8: The Afterlife

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Speaker 1: I'm just a fool. We feture, Welcome to death, grief and other shit we don't discuss. I'm Kyle McMahon. I was sitting in my car at the gas station, just kind of zoning out. It had been two weeks since Mom had passed and I had just gotten a tattoo of her signature. We had scanned it from one of the cards she gave to me, Love Mom, it said, and we added a purple heartnext to it for pancreatic cancer. I wanted her signature to be etched on me forever. I would take it to my own grave and beyond. My friend Aaron Clark is an incredible tattoo artist, and he had really given this piece the love and CARET needed, and really gave me the love and care that I needed. I was so happy with his work and with the tattoo, even despite the fact that Mom hated when I got my first tattoo. I had gotten my one and only tattoo up until today, at least in the summertime. A few years back, and we were going to Aunt Cathy's for a pool party. Mom thought it was so weird that I was wearing jeans to go to a pool party, and honestly, she was right, but I couldn't let her see the tattoo that was on my leg, and she kept questioning why I was wearing jeans to a pool party, and I kept trying to deflect, but my mom knew me better than that. I had planned on letting mom and Dad leave first, then I would change into a bathing suit, but Mom was on to me, so instead of leaving at the time she was supposed to leave, she got busy, suddenly giving her a reason to wait for me to change. Finally, after running out of excuses and time, I changed into my bathing suit and I tried to make a quick exit to the door. Love you, Mom, I'm heading to Aunt Kathy's. Of course, Mom had found some reason to call me back into her office. After I answered her completely made up on the spot questions, I backed away to the door so she didn't see the tattoo on the back of my calf. Why are you walking weird, she asked me. Huh, Mom, I'm I'm just leaving to go to Aunt Kathy's. Turn Around, she said, and then she gave me that look that silently said that she would still whoop my butt as a grown ass man if I didn't listen to her, so in this instance I did. Let's just say that we got to Aunt Kathy's that day much much later than we had planned, and now I kind of had to laugh. Here I am at a gas station thinking about the fact that I had gotten a tattoo of Mom's signature on my forearm. I was so happy with it and the work Aaron had done. I sat there and posted photos of my tat to all my social media accounts. A big smile was on my face. I'm gonna have her signature with me at all times, forever, etched into my body. And then suddenly I'd heard Mom say Kyle, loud and clear as day. It actually startled me, and I looked around and said, Mom, I'd forgotten for a moment. There was an older man about twenty five feet away, just getting out of his car to pump gas. Otherwise, there was no one around, and the older man certainly didn't have my mom's voice. Plus he was just getting out of the car. As I looked over, then I remembered Mom couldn't be here getting gas because Mom had passed on. Immediately, I got chills. Mom I said to no one loudly. Mom, I know what I had just heard. Mom had just called my name. I tried to rationalize it. Are the windows up? Yep, the windows are definitely up, all four of them. That man was in the car when I heard it. The radio's off right, yep, the whole car's off. My phone on the passenger seat. It's locked, so I pick it up just to be sure, and it wasn't. In fact, from my phone, I opened the door of my car to see if the gas station had the radio on, and they didn't. So I quickly got out and ran to both sides of the building and there was not a car or a person in sight. Confused, I went back in my car and shut the door. There's nothing left to the bunk. I know what I had just heard. Mom had just called my name. Mom. I started crying. This was a sort of mix of happy and sad tears. I mean, I was happy that I just heard my mom's voice, and I was sad that she wasn't there. Was she trying to contact me? Had I finally lost it as any of this reel at all? I mean, I'm not high right. I sat for a few minutes and really thought about this, like how incredible this was. I just heard my mom's voice. I didn't exactly know how to make sense of it, but I felt in my heart, in my soul that that was her, that was her contacting me. I quickly got out and pumped gas in my car, contemplating the entire time what had just happened, and then I hopped back in the car and made the short ride back to the house. As I pulled in the driveway, I got a notification on my phone. The preview said it was from Facebook, probably a response to the tattoo photos I had just uploaded. As I clicked on it, my heart stopped. Joanne McMahon has liked your photo. I clicked through on that, and they're in my notifications on Facebook. My mom's Facebook account had liked the photos of her tattoo that I had just posted to Facebook fifteen minutes prior. I screamed, I mean more like squealed, what the fuck is happening? What is happening? I started crying again. Mom. Then I immediately called my dad. Maybe Dad was on Mom's Facebook account or something. Hey Kyle, what's up? Hey Dad? Are you on Mom's phone? No, I'm working. Why what's going on? So you weren't just on Mom's Facebook account? No, Kyle, I'm downstairs in the living room working. Mom's phone's upstairs. Why what's going on? I explained to him the story as every single hair on my body stood on end. He was just as surprised as I was. Well, Kyle, I got nothing. If the incident of hearing her voice was somehow just some weird once at a lifetime glitch in my brain, this was definitely a sign. Twice within just twenty minutes, something unexplainable had happened relating directly to Mom. And that's at two. If there's anyone on Earth or beyond Earth who would try and come through to contact me, it would definitely be Mom. And here she is. She did it. I sat in the driveway for fifteen minutes, just crying tears of joy. She's still here, She's still with us, She's still with me. Not only could I feel it, but now she's shown it. A few weeks had passed and I got an Instagram message from my mom's friend, Sharon. Sharon's sons had been friends of mine in grade school and high school, and later on Mom had met Sharon through Mom's dance classes. Sharon had reached out to me to say that Mom had told her I might be interested in djaying her upcoming wedding to her fiance, Mike. Mom had actually gotten the two of them together through dance class. We spoke on the phone and Sharon told me that she had lost her mother just a month before Mom had passed. We agreed to meet to discuss what she was looking for regarding her wedding music. When I went to Sharon's house, she had a card and a small gift bag for me. She said a mutual friend of my mom and hers, Carol, had given it to her to give to me. I nervously opened the bag and it was a key chain that had beautiful stones and ky l e spelled out in beads. It was beautiful, but I was a bit confused. Sharon told me to read the card, so I opened up the envelope and chills came over me. Kyle, a few years ago, your mom gave me her stash of beads. There were four letter beads included among the colored beads and clasps. I thought you would like to have them to remember Mom, who loved you so very much. When I made this key chain, I think she was smiling. She was a great dance instructor, a friend, a gentle soul. I miss her, Carol. I began filling up with tears and Sharon did too. She gave me a hug. It's so beautiful, I said, and Sharon nodded, yes, it is. What are the chances that Mom, of all people, had purposefully given away a stash of beads that had just four letters and they spelled out my name. She must have bought them at some point to make something for me, and they got lost in the shuffle of time. And now, as I was missing Mom with every fiber of my being, she was letting me know once again that she's still here. And not only is she still here, but she's recruited a whole army of angels that are here on earth looking over me. I had a new friend in Sharon, not only someone who Mom was closed to, but someone that had lost their mom too. Sharon and I speak regularly and go out to lunch every month, and I truly believe she's one of Mom's angels. I was feeling so lost without Mom. I still do. I had never lived in a world without her, and now I was. I was forced to. This is new territory for me. It's scary, terrifying. In fact, Mom and my mom had always been my rocks, my people. They were my safe spaces, and now they're gone. In fact, with the passing of my beloved Grandma the year before, I had no grandparents left at all. I just kind of felt like I was aimlessly going through life. Now. I was sitting out on the balcony at my house thinking about Mom and how my life had just completely and forever changed just a few weeks ago, when suddenly a dragonfly buzzes up to me and hovers at eye level with me. I instantly had a huge smile and tears filled my eyes. You see, when Mom had gotten diagnosed with cancer, she began to have dragonflies appear all the time. And we're not in an area with the type of waters that attract dragonflies, so it was a little bit strange. Even Dad, who's always been a skeptic, had told me. Over the course of mom's treatments, one time they were on their way home and they got out of the car and all of these dragonflies were just hovering around her, and he said he just didn't know how to explain what was happening. I wonder if that was my mom telling mom that she was there with her. One time, she was getting into her car at the house and a dragonfly hovered her around her as if to say hello. She got in the car and the dragonfly went to her window and sat itself on the door. Mom called me to tell me how funny that was. This was just a few weeks after she was diagnosed with cancer. When Mom called again thirty minutes or so later, she had said the dragonfly made the trip to the store with her, staying on the car, right on the driver's side window the whole time. Then it flew away when she got out of the car, and then when she came back to the car from the store, it came back. It was like the dragonfly was her new friend, her overseer. And now here on my balcony was a dragonfly looking straight into my eyes, as if to say, your mom sent me. You're going to be okay, Kyle, She's with you. As crazy as it may sound, I actually began seeing dragonflies everywhere, and I'm aware of the phenomenon of When you think of a black van, you then notice every black van. But I had always noticed when I saw dragonflies because they're so special and unique, especially in our area. You see, throughout history and nearly every country in the world, dragonflies represent new beginnings and transformation. In Japanese culture, they're heralded as good luck protectors, so much so, in fact, that they were the national emblem of one of the emperors of Japan. In Africa, dragonflies are actually thought to be incarnations of our deceased loved ones. And now here is this beautiful dragonfly hovering right in front of my face. I said out loud, thank you, Mom, I love you. After a few more moments, the beautiful dragonfly flew away. To this day, dragonflies appear in my life all the time. I can't tell you how many times that I've been outside having an introspective moment or just thinking about Mom, and then a dragonfly has appeared, letting me know that if I had ever doubted it for a second, She's still here and she always will be when we come back. I talk once again with doctor Jan Holden, president of the International Association for Near Death Studies and retired professor Emirata of Counseling at University of North Texas. We discussed the science behind after death communication. What is it is? Mom coming through? Am I experiencing after death communication? Are you when we return? Much like my dive into near death experiences? I was surprised to find that there is science behind after death communication, also referred to as ADC. Some may think that ADC is simply one's imagination or the human tendency to recognize patterns, but there is a huge amount of science behind the phenomenon and it's growing. One theory is that after death communication may be related to the scientific concept of quantum entanglement. Quantum entanglement is a theory in physics that Wikipedia describes as quote the phenomenon that occurs when a group of particles are generated, interact, or share spatial proximity in a way such that the quantum state of each particle of the group cannot be described independently of the state of the others, including when the particles are separated by a large distance. The topic of quantum entanglement is at the heart of the disparity between classical and quantum physics. Entanglement is a primary feature of quantum mechanics not present in classical mechanics end quote. Another theory by scientists is that ADEC may be related to the phenomenon of near death experiences, in which individuals report vivid and transformative experiences during periods of actual clinical death. We explore that in a previous episode. While the science behind ADEC is still a matter of debate, there's no denying the very profound impact that these experiences have on the people who are experiencing them. In fact, three quarters of bereaved people, regardless of their religious or spiritual belief system, report that they do or have experienced some form of after death communication. Of those experiences, about twenty percent have had documented evidential experiences, and that means there's some sort of substantial evidence to back up their claims, real scientific evidence. With this, I had to tell doctor Holden about a very profound experience I had the morning my mom passed to see what her thoughts were. So the morning my mom passed, It's very strange because I woke up unusually early, and I'm a night owl, so I'm normally a later person, and I woke up very early that day, and I immediately felt her with me immediately, and it was weird, and I actually wrote down in my journal that night, I feel her consciousness with me. And I texted my dad and he called me and he said she passed, and that hit me, But it also hit me in regards to I didn't know how to explain it, but I had felt her with me, yeah, you know, And the way that I described it was that it was almost like, this is strange to kind of put into words, but it was almost like her consciousness had left my parents' house and was with me at that point. And looking back, it was actually kind of comforting in that way because that's probably what my mom. If this is a thing, let's exactly what my mom would do, you know, she would she would come and be with me to make sure I was okay. When I talked to my dad for him to say, your mom has passed and was preparing you exactly exactly, And you know, I ended up having a number of and to this day still do things that I cannot explain. Maybe a couple of them are, you know when they say you look for patterns and things like this, and okay, so maybe some of them are, but there are some that are just not explainable. For instance, my mom was not a big fan of tattoos on me, and I had gotten a tattoo of her signature from a card that she had wrote, Love Mom, and I took it to my tattoo artist and he scanned it and then put it on and we added a purple heart for pancretic cancer. I posted it on Facebook. It was like, you know, I have her with me to give me a hug at any time. Now, extremely strange. So I am at the gas station and this is days after she passed. I'm at the gas station and I hear Kyle and it's my mom. And I look over because I'd forgotten for a second, you know, I just forgot that she had passed. So I look over and there's nobody there. And then it hits me, wait, mom passed, you know, so that's not why are you looking for hers? He's gone. And then I realized, okay, well then you know, all this is processing in my brain. Okay, well who is it? The windows are up in my car and the radio's off, so who was saying this? And I was sure that it was my mom. Now I'm like, weird it out, you know, I'm like, wow, that was my mom, Like I know I heard her voice. I heard her voice in my ears, like physically in my ears. So I'm like, weird it out and I'm like okay. So immediately after getting gas and I get a like notification on my phone from Facebook, Joanne McMahon has liked your photo. And I almost died because I'm like, what is going on? This is so weird. So I call my dad and I'm like, were you on Mom's phone? And he's like, no, Mom's phone is upstairs. I've been in meetings while what's up? And I'm like, so you weren't touching mom's phone, you weren't on her Facebook or anything. And he was like, no, I've been in meetings, you know what's up? Like what are you trying to get at here? And I'm like okay, And I just explained it all to him and he's like, yeah, that's really weird, you know, like I got nothing for that. And it's almost like now that she is wherever she is, she doesn't care about me having a tattoo anymore. And and it was kind of funny because of all the things for her to to like, she liked the tattoo of her, you know, yeah, her signature, and you know, maybe it's just a weird bunch of coincidences. But I can't explain that rationally, and I've I've tried to. I've tried to explain it. I've tried to think of all the possibilities and for those two things, especially to happen at the same time, you know, are very very strange, exactly. So I have a few a few comments to make. One is that my guess is she liked it because it's the message of what really is, which is she is with you and you. I mean, it's like the tattoo is great, but you really didn't need it because she is, she is with you. I had i COLLA, a group that meets once a month here in the Dallas Fort Worth area for people who've had near death experiences, or have had or similar experiences, or have just personal or professional interest in them, so anybody can come. Can I interrupt you really quick just because something you just said just really hit me, and that is you said she is with you. And the day before she passed away, she said those words to me, and she said, I want you to know whenever you're having a bad day. Just talk to me. Whenever you need me, just talk to me. I'm with you. And she literally said those words, and she said, I am there with you. I want you to talk to me because I'm there. Just it was very strange that you said those words, because she literally said that. So I apologize, but no reason to apologize at all. Yeah, So I leave this group for people who have had or had interest in near death or related experiences, and related includes all the kinds of things we've been talking about. And one of the men in the group his wife died and his daughter, his adult daughter. Before the mother passed, the mother and daughter went together to buy the daughter's wedding dress, and then before the wedding actually happened, the mother passed, So after the wedding, and I think he said that it was a couple of months after, the daughter posted on Facebook her favorite photo of herself in her wedding dress, and she sent it to him. You know, however you do that on Facebook. I don't do Facebook. But and so he saw it and then he was looking down the list of likes, and there was her mother had liked it. And he said, the thing is, I have her phone but I don't have her password, nobody can get in into it, nobody knows how to access her Facebook account. And yet there was you know, with a date stamp after her death. She liked the photo. So it's very much like that. And so those are electronic after death communications you talked about the one where she was with you at her she had the presence and the sense of presence is probably the most frequent form of ADC, but it takes all different kinds of forms. You had an auditory one when you heard her say your name. There also are other types of you know, visual where people see the person. It can happen while you're awake, asleep, you know, under any circumstances, and you could see the person in the environment or you could see them in your mind's eye. And the same with auditory. Like you said, you heard it as if she was, you know, standing right there saying it. You could also hear it kind of in your mind's ear. And then there are materialization ones that that same daughter that I was just telling you about, after her mother passed, her mother had given her like four fifty dollars bills to stash in different places to have when she if she was in an emergency. So this one night she and her new husband went out to dinner. They had this lovely dinner, and at the end they learned that they didn't take credit card. You had to have cash, and they just were hardly any cash, and so she had to use her last fifty dollar bill from her mother and she just hated it. But you know, it was either that or wash dishes or whatever you know happens. So after the dinner, they went to Target and they were walking down they turned the corner and went down a makeup aisle and she said to her husband, I feel nostalgic about this because Mom and I used to come to Target together to buy makeup together, shock from makeup together. And as are walking along, there in the aisle in front of them on the floor is a new fifty dollar bill, a materialization. So you know, once again, maybe somebody dropped fifty dollars just happened to do that at that particular time. But you know, it stretches the probability to attribute something like that to chance. And I've had experiences too, so I just you know, I completely resonate that, and they happen. We know now that out of the whole world, One out of three people has had an after death communication experience, and following in the year following the death of a loved one, as many as eighty percent of people report having at least one. And again, it's these vertical ones where people get information that you know or where you know, they lie something on Facebook like how could that be? That lends credibility to the objective they feel again subjectively very absolutely real, but very well maybe objectively real. There's a lot of evidence to suggest that what is the best thing to do when you you know, I took my mom's advice and started talking to her, you know, because that's what she told me before she passed. Just start talking to me. I'm there, and you know, it took kind of that experience to be like, oh, okay, she's showing me. You know, what do you suggest to you know, should we talk if we experience something like this? Should we invite it? Should we acknowledge it? Do we weird out what should? Well? What research shows is that most people experience after death communication is very positive. It's healing, it's reassuring, it's comforting. It engender's hope. You know that we have an ongoing relationship, even though it's changed drastically. I'm going to see this person again, you know, when my time comes. So it's it's very comforting. The thing that can get in the way of that comfort is the doubting, questioning, what I call lack of information or misinformation about what these experiences really are. And when somebody can be accurately informed that they're common, they're helpful if you can, if you can open yourself to what's there for you, then you can really reap the benefits of the experience, and they just tend to be very psycho spiritually beneficial for people. You know, my dad is typically more of a general skeptic. I mean, he's open minded, but is looking for evidence. You know. It's funny because he has had some encounters where that he couldn't explain. Particularly actually when my mom, before my mom passed with these dragonflies, that these dragonflies just started appearing around my mom all the time. It was to a point where it was like, you can't say that us who lives nowhere near any kind of water, you know, system just keeps seeing all these dragonflies. And it was like at one point she would get out of the car, and there would be all these dragonflies around her at like the grocery store or whatever. And it made my dad be like, Okay, yeah, I can't. I don't know what that's about, but it's something, you know. And so now, of course when we see dragonflies, I'm like, at the end of her life, they were all there. And but my dad is like, I want to see something, and I'm like, Dad, but you don't pay attention to anything if it's not like hitting you on the head, do you need to be looking or open, because I feel like it could be happening all around him and he's just paying attention to golf instead of you know, what's out in the window or whatever, right right, Well, you don't have to be looking for it. In fact, most after death communication occurs unexpectedly, uninvitedly, like when your mom said, Kyle, you were just getting gas and not thinking about her or anything, and then suddenly boom, there she is. And it's almost like when you are in this kind of zoned out, you know, just not focusing on anything particular sort of thing, that's when the experience is more likely to happen. So certainly inviting the experience and then being open, being receptive, being just alert to possible ways that she could be communicating. All of that helps the experience to happen more easily. We do have a counseling technique called induced after death communication. Now the title is a little misleading because all after death communication is really essentially spontaneous. But what we're doing in the counseling situation is helping the person get into that kind of inviting, receptive, open, not grasping and noticing any way that the deceased might be trying to communicate with us, helping them get into that mind space. And when we do, somewhere around three fourths of people have an after death communication experience in the counseling session or in the days following the counseling session, and the main way that we help people get there is by helping them work through the worst aspect of their grief, because any intense occupation of our attention and anything that keeps us from being just kind of centered and receptive is a block to after death communication, and in the aftermath of the loss of somebody, grief is usually the biggest block. Even though grieving people sometimes have after death communication like to put it one way the discournents find a way to get through despite the grief, but it often can act as a block, and so we help people process the grief. They report that their grief intensity goes way down, and then many of them have an after death communication. So there's actually a website for induced after death communication that people can go to define people who are certified in this counseling technique. And what is that website? What's www dot induced dash ADC dot com. Okay, all right, so we'll have that up in the resources. Doctor. Think I could literally talk to you for days and days and days and not you know, and be endlessly fascinated and educated on this. There's so much here, you know that that I feel like we need to continue researching and understanding. And thank you so much for your time and your wisdom. Oh it's been my pleasure, and I'm just really I'm happy for you that you're having the connection with your mom that you are. It's got to be a tremendous source of consolation in spite of the fact that you know, she's she's not here the way she was before, but she's not completely gone. Yeah, she has you know, she has um honestly lessened the blow, if you will. I was reading, you know, as I'm doing the show. I had exported all of my texts with her and with my best friend with my dad from like twenty sixteen forward, and I was looking at the day that she got diagnosed, and I texted my best friend and I said, you know, don't don't say anything. Let them tell you, but you know my mom. They found something on my mom's pancreas and they're concerned about it. And he said, oh my god. You know, well, I'll wait till they say something to me. Blah blah blah. And my words were, Jace, I'll die if something happens to her. And that is truly how I felt. And that's why I think my mom was so concerned with before she let go, making sure that I was going to be okay. If actually made me promise her I would be okay. And I think now she's on that other side, whatever that may be called, helping to make sure that I'm okay, you know. Yeah, So that gives me absolutely And I know that you were referring to physically dying, but in a way you may have been accurate that you're probably a different personnel than you were before her death. Because of all these experiences, you, the old you has died, anew you is born, and it's a it's a bigger it's a bigger you than you were before. I think you're right. It's so interesting to me that there is so much science behind these experiences. Due to what I've learned in the last year as I did this series, I truly believe that our energy, our consciousness, our soul doesn't ever die. Nearly every faith system follows some variation of this. There has to be something to it, and this is throughout history. Now the evidence is there, even though science might not understand what it means yet and maybe we never will. But as someone who was gravely missing a loved one, and as someone who my mom's death, it's profoundly changed me as a person, I'm okay with not knowing the what it means, because no matter what they may eventually find that it means scientifically, the end result for me is the same. Mom is still here with me, and if I just opened my eyes and pay attention, the signs are all around me and that is enough for me. Next time on death, grief and other shit, we don't discuss. I traveled to lily Dale, New York, a beautiful hamlet upstate that's made up entirely of medium I sit with Reverend Angela apt to discuss her experience with mediumship and contacting those on the other side, and I get a reading of my own. I'm going to see my mother. She said she'd be me when I come time. Just school Overaga, I'm just schooled. We're over Angela school. We're Overjita. I'm just school We know that. Ha