Looking for “Signs” with Author & Artist, Mitch Carmody – Part I

And we thought it'd be a great idea to bring him on the show today and share with everybody because as difficult as grief is, sometimes it's good to see a little sign that helps you make it through your tough day.

You know, and, and dad, his dad, she did, she was an atheist too so she said, dad is dead, Don is gone, there is nothing after that, you know? And then I had a dream of my dad coming home, shaking his boots off and coming into the house and, for a whole week after he died and I said, dad, what are you doing home? You know, you're dead and he goes, I'm just here to watch you for a while.

And what was so odd about it is that he'd get on the couch like he always did, took his shirt off, like in the summertime, put his boots up, open a bottle of beer. And he had this bright red, scar on his chest, you know, and I could see the scar all the way down his chest. And so I knew it was like post-mortem because he never came home from the hospital.

He died in the hospital and, and so it was just that I accepted it that week I had those dreams and so dad's here to visit comes in door, open shakes, his boots off, sits on the couch, opens a beer, put his feet up and I just look at him on the couch and it was just, it was amazing. So, I mean, I just catalog that, my mom said it was nonsense, so I just cataloged it.

But you know, he died in the summertime and his big job was to, only job he had at home, cause he worked two jobs, but he had a Christmas cactus that he had that he had gotten. His mother was, when she was pregnant with my dad, had had Christmas cactus'. So my dad had it all these years, great big Christmas cactus. And so it would always bloom at Christmas. Solid blooms, you know, and everybody was pride at this Christmas cactus.

And, but my dad's job was every year to take it outside, put it on the North side of the house. In the fall he'd bring it back inside and it would bloom for Christmas profusedly. So now Fall comes, my dad is dead and I'm looking around and everythings getting brown and I go, Oh shit, Oh shit, excuse me. Oh, I got to bring in that um, the Christmas cactus.

And so I did, and I felt strangely, like, you know, I'm picking up the ball, I'm picking up from my dad and I, so I brought the Christmas cactus in and it did not bloom at all. And my mom says, oh, you brought it in too late or something, you know? I said, no, I think it's grieving for my dad. She said, Oh honey, that's ridiculous. So that it never did bloom all, all winter. So summertime came and I said, well, we lived on an Island on the Mississippi and I said, I'm going to go bury it.

I'm going to bring it out to the cemetery. It's a natural cemetery. I said, I'm just going to put it out there and said, you can join dad, I'm not taking care of it, I'm not going to bring it in the Fall anymore. You didn't bloom. You're done. So I put it out on his grave and I left it out there, I said, I'm not a graveyard person, never went to visit, you know, but then Fall came. I thought, you know, I should go check and see if that things survived. I didn't water it and take care of it.

Go out there,it was still alive, brought it back home, that Christmas you couldn't even see green on it was so filled with flowers. And I knew then, and I said, there something to this. There's something to this. I didn't know I needed that. I didn't talk about it to anybody for years. I just knew it was my little secret until my son died and I asked him for a sign and got a sign from him. And I realized, wow, you know, this, this will save my life.

And my little gift from my dad, that, that I knew that I could survive this journey of losing my son. I lost my, my, my son and my dad. And I was ripped off at both ends and I was really pissed off at God. And, uh, but the sign that my son wasn't completely gone, it wasn't a hundred percent gone, brought me back. There was just that crack of light you need to bring your soul back. So that's where it brought me.

I wrote a book about this and I'll talk about the other sign that my son gave me more powerful it's in the slideshow. But when I asked him for a sign specifically, and after we moved back from Mexico and we were living and I caught the sign and I said, Oh my gosh, he actually sent exactly what I asked him for it. And so I took a picture of it, put it in my book, I wrote a book and I said, okay, I'm going to share this to other people that there is life after death on both sides of the equation.

So our, our loved one, our child died and for us who are left behind. It's going to be a sucky life for a long time, but we can do it together and that's what, okay, I got to share this story with people that there is a way through this, um, and it's not, without them not putting a black cloak over their picture and the mirrors of the house. Maybe they did that in the past and it worked for people but it didn't work for me.

I just, I'm a lawyer, but my vast majority of family members are medical people and they all just believe when life ends on this planet, it ends, there is no afterlife and, you know, I'm, I'm Jewish and my parents both believed there was no afterlife. And I have been learning more about the Jewish view of afterlife, but to me just, there's been too much empirical evidence from Matt over the past two plus years that he's been gone for me not to say that this is him. So I've done a total 180.

I thought there was no signs there was nothing after somebody passed and now I'm absolutely totally convinced based on the evidence that I've seen from Matt's passing. How did you feel that before your father passed and started seeing signs? I mean...

And, and so I started, maybe, I did never went to a psychic, but I just started going with them and realizing, wow. And I did some writing that I felt like it was almost automatic writing, um, because it just flowed from the knowledge base that I don't think I really had. So I, I believed it, yes, and so it seemed like I was totally prepared when I asked my son for sign that I truly believed that I would get one.

And so that really gave me the faith to ask for more or not even to look for more, you know, and not even ask as much as to look for and be aware that there can be a sign. That's why, when I even look at, picture that earlier, I saw the Jordan's message on the radio and it said 11:35 was the time and the station with 97.7 or three, and sometimes 11:35 may be a significant time in Jordan's life that has a connection to it as well. So, I look at everything.

Time of day, the feeling, what you were doing, the smell, the time of year. Our body remembers so much of all the details during a time of trauma, you know, that when we lived through this, even the smell of the Fall leaves can trigger something. So yeah, I was prepared and accepted it and it does keep coming. Now, 33 years at the end of the slideshow, I'll show you one that we just got this summer in Florida, unbelievable sign. And I've sharing that for the last.

So I almost think that it's almost your sensitivity and awareness for looking for signs. There might be signs that both of my parents are sending, but I'm not picking them up because I'm looking for signs from Matt more than signs from my parents.

I didn't grieve for my twin sister until 10 years later, or almost 15 years later when I went to a, um, no, it was 20 years later because I, she was killed in a car accident and I asked I called, uh, I saw the driver had a clipping of the driver's name and I, I called it. We have Google now and I Googled the driver's name and I got it and I talked to him and asked him what happened that night.

And it was, it's a long story, but it was phenomenal how I released his anxiety, that I said, we didn't blame you, my sister was a horrible driver. We don't know what happened. So, I mean, we had a dialogue and, and that I felt, God, I'm talking with my sister again and then twinless twins called me and said, could you come and speak at a twinless twins conference? I'd never been to a twinless conference. It never heard of them.

And go to a room with 125 people that are twins and see all, none of us look alike, because all our twins are dead. And, but it was just a, but we all had the same feeling you know, that, that we're something we're losing our car keys are always lost. There's always something missing.

And the closest thing I can compare that to is the loss of my son, liken to a twin because I lost my brother as well and, and I didn't have that same connection with my brother as I did with my twin sister, because we were roommates we had a relationship for nine months and that makes a difference. And in fact, the twins called us that are not twins, singletons. They say the singletons just don't get our grief, you know, and my sisters don't.

My other siblings don't get the grief I have for my siblings. So, we cannot expect other people to know what a child is like if they don't know. Um, but we can, I I'm, I'm sorry. I'm kind of going off on a tangent here, but, um, after my sister had died, I asked her for a sign. And, and I finally got this, I saw her in a dream. She said, Mickey, Mickey, Mickey, Mickey, Mickey, I love you. No one calls me Mickey anymore. Oh my God it was her and she looked so beautiful.

And a psychic had told me once that my, after my twin sister, a psychic came to me, I didn't go to her, but she said I had a reading or your sister came to me and says that, um, she just wanted me to tell you, yes, there are golden trees with apples in heaven. And that she's in charge of all the little children that died to come over too early.

So, that was three years before my son died and that when I, when my son died, I said, Oh my God, I know my twin sister is there to receiver, you know, it just like, I think even your, your mom was there to help out your son who was probably in that, still, I don't, I'm writing another whole book about that whole state that happens after, because my first book was letters to my son and it's all about me.

Now, the other book is letters to my dad and it's about Kelly, talking to me what happened after he died and how he tried to help us through these years with the signs and through the grief and it's just been kind of a fun book to, concept to work with him again and in a, in a dialogue, talking to him and feeling inspiration in the morning from him and so it doesn't have to go away. That's all part of the sign that it could bring a lot of our life back that we thought was gone forever.

Mitch has a PowerPoint that we're going to share, and we'll talk from, as we go through the podcast, but you'll be able to actually see this on our YouTube channel a couple of weeks after the podcast is out. So with that, Mitch, would you, should I go ahead and pull up?

So I talk about, you know, this is like an introductory to, for signs and for people to be able to identify it, they need to know what to identify and when they happen, so I'm going to go through each one of these one by one, but the prior to death, because that does, people have signs or portents, or, uh, uh, actually find something following the death that indicated that they knew the love room's going to die in some way, even though it wasn't like cancer or suicide that they werqe planning.

It was just a, like a young girl got killed on a, uh, one day, but she left behind on her computer. Uh, the 'not yet file'. All that she wanted for funerals. The songs, the stuff she didn't want. She had planned her whole funeral and a couple of weeks she was killed in a car accident. She didn't, it was just kind of completely accident, but yet on some level, her spirit, I think knows, and that we talked about prior to death, then at some level, the spirit knows and can get, get inkle or help.

I'm not sure how the process works, but I've, I've interviewed many bereaved parents that many have said, they have pause and they think back prior to the death, you know, a couple of weeks, a couple of days, what was, what has changed, what something happened that they said that would give you a pause and so that can happen then during the dying process, you know, after the death has occurred and during the dying process, I was with my son when he died. I was with my mother when she died.

I was with my grandmother when she died. And when my grandmother died, you know, I, I was working midnight shift and she was working, uh, you know, at that she was actively dying. I'd go there every morning and see her. And I saw her one morning and she's, and she's talking like this with her arms in the air. And I go, grandma, who you're talking to, she goes, well, grandpa Ernie, can't you see him? I said, yes, I do grandma, you know, it's good to see you again, grandpa.

So I was just placating her, I thought she was had dementia, but then the next morning I said, you know, she's doing okay. I'm not going to go tomorrow, that next day. Every morning I went there for a week. I didn't go that next morning and she died. And so I think she was waiting for me to not be there. So it would be easier for her to leave. So that was the first exposure is watching someone. You know, I didn't actually see her die, but I saw her, in the dying process.

When my son died and his lights went out, I mean, he was paralyzed and when he, when he died, his eyes glowed and he was looking through me and smiling, and he'd been paralyzed by the tumor, but his mouth relaxed. And he actually smiled and his eyes glowed almost like a poof, you know, quite blue again? And then they went grey and he, he died. And it felt so wonderful to see what he was seeing.

He was seeing something that I know someone was there to greet him, which I assumed was my twin sister. And then my aunt come in and she said, I had a dream and she said to bring three angels to you today. And I come over here and Kelly is dying. And she said, I brought these three angels to escort him to heaven. I mean, so these little things that continually happened, I mean, that happened on his death day. And then my mother died, I'm with her. And she's the atheist, mind you?

I told her she didn't believe in God. She's an atheist. It's over when it's over. Why do you believe in signs? Your dad is dead, why do you continue to torture yourself? And I said, mom, I'll be tortured without my son, my rest of my life. So like, we don't need to talk about it anymore because I am tortured. And she said, well, put it behind you, blah, blah, blah. Now she's dying and actively dying.

She's changed talking, she hadn't spoken in hours and we're gathered around her and said, yes, it's going to be any minute. And all of a sudden she opened up her eyes and she said, grandma, Oh, I can't wait to get your cherry pie. And she died. And my, my, my grandma, my wife's aunt and my sister said, Oh my gosh, thank God. She played that one close. You're not believing in God at the last second. Yeah, but to see her face again, to see her face, see somebody to see Kelly's face, see somebody.

I saw the reflection of God's presence more than seeing it. So that, that helped buoy me up after the deep grief the next day and the next week, the next years of drinking beer all the time. And, but those signs helped me come out of that. They really did. And so again, I'm just going all over the map, but that's during the dying process, then most of the time we'll be talking about signs and people in grief world, and I've been doing for 20 years is, the signs have come after they have died.

And it's in recognizing those and what we're talking about here. Now we can move the slide now.

And so that we're like an avatar for them. And, and to, to bring back their knowledge and their love to other people that recognize that same love and, and people start to do it. When they first, they get over the business that you're crazy or not going to get over this, they start to realize, wow, maybe they aren't going to get over this. And I say, you're right. You'll learn to live with it. And that's how we get by. And we look at everything that can make that journey better, like.....uh.

I talked about the prior to death, we talked about the dreams of drawings, writings of people, the premonitions, you have. Maybe people, some people are psychics, some people are not. You get that gut feeling and you just kinda start to act on it instead of shutting it down. You know, little kids used to talk about having invisible friends and we always shut them down. All your net. Nice. You got little invisible friends and I did the same thing.

Now. I know tha little children are talking to spirits. There are, they do have invisible friends. You know, they talked to grandpa in the backseat and who are you talking to? Oh, grandpa was here. I've heard hundreds of these stories of little kids under five, especially are still connected. They haven't been walled up and they are still very open once they get in school, you know, it gets embarrassing. They're not gonna talk about in visible friends.

They're not going to talk about, so everybody gets shut down and becomes normalized, you know, and we really lose that gift that we have as a child. And so when we start to understand that way, we can look at these things that happened prior and say, Oh, maybe there's some indication, that yes, I can get through the grief because I know it's not completely gone. So prior to another, it's important thing to look in retrospect in your grief.

And, and maybe there are some things that, wow, these things did happen prior. So we can move now.

They, actually, people were curious.

So, you know, they think, OK, Mitch going on, you know, and, uh, but, but yet there was a, there was a caveat with my daughter who thought, well now, you know, I was, you know, I'm an only child now and Kelly was a center of the universe for two years while they fought cancer, being bounced all over the place. And now I get to be center of the universe and dad says death, Kelly's not dead, he lives on, you know, so she was, yeah, I can understand her, you know, we talked about it as an adult.

She didn't talk about it back then I was too blind to even see it. But when she became a mother, she said, I want to forgive you dad because now I'm a mom. I get it. So, um, yeah. So during the dying process, let's go onto the next slide.

You know, so during the dying process, the angels are coming, relatives are coming and they're, I mean, they're, they talked about it without nonplus, you know, of course. Why you don't see them? And so you have to, again, to take pause that, that there's, they're not crazy. There's not all these people, all of a sudden getting dementia when they're dying or they're seeing the relatives that are coming and gathering.

And she did the same thing. She was talking to her sister that had passed and were saying, well, this is not an Alzheimer thing. This is something that we noticed. My wife's grandmother also did this, where she was talking only to people that weren't here and so we had three times where we're saying, wait a second. Once, sort of interesting twice, is this a pattern?

The third time we're very conscious of that because we've physically experienced this where they're just, they're leaving and they're talking to people that aren't here, but there somewhere else.

You know, when we start opening up more and our brains start to put things together, but after the death occurred, there's the visual signs or audio or even smell, you know, but there's some sort of sense that we get. It you can smell, I know some people have smelled their, you could smell their child in the wind, or, I mean, you know what, your child smells like you when they're come in from a workout or they've been a little kid from the snow and they, you know, they have their certain smell.

And every once in a while I would get a whiff of my son, like when he came in from outside playing, you know, and I would just, just stop and just breathe it in and know where'd it come from? I don't know. But these, so it can come in all of our inputs. We can get a sign. And so to be aware, that psychic information that we get, or from other people and dreams, visitation, and a dream and a visitation are different. A dream is like a dream you have.

Well, I wish, well, are we a dream of something you did before with your child or your loved one in life and, and they're kind of a modge-podge of everything. But when you have a visitation dream, like when I saw my sister. I mean, I woke my wife up and I said, honey, Sandy's here!. I mean, she was in full color, high def, high smell. I mean everything about it and I could still, where I'm talking to you now, I see her smiling face and Mickey, Mickey Mickey in my head, it's a video.

I can not get out of my head. And I had the same one when my book was published. I have not had dream of my dad, since he died, nothing at all. You know, and I was, so I have so many deaths after that, you know, that I never really even tapped on it or asked him for any. But when I published my book, I kind of pined, like God, you know, I, my dad died way too young to be proud of me. I was never good in sports. I was never good in this. And I always felt I was a disappointment at 15, you know?

And so I really couldn't, uh, you know, I never could get his accolades for doing a good job. I had a dream, my book was published. It came in, it came in the mail, the whole case of books and, and I, Oh my God, they're done. I can send them out. And I had a dream that night.

My dad who died in his dress blues as a police officer coming down a valley, down a hill, coming down this Hill, walking in his dress, blues and looking at me and I I'm coming down the hill, I go, dad, and he goes, I'm so proud of you son. And then it ended. He never crossed the valley. I never went down, but he just pointed at me and said, I'm so proud of you son. So I finally got it from him. And so there's no time limit on these either, you know, and I never did get a sign from my mom.

You know, I tell, on her birthday. One of those black balloons from someone's 50th birthday party or something, whatever, our dogs were barking in the yard. And I go running out in the yard and, and I go, what are the dogs barking at? And they're in the garden, barking in the garden and look in the garden. There is a black balloon with a silver string on it, bouncing around in the garden, on my mom's birthday. And I said, Oh mom, you.... so I knew it was her. I just knew it was her.

It had been all years since, but I just, okay, fine. I've got a sign for my mom, my dad, I got a sign from them all. And I don't even ask. It's just whatever, whatever, whatever they need, you know, maybe they're on a different task that God has planned, I don't know. Or we resolved everything. I pretty much resolved everything with my mother and there was nothing except I wanted a sign. So she sent me a sign, but that was it. There was never any dialogue.

And I knew she was doing good and she made it and, and we never had any issues. So it brings up a lot of good grief issues too. When you're wishing for signs, you start to think, think about things that you look at the guilt and regret that we have and, and, and study them and it's okay. I did. I haven't, I, you know, I didn't know this was going to happen. But maybe I can talk about it with mom again, you know, so it can open up the being in the present with them, which is so important.

So being in the present, looking for these signs, that's, what's so important just being aware.

So I walked outside, I sat down on the grass and we had a couple of trees there. They're probably 20 yards apart. And I was, it was, the lake was so still, it looked like a, a mirror. It was reflecting everything from the far side. And all of a sudden I noticed something moving along the edge and it was a dragon fly. And it was probably three feet off shore and I counted 29 times that it went back and forth between those trees.

And I could see it, like, it was like a foot over the water, so it was maybe three feet off shore. And I'm like, I saw it, I noticed it, I started counting. I counted 29 times and on the 29th time, my right shoulder got so cold, it was like, somebody touched it with an ice cube. And I was like, wow Jordan, is that you? And I told Shelly about it and she's like, don't you tell anybody about that! And I'm like, dragonflies, don't go back and forth like 30 times so,

This lady was telling me and I, then I'm 80 years old and I know Hank sat on my bed. And he sat at the same spot every time, to take his shoes off and I knew it was him you know? And it can be just that feeling that you feel on the edge of the bed. No, no smell, no sight, no people, everybody wants the billboard and that is, those are nice, but they're rare, you know, where you'll get a visual people, see them and actually talk to them. What I've taught.

I have people that have experienced that, but that's not the norm. Most of it's just that subtle stuff like the bed and or finding a corridor on the bed. And then, wasn't there before then it disappears that it's there again and little things like that. So that's how all of the, after the death has occurred, we're talking about all these things that can happen.

And then during the near-death experiences, I, talked with my mother and I kept pretty much been over that with my mother, how she saw my grandmother and my son, saw somebody, so, we can just skip through this slide. But this is an important picture because of the near-death experience that my son had. Because he had surgery, to remove the brain tumor.

They took as much as they could, and it's at the base of the neck here, so it, it, his heart started to skip a beat and, you know, it's the respiratory center, it's everything, but they, it's so wrapped around everything they had to get as much, and they were going a little too deep and his heart stopped. So he was dead for a couple minutes. They, they brought him back and they were success, he was success.

But he was in a coma for a week, intubated and we're just praying, hoping, praying that he would survive. And then he did and when he finally did get intubated out, we said a said, He said, first thing, he said that that, that his role was raspy but dad, he goes, I gotta tell you, you won't believe it. He said, I left during surgery. I saw the surgery. I left up, floated out of my body. I'm on the ceiling.

He said, I saw all the walls in the room, all the bright lights and the doctors all over me and he counted the nurses I can't remember, but he gave all these facts. And I, I said, you're kidding. I said, you really left your body? Yes, yes! I just floated up and I was there and he said, I was holding hands with Jesus. And I said, you were holding? He said, yeah. I said, did he say anything? He says, yes, Kelly, you will be well.

And we're very lukewarm Catholic family so, and he wasn't going to catechism and so I'm like, you know, where is he coming from where he seeing Jesus? Yeah, I believe in Jesus, but I'm not looking forward to seeing him right away. But when Kelly said that he saw Jesus, I said, well, what did he look like? He's said, he looked just like Half Nelson. I said half Nelson, who's that? He said one of my Garbage Pail Kid cards.

Because Kelly was sick, you know, 18 months we had 5,000 Garbage Pail Kid cards, you know, that we collected, that was what he did. And now they're my granddaughters. But, so th that's just what his, he pulled. I had to go home and pull out what Jesus looked like. And I was working for the Catholic Church at the time. And I showed pastor father Jim, you know, saying father, Jim, this is my son said, Jesus looked like. He said it's not the Romanesque version.

Um, but he said, actually I see the full implications of your son seeing full spirit. Anima, animus, sensitivity, strength. Our body defines our gender. Our soul does not. And he said that is what's the beauty of it. He's saying pure, beautiful spirit, both sides of the equation, both the masculine, the feminine, the yin, the yang. All, everything is the best way he could describe it. Yeah, that was profound to me, you know? Yeah, I see it.

The strength, the sensitivity, he was describing spirit. The only way he could to his context of a Garbage Pail Kid card, you know? And some people will think it was sacreligious and no, are you kiding? This is what my son saw, I think it's funny, you know, I think it's great. I love it. You know? And, uh, so I share that a lot that he did, you know? And so I use that. I've always used that in this, presentation because that again gave us evidence.

It gave us strength to go through the journey after he did die, that he had met Jesus. And, he said you will be, well, we thought we'll be, well, he would be healed, but we know that's not always the case.

You know what sometimes dying is, is the ultimate, you know, when he, his tumors were all over his body, I was praying for his death at night because he was screaming all night, you know, you know, that's nothing else would, you know, unless it's death would get him out of it, you know, and nothing we couldn't do anymore suppositories. He was so skinny and, and so when death did take him, it was a relief that he would die so he was out of pain.

And so the undiagnosed tumor that he did have turned out to be a blessing that we did not know, but that actually killed, stopped his brain before the tumors in his spine would just get bigger and bigger and bigger. And so again, there's things that can kind of help us that, uh, following the loss that happened prior to the loss. And I keep going back and forth on signs because there is no they're, they're all kind of mixed together. So then the peaceful transitions, I call it soul speed.

You know, while we're in soul speak that we're, we're in that spot where we're in meditation. We're in prayer where we're reading the Torah, whatever, we're in that sacred divine spot where we're communicating. You know, with God at a higher power. So we're in that space in a dream world I think. We're in that and the dying process. And to know that we are, and to actually feel that cause so many people will feel it if we allow it, we can feel our arm. We can feel the energy, the room gets warm.

There's a lot of things that that can transpire at during the dying process, if we're aware and not everybody has the opportunity to be there. So I don't talk about it as being the best thing that can happen. But yet it can be helpful for the journey, but can also have, you're not there, if it's a mixed bag, you know, I, I wish I'd not even seen my son in the casket. You know, I just, that was not him in there. And, and I can't get that out of my head.

People that find their loved one in the bathroom that had completed suicide or had had, I had a horrible accident and you have to see that, you can't unsee that stuff. So sometimes we regret and a lot of people will say, well, I'd never had the chance to say goodbye. And I said, well, I had the chance to say goodbye. I did with my sister, but I did with my son, I did with my mother. But when it came to that point to say goodbye, I couldn't. All I could say was, I love you. I love you.

I shouldn't say goodbye. Cause I know it's not the bond.

I think I was trying to hurt the mortician cause he's taken my son away, cause back in the day when the kids were young, I owned a big black, 1980 hearse, landau roof on it, all the lights in the back, rollers, beautiful hearse and we used it for camping for, they called us the Adams Family, we'd go camping because this big old hearse, we pull into the camp ground and it was fun. It was great. Anyway, that had that hearse. Now, at this point, Kelly died, we'd lost everything we had was gone.

But when I put him in, I lifted, I put him in the back of the hearse and I looked right into the morticians eyes and I said, you know, this isn't his first ride in hearse. And I walked away. I do, I still kind of have guilt for that, that I, that I, that I what's he think, I wonder what he thought, you know, but it was like, I couldn't help myself.

And so we act really strange in the dying, in the dying process and, and all the things that lead up to it, whether it's instantaneous or like with suicide, or it's like all these different things, all those change everything. But what doesn't change is that they can communicate to us after they have died. And so let's go on to the next one. Here's a little boy and we have a special rosary that this little boy is wearing.

I forget I'm describing this, I have a picture of a boy, Tyler, who some parents have read my book and, or they actually came to a Compassionate Friends meeting and they were in the audience and then we, everybody introduces yourself, you know, what is your name and what is your loss? When it came around to this boys parents and they said, well, we're Tyler Haraker's parents, and but, he's not dead yet.

And I've never been to a compassionate friend's grief group or someone with any advance, you know? And I, I was just, you know, and I do, I talk about proactive grieving, and, and I was kind of startled. I said, your son has not died? No, he is dying actively. But we know you wrote a book about your son who died of cancer, and we want to know, is there anything we can do to save his life?

I said, yes, I have, I have, it's very special rosary, that my son had that he, he didn't pray with it like a Catholic. I mean, he didn't even know how to it, he just held it like an amulet, you know, and, and so when he died, it was put away into a the chest of things with all his stuff. You know, I didn't think about it for years, because it was his sacred rosary. Until a friend of mine, you know, almost 20 years now, got cancer, he had to have a bone marrow transplant, completely unsuspected.

They said, you've got cancer. It's coming on fast. You need a bone marrow transplant. And so he said, okay. So he, he got the bone marrow transplant, got, umbilical cord blood from a little girl in Italy, matched him perfectly. He still survived. He's doing great, but he said, I need something and I I've lasted my Catholic roots. And so I said, David, take this rosary. It's it's a very powerful rosary.

Prayed with it and he kept with it and then he got better and so I said, can I get the rosary back? Another friend of mine has got an informal cancer, a rare form of cancer. And he was like no. I don't want to give it back. It needs to go to someone else, David. And so David gave it away. And so I gave it to someone else, and went to someone else, it went to someone else. I mean, now David had a cancer liver cancer three months ago. The rosary had finally made it back to me again.

Eighteen different people have had it since David had it. And I gave it to him for his surgery, for his liver cancer. And we went for a Fall ride the other day, his cancer was completely gone, he's doing great, and he gave me the rosary back. I gave it to my cousin who also had it once before, but her cancer came back. So it's a very special rosary, but it happened to be home, you know, for a few days. It's weird how it had magic of its own. It travels on its own. I'm just it's caretaker.

So, the rosary came back and so the Haraker's asked about the rosary. I said, no, it's with somebody right now, they read about it in the book. And I said, I, I wish I could give it to you. I went home the next day and I got a phone call from my sister and says, someone came by, saw my mailbox and said, I got, they said, I want drop this rosary off. I saw my kids graduate, I don't need it anymore.

And then she died a year, about a year after that, but all she want to do is get well to see her kids graduate, which she did. And then she said, I don't need any anymore. I never spoke to her, but it went to my sister. So, I called the Haraker's right away and said, the rosary came back. You won't believe it came back yesterday or I mean today. And they said, well, we'll meet you at Taco Bell in Hastings, so two hours each way, we, we met, I said, no, why don't you just come to our house?

So they came to our house. Came over, I gave him the Rosary, he put it on and all of a sudden he started to smile and he said, I want something to eat. And they said, he hadn't eaten anything in days, and he wanted Cheetos and a root beer. And the parents looked and said, Oh my God, he wants Cheetos and a root beer and he hadn't even eaten. And so he did and, and he's talking, he said, I really feel good.

And then I took his brother, as you can see in the back and he can't see it if you're listening, but in this picture, there's a brother in his back in the background. His older brother was about four years older that he's about seven years old, Tyler and his brother was about 10 or 12. And I said, you know guys, you know what, I'm thinking, the emotional risk, because I've been bereaved and working with people. I say, you know, Tyler's dying.

This rosary is going to help him, but just in case he does die, go in the back room and you guys make up a sign, tell each, tell a sign that only you guys know that Tyler can send you when you know, that when he has gone. So Jacob said, okay, let's go to the back. So he and Tyler did, they came out and they said, okay, we did it. That was, again, it was a week later, the Haraker's called and said that Tyler had died.

He held the rosary in his hand holding it and he went and he started using it like a key. And he said, I'm trying, and the dad said, what are you doing, honey? They're laying in bed, he said, I'm trying to open the door to heaven, but they won't open it. And his dad said, honey, don't worry the angels will come. The angels will come. And he said, daddy, I think they're coming. I see Jesus! And he died in his dad's arms and he too carried him out to the hearse, he told me.

That's two boys that saw Jesus, both one, a little, didn't even know anything about the rosary one that really didn't know about it either, and he was Catholic, so they saw it. So that was so any stuff he hadn't had no more night terrors. He was having night terrors about dying every, since he got the rosary, he'd no more night nightmares. He just sort of blended into his death, instead of him being terrified of it from this. So then three months later, Jacob calls me.

He goes, Mitch, I got to call you your books, numbers in the book. I said, I haven't even talked to my parents yet, they're at work, but I got home from school and I'm sitting in the room and I'm having a bad Tyler day sitting on my bed, the bunk beds that I have alone now. And I said, Tyler, where's my sign? And a Red Tail Hawk came and landed on the window sill and looked through the window. And he said, Mitch, we made a sign of a Red Tail Hawk! How does this happen?

I said, you are so lucky, Jacob, your brother knows it was so strong. I love that, you know, that will change that boys philosophy on life and death, the rest of his life, because they have the opportunities. So, I talk to anybody I can, if you have an opportunity with my mother-in-law, I've already talked to him, my sister, we've already given signs to everybody to say, well, here make this a sign that is feasible.

You know, that we can get back and we laugh about it now because we're not dying. But yeah, I think it's a good thing to plant that seed. And, um, so when we can do that, So that's preparing for the journey. So I believe these boys are together like Peter Pan, you know, they're up there, Tyler and Kelly are playing together, and, and I really do. I think that they, our angels are boys. They coordinate our children are whatever our loved ones communicate in some sort of, I don't know.

But I think they do. So science again, here, after the deaths occurred, we can get through this. This is the lead on. We're talking about visible signs. It was deep, like I have a picture here of a grilled cheese sandwich. That's actually found in Florida 10 years ago. Where a woman, her daughter was took a bite out of the cheese sandwich and the mom screams, stop! The Virgin Mary's in there!

And the girl stopped, she froze it and sold it on eBay for thousands of dollars because it looks just in the cheese sandwhich look just like Marilyn Monroe in the, I didn't think it looked like Mary as much as it does look like Marilyn Monroe, but it's an actual face in this cheese sandwich. So, then they can look in the clouds and people. I put a Sharpie around this, a picture that someone had sent me and it shows like an Ark Angel. You can see the face and you see the wings going up behind it.

So this is a term called apophenia, APOPHENIA, apophenia, and its ability for the mind to see random bits of information in a recognizable discernible form as you see a face in some wood on a floor and a door or something. You see a poodle in this guy where you see an angel in the sky, you see a heart and this sky. You do see it. We see it, our mind puts it together and we see it. It looks like a heart.

So sometimes look at your pictures later, when you take pictures at events where a loved one would be there, or the spirit is filled when people are filled with spirit and grief, just like you were in a church or in the graveyard, spirits congregate around that power. And a lot of things happen when people are congregant. And here, this is in our backyard on Kelly's birthday. And, you know, this is before cell phone and like, Oh my God, I gotta run out, you know, with like Pentax.

And, but it looked like, can you see the big heart? It's just a heart in the sky with the sun is peeking through and little holes, but it looks like a heart that has been, you know, with a BB gun on a piece of metal, you know, and you can see the heart coming through and, and it can only last for a second sometimes, but that's why it's so nice.

Nowadays, people have the advantage of having your cell phones with you and even showing up moving orbs now are showing up and we'll talk about orbs in a second. So we can hear you just more hearts, here's a heart in a coffee cup, like a stain in the bottom of the coffee cup, looks like a heart, the Father Jim at the church that looked like he saw a chalice of Christ within the hearts. And so he saw that.

And then a waffle batter came out of the dishwasher with a heart on it and see us, keep looking for hearts. And we have some more slides as arts here, uh, hearts in a tulip flower. Our hearts in a Walnut. Hearts underneath a pile of leaves. Tony Rambis sent me or, uh, the Rambis' has sent me this picture of all these that they get. They get lots of hearts and, and with a loved one, that's giving signs at the, these after, after death signs, they usually apply it with their signature.

So, once you know that they know that, you know, that they know, you know what I need, they will send you no. So they make sure, and their personality comes through. And so I call it a signature and boys love to tease their moms. If the dishwasher comes out and off and on and off and on again, she goes, why is the dishwasher coming off? You've never loaded it or started it your whole life when you were living. And now you're turning it on and off, will you please stop it.

And I, I like to talk to moms, that you can still yell at your children because they're not completely gone. So yes. And siblings will be jealous of the affection you have for your lost child, but siblings will always be jealous and parents can always yell at their child or whether they're alive or dead. And so just keep them in the, in the, in the, in the present is really helpful. So there's so many different hearts can come over. All these arts, I got pictures of were found in my garden.

So if my grandchildren grew up with proactive, grieving, they know to look for signs and they found all these in our garden. We were on the farm for 25 years, it was probably an old farm and gardens. They used to throw stuff in and so heart, heart, leather, heart showed up a little, uh, ruby heart, and a heart that was inside of a stone and my granddaughter said, Papa looked at the heart stone, but it's whole, but it's broken. And I just started crying. I said, yes honey.

I mean, you're describing my heart. It's whole and still beating, but it's been broken and, but yet it's still holding and can function. And so it, it gives an opportunity to, to learn, to teach children. These are the Stillwater stones. There's a, excuse me, a town in Stillwater, Minnesota, which is one of the oldest towns in Minnesota. And so people always go there on the weekends.

It's a river town and all the old buildings and antique shops and, so some friends of ours and you'll see their daughter in the slideshow coming up, live in Chicago. So they're now really good friends with us and we've been down in Chicago to visit them. In fact, my son loved Trains, Planes, and Automobiles. We saw it the day before he died. And John Candy was his all-time favorite actor.

So we saw the movie the day before he died, and I'm so glad that we, as a family can actually laugh together the day before he died, when it was all much, so much pain and tearsand so we had that, that, that John Candy moment. But when we went, so we went to go visit our friends and they're bereave, and I'll talk about their daughter later, but we went to go. I said, I want to recreate Trains, Planes, and Automobiles.

So out of TCF conferences, we're going to come down to your house on Thanksgiving in Chicago. We're going to take the train down. You're going to drive us around and we're going to fly back. And your wife is going to make Thanksgiving dinner for us, just like Steve Martin's wife did. And she did, we went down there, we took a train down there. We took a car down there and we flew back and we had Thanksgiving dinner at their house.

And when they came up to visit us we went into Stillwater, this little town, and we're walking on a Monday afternoon after a summer busy weekend in a Rivertown. And it's quieter on Monday. And I looked down cause I'm always looking for signs. I was looking for everything. I mean, I just, it become part of your life. And I saw a stone and I got it here and it said, I love you written on it with little flowers and just like some kid had made in a project. Or church project or whatever.

And it said, love you. And so I said, Oh my God, look at that and I showed it to my friend, Lenny, who was walking with me, my, our wives were miles ahead of us window shopping. We were taking pictures. And I said, look, man, he says, love you. And he goes, wow, that's so cool. That must be a sign from Kelly. And I said, well, I'll take it. Well, I wasn't sure if I should take it. It was sitting in front of a window in front of a shop, but that's what the shop is closed.

And, and it's on the outside so I said I'm to take it. And that's what we walked a little farther and my, and my buddies go, hey, man, I can't believe that and he looked down by a drain pipe in the alley and he goes, there's another one. And it's a stone painted yellow with the word, believe on it. He goes, I do believe, I do believe.

And so we run up, to show our wives and I show up and he'd go show us this why he goes, look, MItch's said, love you and I said, Oh my Go it says believe and his wife turns it around and it says, You matter on the other side of the believes and we go, Oh my God, love you, believe you matter. And then my wife said, well, where's mine. I've got to find one. So we walked a couple more blocks, nothing.

We walked on the other block, going the other direction, some more shops and she went down underneath the doorway. It was closed like to an apartment. And she saw this rock sitting on the stool. It said on the stoop, you are worth this fight. Turn it over and it says love. And she got, this is getting crazy, but we got, we got to go to a restaurant and we got a reservation.

So we went down a couple more blocks, took a ride, another left and went to this restaurant and there was a little flower pot sitting on outdoor bistro table going in. And we walked in the door, everybody walked in, and my wife, just naturally kind of pushed the flowers aside, the ad underneath that was another rock and it said it's all okay, be brave.

I'm beginning to think that this is like a Hansel and Gretel thing for someone that was dying and I'm walking behind picking up all these rocks meant for someone else and should I go put them back? And I asked them the restaurant and I said, we found this rock and she goes, Oh, I saw that this morning when we opened up, I have no idea where it came from. So now I know that those rocks were there in those places all day long, no one saw them except us.

And when you read it all together for a bereaved parent, I love you. Believe you matter. You are worth this fight. Love. It's all okay. Be brave. Now isn't that a message for a bereaved parent that was so effectively put together by four bereaved parents walking who believe, who have had signs, and we know that our children, our buddies in heaven, because it goes now they don't have any grief, their only daughter died. So now our grandchildren are their grandchildren.

They said, when you come on down with our grandchildren, to Chicago again. And so we did for Christmas and we saw all the lights at Christmas, in Chicago with them. So these are the collateral blessings that come into our lives. We have collateral damage from the anniversary day, the angel versary days, but we have collateral blessings from the people that we met, like meeting you two guys today, or, well, I've met Steve before, but these are blessings that do come into our life.

So, if we're open and aware, there are stuff speaking to us all the time. This is the picture of a, of a truck. You could see the truck down below it's parked in the driveway behind it is a tree with a long limb. A young man hung himself on that limb on his backyard. The parents called me Not the parents, friends of the parents called me they, and this kid's name was Mitch is Mitch, excuse me, I said there was word. But Mitch worked at the, at the, grocery store.

I mean the hardware, Hardware Hank in town. So I'd go to the guy once a while, I'd see him and I go, hey Mitch. He'd go, hey, Mitch, you know, we'd laugh, but I didn't really know him but then when I heard that he had died of suicide, I said, I had written a poem when a child dies by suicide and it was in my book, which I, I, I put my book in all the funeral homes, a dentist office, doctor's offic,. I just put it for people to have and to get.

And, so they saw it and they said, we want to use that poem in the funeral is that all right? And I said, yeah, certainly I will bring you your own book out. So I went out to their house two days after Mitch had taken his life. And I walk into that house and, you know, yeah. You know what it's like sitting in the kitchen table at a, at a home where someone had just had a loss, no matter what the loss is.

Where people are all gathered in hushed tones drinking coffee and eating snacks and, you know, you know, it's, it's horrible. I walked in, I didn't know anybody in there. I only barely knew Mitch. And then I walked in and the, and the mom goes, looked right at me and she goes, why are you wearing a camouflage bandana? And I don't want to be smart ass with it. What the bereaved mom who just lost her son but I said, because it goes with my camouflage Chuck Taylor, tennis shoes.

I said, I work at the school and I said, I wear different Chuck Taylors every day and I wear a different bandana to match. She goes, why did you wear a camoflauge bandana today? I said, because I don't know, I just pulled it out of the drawer. And she goes, look at the couch. There's my Mitch's clothes on the couch, all camouflaged. I go, what?

She goes, at the funeral we're having everybody in his high school, you know he died in high school, all the high school, every kid is either hunters in small town of Hastings, everybody's wearing their camouflage gear to the church. Everybody wore camo and she goes, then you walk in here with camo on. And so right there was like a sign for her.

And then the dad says, well, Mitch, come here, I'm going to show you something and he goes me out in the yard and he said, I got to show you where Mitch's truck was parked. We're going to use his truck to haul the coffin, his mud truck, to haul the coffin to the funeral. And when we moved the truck to clean it up, there's this huge oil stain underneath the truck in perfect shape of a heart if you guys could see on the screen.

And he said, he said, I saw the, in your book that you had pictures of examples, like the Walnut and he saw the pictures in the book that had the examples of hearts and he said, so I knew what to expect and I didn't expect it, but now I know that it was from Mitch. And then my, then my wife says you had the camouflage on and he said, I don't even know what to do. He goes, what do I do with the tree? I don't know. I don't know what you need to do with that tree.

He eventually went to a native American chief that lived on, he works at the Prairie Island, nuclear plant near a native American. And he, he knew a native American. He said, what should I do with that tree? And he said, water it well my son. I said, Oh, so I did, is that okay if I needed someone to tell me it was okay that I didn't have to cut it down or I should not have to look at it every day.

It was just so there's so many aspects of this, but because they were aware a little bit ahead of time of signs, how much it helped them two days following when they're in complete shock. And again, they love it. They, they have a cabin up in Northern Michigan. Now we've been up there a couple of times, gone skiing in Northern Michigan and I've gone to their daughter's wedding and the collateral blessing is we are fast friends. And the signs that can happen.

That, with this family, just with them, the little things that have happened, they said come over to our house you want to have at our house, we lived on the farm and we came over and, I had just redone my bathroom because I had a 2010 year. I said, I had a stronger than a bucket list. It started with a different continent. It's a lot stronger, than bucket. And so I said, there's some things I really want to do.

And I have this box of old newspapers that my dad had from World War I, World War II, all the when Kennedy was shot. I mean, all these newspapers. I said, I asked my daughter, well I don't want them. I said, well, we're cleaning stuff out and I said, I don't know what to do with all these and you don't want them. So I wallpapered the bathroom down in the basement. My wife thought I was crazy. I wallpapered the whole room with all these old, old newspapers.

This couple comes over and then we're, we're, we're tight friends is bereaved and, and, and believing in signs. And the dad goes into the bathroom and he comes back out and men read things on the wall differently than women do in a bathroom. So, uh, he comes out and he says, Mitch, I have to ask you why in the hell do you have a picture of my wife glued onto your bathroom wall? I said, what are you talking about? These are old newspapers in my basement. He said, come in here.

And I, and he brought was wife. Look, Lynn, we go in there and she goes, Oh my God, that's me! It was an advertisement, how to hang wallpaper. And I thought, Oh, I'll be funny and hang, this 1978 ad about hanging wallpaper and she worked at plywood, Minnesota at that time as the wallpaper expert and she, it was her picture in the paper. Yeah, I mean, you can't make the, there's not even a category for that.

That's why I tell theat story because they taught me so many, way more, they're more like validations than signs anymore. You know, that there is some spiritual connection then, and we were meant to be together. This meant to help each other on this journey. So here we have more, someone asked for sign. Here's hearts on a picture up of hearts and a garage wall. And, let's go onto the next one.

And then there's a van that his wife gets bunnies because the sign for their daughter was about bunnies all the time, bunny, rabbits, bunnies, bunnies, that, and the dad had never gotten a sign. Then he's walking along the beach and he trips over a rock and a rock flips up and it's a bunny rabbit on this rock. It looks like a Playboy sticker if you can't see it here, but it looks like a Playboy sticker with the eye and the ears and everything.

And I had to laugh, I said, I put this on the slide show and I said, you know, it doesn't have to be a real bunny. It can just be the sign of a bunny, you know, and our picture of a bunny. And that's the, again, all these things have been coming from other children and other people to show the flexibility of the sign that can be almost any different way. So let's go and butterfly, so many people get butterflies. Well Aaron's mindset.

You know, I get butterflies with my son, my husband, again never gets butterflies. He's on the beach. He, a butterfly shell walks up. I mean, it's a split crack molusk shell, just like a blue swallow tail that landed right between his feet.

And so these things, then they go back to the next year and they go back there and they see his face in the water, a reflection of his face in the water, which you can see on the right-hand side of this picture but on the radio, you can not obviously, but they could just see the image. I mean, it kind of looks like Jim Morrison reflection in the water, and then he did, Aaron did look like that.

This ones a picture of Brandy's mom gave me this picture of a cat-scan of her daughter who died of a brain tumor. So we had a connection right away, we talked.

And at the conference, she comes down with a picture she took of the mirror in her hotel room, which anybody else would have called room service and said the maid was really sloppy and left this sponge print on the window, but it wasn't on there until she took a shower and this big, huge sponge print showed up on the mirror, which looks like a healthy brain. And she said, this is my Brandy telling me that she's okay. She has a healthy brain, even she's in heaven.

So this wouldn't mean anything to anybody else, but to Brandy's mom it meant everything. And this is a, uh, cat. Uh, what do you call the, the ultrasound for a child? This was in the TCF Taps Conference. I, uh, caps mom and said her daughter was having a baby, but, uh, her nephew had, was killed in Afghanistan. And he was, couldn't wait to see his nephew.

Garrett could not wait to see his nephew and then he died the baby was still in utero and they had this ultrasound and it shows a picture of Garrett doing goochie, goochie, goo underneath this child's chin. And since I've had this for several years, I've had more people send me ultrasound pictures. It's amazing because it come through this show, some sort of something, that maybe other people say, Oh, it's wishful thinking, you're looking so hard, you know? Well, yes we are.

You know, and I found it, thank God. You know, so yeah. So don't try to intimidate me with your doubt. Uh, just say thank you and or appreciate that, that, you know, I don't want to yell at people, but here's what I know. This is one of Steve's favorites.

Jim is a collateral blessing that Michelle's dad is, and, and we always meet at Waffle House in Atlanta whenever I go there. So it was a picture. His, his daughter, Michelle had died. Then his other daughter was taking, took his old Pentax camera and it was still in high school and she'd get a project for high school photography class and she was taking mountain pictures and she took some like in Asheville, North Carolina, when they're visiting and she's doing these different mountain pictures.

And so the principals hanging them up for the show and she had like a series of mountain pictures and they had this one, when they were going to hang it up on the wall, it was sideways. They're looking at it sideways and they go, Oh my God, you can freaking show Marshall when you, when you turn it sideways, it looks just like the silhouette, not silhouette, but the three quarter view of his daughter, Michelle, like she's wearing a beautiful feather hat.

You can see your eyes through it, her nose, now back the shoulder that countenance of just, uh, of peace and reflection. And then this is the, what we're seeing on this road picture. Then the next picture, I'll show a picture of Michelle next to it and you can see the similarity of her. So, Jim, when I met him it was an all day workshop.

In the morning, we talked about our children's death and he talked that he had gone camping, in Florida and that the daughter had gone missing and they couldn't find her looking at the beach and they found her purse and her clothes and, and saw her arm floating in the water, she had been eaten by an alligator.

And so then I see him in the afternoon, he's got this picture in his hand, like he's got a grandfather with a grand baby and he got to see this picture, you've got to see this picture and I can see how much that I could see it as, uh, you know, the witnessing people and see them how they were in the morning, uh, at the, uh, the pain of the grief. And then I see them in the afternoon when we're talking about signs and see them glow with a recognition that their, their child lives on.

And so this picture phenomenal and it's so....

Synchronicity is more of the timing that it happens like a synchronicity as when you find the dime on the ground and when you bend over to pick it up, the, the falling debris that was going to hit you in the head went swinging by and you miss that, that was the serendipity. That was the luck or the good fortune that came from the synchronicity.

So, those things happen when you sit at a conference and you sit next to somebody, you have no idea why, and you realize, Oh my God, they had their child at the same loss or same birthday or you will know that you were meant to sit at that table. There's some manipulation, some God, not guidance, I guess, or pushes or nudges that gets us to feel these synchronicities, that happen.

License plates, billboards, seeing a falling star, seeing a double rainbow, seeing a rainbow, in a, in a clear sky, all of a sudden seeing a rainbow. Billboards with your child's name or loved one. License plates are obvious, those happen a lot. People that you're supposed to meet. Repeated numbers. And numbers, another huge thing for so many people that the same number comes up all the time.

And for my number and it's been coming up for years as 420, which is embarrassing now because it's kind of a college term for smoking dope, but, but I get it when I get a room number or I get change or, and I it's it's happened so much all the time that even my granddaughter, we arrived at a hotel in Canada at a TCF conference and, and we moved to the hotel and she goes, pop pop, 420, duh, it's Kelly.

And then we'd go next couple days, we went downtown and touristing and we'd go to a parking lot and we'd get out and punch the parking to leave. And she goes, what time does it say on their pop pop? 420. She goes, see? So it happens. all these, these 420's kind of happen all the time.

Then I looked when my granddaughter was born because she was born on my son's death day and so I was curious what day she would, what hour she was born at compared to what hour Kelly was born at, because I knew it was early in the morning. We look up Kelly's birth certificate. Guessed what time he was born at 4:20 in the morning. So now I get it.

And even I was going through stuff, cleaning up my office and I found the the invoice from Beaver's Pond Press for my book, it was first published and the invoice for the cover art was $420. So I mean, it just, it, once you recognize it, you'll see it all over the place and so, I don't know if you guys have had any numbers at all.

And so they were going to Wisconsin Dells and he said, Oh, let's do one more set of rides and he went, I'm going to get a hundred bucks worth of change and he goes to an ATM and puts the money in. All his money drops out of the ATM, the twenties one at a time while the last one comes out, has Austin written out in magic marker. And Dylan's girlfriend says I work in a bank, we destroy those. That can't be.

How could that get in there and to count Austin out of an ATM when you haven't had a sign and not, I mean, It was incredible, that did so much for Dylan, and he said, finally, Austin,you got me.

And actually with your Stanford University, that's where it was. So we are, and we are, we are all done. We said, Oh, let's go to a pizza college pizza place, eight o'clock at night, we're wiped out in the studio all day. And we go into a busy restaurant or a college restaurant, you know, the big, tall pizza place with all the big booze, with all the burnt, you know, names written into the scrawled, into it and on every place in the whole building, kind of there's one place in Chicago.

I've been to it's like that too. Probably a lot of places. But anyway, we go in and we're going to sit down at a table, it was open. And Alan's wife says, I don't like sitting at a table, I want to sit in a booth. And I said, well, because it's the only table open and, she goes, I don't care. And she goes there's people are leaving over there. And so a few people got up and left, we ran over there and sat down in the dirty booth. And, and so we'll wait for the waitress.

The waitress came over, said, I'll clear your table. She clears the stuff in front of me. And I looked down and it says, KC, which is my son's initials, Shelly Carmody you know, and I always wanted to call him KC, is I never, he never got old enough to give him a nickname to call him, hey, KC, you know, but anyways, KC's there and I said, Oh my God and there's a heart beneath it.

That's like a sign the cart with my son and then I looked further down it says, Mitch, underneath the heart, Kelly, Carmody above it, the heart and Mitch underneath the heart. Well, you can't make this stuff up either. And I said, Allen. I thought Allen. Hey, look at what I got, I got, cause now we've been on a grief journey long enough. We, we can say it almost with humor. Hey, look at, I got buddy, you know, come on where's Ashley sign? He goes, well, I don't know.

So say they moved some more stuff and if you go to the next slide, his daughters, Ashley, Ashley Peterson, or the giant AP in front of him. He, I won't tell you what he said. And he said, oh my God. And then Denise, he, uh, wife you know, sitting there waiting, and she's looked all glum and she goes, Oh, I see Carolee. And we know, I mean, we talk about our kids all the time. I see Kelly and I see Ashley's there, but where's my Seanee? How come, I don't get assigned from Sean?

And I said, well, I don't know all the tables are dry. I said, she said, Oh, wait a minute. And she moved that little six pack of, ketchup and mustard and all that stuff. She moved that aside, underneath it, it says, love Sean, Di. And her name is Denise. And a heart and a big heart. Love Sean with a heart. A Kelly and a heart. This is the beyond on comprehension.

That the three of us would have our children's name on the table and Diane Denise's name and my name Mitch Alan's initials, Dennis' daughters intials are the same. So that was, that worked out for him. He had, so you can't even break this down, it's just impossible.

We finish up part two. Thank you for joining us today and be sure to look for part two next Thursday. Thanks. Thank you for joining us on hope through grief with your cohost Marshall Adler and Steve smellscape. We hope our episode today was helpful and informative since we are not medical or mental health professionals.