In this after-death communication, Bill shares some examples of being alerted to a spiritual visitation, through sight, sound and smell.

Bill writes:
“I found your site in my own quest for answers to my grieving, having
recently lost my wife of 34 years.”

“My wife lost her father at a young age. She would always tell me about
the day after her father passed. When she was laying asleep in her bed,
suddenly, she was awakened by the smell of pipe tobacco. She looked
up, and standing in the doorway to her bedroom, was her father. Her
father smoked a pipe. She told me, that he said to her, “Everything
will be alright. I’m okay.” Then, he vanished.”

“Having never experienced anything like that myself, of course, I
believed my wife. However, I had some doubts as to exactly what it was
she experienced. That is… until the passing of my wife.”

“My wife passed from pneumonia after being in the hospital for 3
months. The last couple days before she passed, they had her on a very
loud respirator that constantly pushed oxygen to her lungs.”

“On the night that she passed, after we got home from the hospital, I could not
sleep in our bed. I chose to sleep in our daughter’s room, which is now
a spare bedroom, after my daughter moved out to live on her own.”

“During my last hospital visit with my wife, I stood by her bedside and held her head
in my arms. I could not hear her because of the respirator she was
wearing and how loud it was, but I felt her give a sigh of comfort as
I held her in my arms. I held her for so long, that I eventually fell
asleep standing up in that position, holding her.”

“Early on the morning after she passed, as I was laying in my daughter’s bed, I was suddenly thrust awake to the loud hissing sound of the respirator that my wife wore. It was as if she came to visit me, and the sound of the respirator was her way of waking me and letting me know how much she was comforted that day I held her in her hospital bed.”

“That morning, I explained my experience to our adult son, who still
lives with me. He said early that morning he was awakened by Mama
standing in his bedroom doorway. He said, “there was a glow of light
around her and she told him that she came in to say goodbye.” This experience for him was very much like her father’s visit with her when she was younger and he passed.”

“This was just the beginning of our experiences after my wife passing.”

Commentary- 

Our Five Physical Senses

After our loved ones transition, common ways for us to experience them once again, are through our five physical senses. These senses include, seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling and touch.

In Bill’s examples, he related 3 physical examples of these senses.

• His wife’s waking experience with the familiar scent of pipe tobacco that her father smoked..
• Bill’s waking experience with the familiar sound of the hissing sound of the respirator.
• Bill’s son’s waking experience with the sight of his mother in his bedroom doorway. This is much like his mother’s experience with his Grandfather.

Each of these experiences were upon awakening, and deeply personal and meaningful to the one experiencing them. I want to go into a few important things here that are related to the experiences mentioned in Bill’s post.

Spiritual Calling Cards

In my posts, I often refer to, what I call, a “spiritual calling card” from the departed. This spiritual signature is so familiar and personal to the person experiencing it, that it’s undeniable that the experience occurred. This is how they communicate that they are with us. And, whatever anyone else thinks, we know when that happens.

The Twilight Bridge

Many after-death communications happen during sleep or upon waking. As we drift off to sleep, we literally drift away from the cares of this world. As the physical world fades, we journey across The Twilight Bridge to venture off into higher realms.

There, for example, we meet departed loved ones, receive spiritual healing or guidance. However, we rarely remember as we travel back over the bridge into waking life. This is because the physical energetic frequency experienced by us, in the over-all spectrum, is far less than our spiritual frequency. Also, up until now, we may have not been aware of it.

The Twilight Bridge is the space between the states of dreaming and waking. This is a very special time where one is susceptible to a spiritual visit, a message or an epiphany that would be more difficult to access in waking life. So, it’s an important place/time to pay attention to, as some very interesting experiences emerge there.

A visit across the twilight bridge always ends with coming back into waking life. Our experiences there are so much easier for us to recall so it is prime time to connect with our departed loved ones. Actually, they don’t even have to be departed loved ones, you can have experiences with the living, too.

The Two Other Senses  (Taste and Touch)

1. An old friend told me that after her father passed, although she was a non-smoker, she had the urge to smoke a cigarette. She was certain that was her father sharing the taste of a cigarette with her through her senses. This made her smile.
2. Touch happens all the time, although it is quite easy for people to disregard. The experience of touch, often, gets dismissed as imagination when it is really a loved one reaching out.

Beyond The Five Physical Senses

As I write this, I wonder how many of these five physical senses are actually more enmeshed with our spiritual senses than we realize. In other words, perhaps our spiritual senses are nothing more than our 5 physical senses, turned up in frequency, a bit.

It has been said that, “We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” This could be an interesting perspective from which to consciously live. 

Seeing Is Believing? Believing Is Seeing?

One time, someone wrote to me in earnest. “Why do people believe in life after death? Why do people believe they can get a visit from someone who has died?” I told him, “You may never believe it if it has not yet happened to you. But, once it does, that’s a whole different story that you can’t deny.

It is difficult to understand spiritual experiences when you have no direct experience. The physical brain/body knows little of the spiritual self. You see, in this physical world, it has been forgotten. Spiritual experiences shared with us by others, alerts us to the possibility that it could happen to us, as well. This opens up a personal path to perceive them directly.

Bill Believed In the Possibility

Bill was a believer when his wife told her miraculous experience, because she was so sure that it happened. Even if Bill didn’t know the mechanics of how it was made to happen. Bill believed in the possibility, and… It happened to him too.

However, when Bill experienced his wife’s visit first hand, and his son, too? That’s not only believing, it’s well on the way to knowing. The experience is no longer conceptual, it’s experiential now. They know if it happened once, it could happen again at any time, because they know it is possible.

With Bill and his son’s experience, both were validated by the other one’s visitation. She wanted them to know that even though it may seem that she was in a different place than them at the time, she broke through on the Twilight Bridge that morning and made her way to them to say thanks, give comfort, love, peace and amazement. 

Instead of thinking that our loved ones are “out there, somewhere else, far away”…
maybe, our departed loved ones are closer than we know. Perhaps, they are little more than a sensation away.

Photo credit: RoonzNL