people who "came through" for Marla at our Dreamland Festival audience asked for forgiveness and understanding from their living relatives and told them how proud they were of them (as well as warning them about upcoming problems in their lives and telling them they might have certain diseases).

I realized it was time to forgive my father, so I thought it through carefully and "spoke" to him inside my head. I imagined how terribly hard it must have been for him to have married a childhood sweetheart with bipolar disease (manic depression). Did he subconsciously sense she was going to kill herself while he was away on a business trip? Even if he did, at that point there wasn’t much he could do about it.

And his marriage to the woman who turned out to be such a cruel stepmother to me (to the point that I felt a bit like Cinderella, except my prince didn’t come along until much later) was innocent too. He wanted very much to have a happy future and I think this woman gave him that, even though no one in their new family (they had 4 kids together) could figure out what to do about me, which was why I ended up spending most of my time alone in a basement bedroom after they built a new house in the country. I now know (thanks to Marcelle) that he regrets the fact that I was so unhappy.

From looking at things from his point of view and thinking them through, I found I was able to forgive him, and I’m glad of that, because bitterness is caustic–it eats away at you and makes you less of a person.

When the great medium Glennys MacKay was here, she was able to contact my stepmother and heard her say that "perhaps she was a bit hard on you," so I don’t think she’s ready to be forgiven yet, but I hope (for her sake and for mine) that I hear from her (through Whitley?) in the future. She clearly hasn’t faced herself yet, so I guess she’s still waiting for that train.

NOTE: This Diary entry, previously published on our old site, will have any links removed.