The Second Sign: Road Trip to St. Louis

[Story continued from Blog #1: Daniel's blue rose - it is what it is.]

The strangeness of the Blue Rose Appearance opened my husband’s mind to the possibility of energy surviving physical death. For many of us, such a thought is a huge leap of faith. For some people, I know it runs counter to faith.

My own belief system has no problem “crossing over” to that conclusion, as I had been involved with death work for a long time. During previous jobs (Manager of the Chicago Ronald McDonald House; Director of Western Illinois University's Crisis Hotline), children and adults had recounted near death experiences to me. I was no stranger to the belief of a soul surviving the body.

But nothing quite prepared us for the next challenge – or confirmation of my beloved son Daniel's continued energy.

Friend Donna Gray was asked to critique a new book for bookreview.com for its New Age genre. Author Suzane Northrop had earned great acclaim as “the psychic’s psychic” because John Edward, a famous medium with the television program Crossing Over, was among her tutelage. Suzane was to appear in St. Louis, Missouri the coming week, her closest rendezvous with our city (Madison, Wisconsin) that year.

“Why don’t you write an author interview to go along with the book review?” Donna suggested. “Road trip! We could go to St. Louis and meet her! It might be fun.” Why not?

Road Trip!

I contacted bookreview.com for the assignment, and Donna handled all the trip details. “Northrop’s people” agreed to the personal interview and gave us the secret name she was listed under at a downtown St. Louis hotel. We promised our husbands a riverboat gambling trip and a good dinner to lure them in, thinking it would be a lark at best, and that Northrop would be a sham at worst. So we hit the highway in search of a latest adventure. (We often travel together and it is always an adventure).

Despite all the hype in the press at the time about Suzane’s abilities, Donna and I decided that the medium – sitting in a drab hotel room without makeup or assistants, nursing a glass of red wine, answering perfunctory questions that she’d obviously answered hundreds of times before – was nothing spectacular. Most interesting was that she was royally ticked off because some lunatics had called a local radio station with death threats, proclaiming her to be a channel for the devil.

“And you people wonder why all the psychic mediums live in New York instead of the Bible Belt,” she quipped. [Actually, her real quote had lots of swear words in it.]

I was disappointed – not in the swearing, but because a psychic didn’t know what to expect before coming. [Okay, she's technically a MEDIUM, not a "what's going to happen before it happens" PSYCHIC]. She also wasn’t as, well... different as I’d hoped. She didn’t wear cool jewelry or bright colored gypsy scarves or even have an enigmatic smile. She was just a regular person wearing a nondescript outfit who drove a four-wheel drive jeep to all of her gigs across the country because she was bugged by the hassles of flying.

And yes, we did wonder why it was that she and John Edward and the two other headliner psychics popular at the time (James Van Praagh and George Anderson) were tied to Long Island.

“Is it something in the water?”

She smirked. Turns out she’d heard that question hundreds of times before, too.

I didn’t think we impressed her any more than she was impressing us, so it was a surprise when, as Donna and I gathered our tape recorders and started for the door, Suzane suddenly offered four complimentary seats in the reserved section at her sold-out evening performance. “You have to come,” she pressed. “I want to see you when I walk out on that stage.”

Okay.... But there were still husbands to convince.

“We think maybe the Bible Belt will crash the show to stage a Devil protest,” we suggested to them. (Yes, we offered up the potential for chaos or live wrestling to get them to go along). However, as bereaved mothers, Donna and I probably both privately harbored some hope that we’d get something we needed out of it. She had never gotten any signs of an afterlife after her son David, 33, died. At least, she hadn’t gotten a message as clear as the blue rose. And I can admit I wished for another blue rose.

Suzane dressed for the show in a tuxedo, with makeup. She looked incredible. Not new age "out there"; she looked like she took it serious and she was ready to take charge of the stage.

The show followed a typical protocol. Suzane began with an explanation of a “medium” and then offered a guided meditation for participants. Following that, she did “readings”. She began to speak rapidly as she called out clues to audience members, asking who “owned” a particular energy.

What wasn’t typical of such productions, however, was her specificity. Although she has been tested for psychic abilities in university studies, and consistently scores in the highest bracket for intuitive knowledge (imagine a batter who hits 300 most games), the things she said that night were nonetheless unsettling.

“Who owns an Uncle Frank, who hung himself in the back yard?” for example. That’s pretty specific. Not like “Who lost a loved one whose name begins with ‘G’?”.

A woman stood up, crying, and "claimed" the uncle.

She must have placed stooges in the audience, I thought. This has to be a sham. That, or group hysteria or hypnosis. Maybe the woman THINKS she had an Uncle Frank now....

"I have a Betty here."

We were nearing the end of the program when Suzane announced, “I have a Betty now. This Betty only planted gladiolas in her garden. No other flowers. Only gladiolas. Who in this audience owns Betty?”

My husband raised his hand as his face drained of all color. “That’s my mother,” Kevin confirmed in a surprised voice, standing. “It’s all she ever planted.”

Now it was my turn to feel the blood rush out my head. I didn’t know that weird fact about Betty. But my husband was no stooge for Suzane Northrop! (That I did know.)

“She didn’t come to talk to you,” Northrop stated, all but dismissing him. “She came to open the door to bring through two sons.” And with that, she crossed the room to where we sat conspicuously in the front of the room.

In the next few minutes, she told us that Donna’s son was named for his father (David Sr.). She said he was onstage standing by a microphone, like he was telling jokes, and she reported that he was talking about the movie business and about a large collection of keys. She threw facts at us faster than we could catch them. “And he says he opened in Las Vegas,” Northrop said. “What does all that mean?”

David Sr. had a look on his face that I’ll never forget. But he managed to speak: “He was a comedian who had just made a movie. And he was a Second City comedian who opened for some big stars in Vegas.”

“The keys were a family joke.” Donna was unable to stand to face the audience as Northrop requested. She was shook up, but she added, “He traveled and was always locking himself out. We had made several copies of the keys for his house. Everyone in the family had a set.”

Suzane turned away from Donna to repeat the words for the audience, who applauded the confirmation.

Then she turned back to us. “The other son had a mother who had four children,” she proclaimed. “Two and two.” She held up two fingers on one hand and then turned her hand, indicating four children total. “Two boys and two girls.”

This can't really be happening, I thought.

My heart beat even faster, if that was even possible.

“This son,” she added, looking right at me, “is showing me his mother wearing a headdress of some kind. A wrap. A covering over her head. He says to the man with her, the man by your side” [she pointed to me and then to Kevin] “‘thank you for taking care of my mother’.”

I had survived breast cancer since my son’s death, and had worn a scarf, turban or wig for many months. Because Kevin and I were married after Daniel’s death, it also would have been appropriate to use those words for Daniel to express his gratitude to Kevin for being my caregiver. Daniel was that kind of a thoughtful kid, too.... an unusually thoughtful child....

But wait a minute... I thought. My hair is still super short because of ongoing therapy – could she make a reasonable conclusion from that? Would she have a way to know I’m a cancer survivor? Yes, maybe ... if she Googled....

Northrop interrupted my thoughts, continuing her hurried report: “He says his mother was worried about the hot air balloon, but he wants you to know, he was there. You asked him, and he went in the hot air balloon, too.”

Oh my god, I thought. This can’t really be happening. This can’t be real!

After Daniel’s death, my father offered my other son, Philip, then seven years old, a ride in a hot air balloon. I’m petrified of heights and I didn’t want him to accept the birthday gift. Philip called me “a meannie” and Dad called me “overprotective,” so I caved in. As the balloon soared, I mentally begged my angel Daniel to protect his little brother. I asked him to be there, and to keep his brother safe. “Please, please!” I had begged.

“He says you are known in your family for your mega albums,” Suzane added, snapping back my attention. “What’s that mean?”

I blanked out. It meant nothing to me.

“She scrapbooks,” Kevin offered. “She’s made over 30 albums for the family.”
I prayed she would stop. I mean it. It was wonderful, but I couldn’t process any more. It was just too much. I felt naked in a room full of strangers.

"Two and Two"

However, she had one more message: “He says he will appear to you again, to take away all your doubt,” Northrop said. “He says not to spend your money looking for him; the message will be delivered to you. You will know the message is real because a true medium will give you this sign very clearly” – here she held up two fingers again, and again she rotated her wrist to displayed two fingers again. “Two and two,” she confirmed. “There will be no ambiguity in the message. Two boys, two girls. Always two and two.”

With that, I think she closed the show, though I can’t remember for sure now. Everything after that last pronouncement was less important. When we left the room, not one of us ever imaged we would be able to sleep again because we were so mystified and charged up. Yet we didn’t want to talk about it, either. We ordered coffee in the hotel bar and then couldn’t even finish that before leaving. It was all just too much. Too much.

Still, that evening wasn’t the miracle. I thought it was at the time, but now I recognize it as only the second sign of the real miracle, which was delivered, as promised, about two weeks later.

[Continued in Blog #3]