After her mother’s recent passing, a sorrowful Jan, is repeatedly visited by her mother on the Twilight Bridge.

Jan writes:
“It is difficult to find anywhere to ask this question and it has bothered me since my Mom passed away a year ago. I had been living with mom for about 8 years and helping her to live in her home. She was 99 years old and fell while I was with her and did not recover. So, I do feel guilt, but everyone tells me it is not my fault.”

“After she passed (I live in her home), I was half-asleep. She came into the bedroom. I saw her in my mind, very clear. My eyes were closed and I wanted to wake up but my body felt frozen. I saw her distinctly for about 3 seconds and immediately woke up.”

“The next month, I was still very upset when a similar thing happened. I was half-asleep and saw her in my mind come into the bedroom, sit in a chair and look at me, sort of like she was comforting me. I called out to her and immediately woke up.”

“Then again, another time, I heard her call my name while I was sleeping. In front of my face was a large pad of paper and a hand was writing on it, but I could not read it and again woke up.”

“This last week, (still very sad) I heard her ask me “What is the matter?” I heard myself speak out loud, “I am sad.” I don’t think I was in a deep sleep.”

“These do not seem like any regular dreams I’ve had. In fact, I don’t usually remember my dreams. I guess I really need to believe it is her but at the same time I am skeptical. I don’t know what to make of it all. I read that grief plays tricks on your mind and it is just the trauma of grief and not really the deceased person. My greatest wish is that it is really my mom and she is with me. That would calm me.”

Commentary- There is a stage of sleep we pass through as we begin to fully awaken. This stage is often associated with the memory of having vivid dreams, experiencing curious occurrences and a feeling of such realness, that it can leave one wondering what the heck just happened and what it all means. I call this stage the Twilight Bridge, for reasons I will explain.

Although I had certainly experienced this phenomenon before in my life and chalked it up as interesting, it didn’t become tremendously fascinating until after I had lost loved ones to death. It was only then that a pattern formed, when my departed would, many times, come to visit me there at the Twilight Bridge.

I call it the Twilight Bridge because it is that magical space between dimensions that connects a more liquid, lucid dream-like world to our solid, fixed waking world. It didn’t take me long to realize that, if I experienced a visitation with my departed loved one during this magical lucid stage, and especially if they were giving me some detailed information, which only happened on occasion, I only had minutes to write it down before the message quickly faded with the waking up to my daily world. Of course, I would remember the gist of what happened, but in thinking I would remember what happened so clearly later, to write it down, was a lesson in which I could never recover those complete fresh details ever again.

While deep in my grief, I would love to sleep, just for the possibility of a Twilight Bridge experience and what I would learn from it. I even trained myself, to the extent that I could, to monitor my dreams for visitations. I would practice lucidity and awareness. For instance, once I was aware that I was experiencing lucidity, I would train myself to look all around me to see what was there. To my surprise, I would often find departed loved ones right at the periphery of my awareness.

Sometimes the visitations were visual and aural with touch, like a regular visit with someone in this realm. Sometimes the visits were just auditory. But the voice was clear enough to not deny. There were times I was left with the memory of a feeling that something big and important had just happened. And… sometimes the messages would be more abstract and I would have to feel into the experience to decipher its true message.  But, whatever it was, it didn’t matter. It was one more chance to be with my loved one again in a way that was very real. Sometimes… even more real than in this physical realm. 

Having had my fair share of Out-of-Body Experiences, I did have the experience of actually meeting my loved ones in the space, part-way, between two worlds during that twilight time or twilight sleep stage. There was even one time when, while visiting with a deceased friend, I began to awaken, only to realize that I couldn’t move my body for a few minutes until I completely returned. At least that is exactly what it felt like to me.

I’m not even saying that we are meeting on an actual bridge somewhere. And maybe we are.  I am saying that the twilight state, in and of itself, seems to be the space for us to meet up between realms. And, that’s why I call it the Twilight Bridge. It’s a joy to experience.

Besides having these experiences during the twilight state where Jan would have the experience of being with her mother, she would also hear and see her as well. Although Jan was in a sleep state, she was on the Twilight Bridge. Jan was seeing with her spiritual eyes. Some people refer to them as the Third eye Chakra, others would say they were the eyes of the spirit. 

It’s funny but, we tend to think that using our physical eyes is where it’s at, as far as giving us information. Of course we would, dwelling in this physical realm. That’s what we are used to. But consider this. It is possible that we can actually see more sometimes, when our physical eyes are closed. We see some of the things the physical eyes might never see because of what the physical brain filters out as irrelevant to physical survival. Eyes closed in a particular meditative state makes it possible to connect more deeply with our spiritual self – a good self to know.

Learning to see with spiritual eyes has such value. Of course, your brain may not know what to think of it. And, that’s why people will doubt their spiritual experiences. Eventually, the brain that has no idea how to explain these things away, slowly begins to accept these unusual occurrences as legitimate experiences. 

Skepticism can be a good thing. Being cautious and even a little bit suspicious keeps us from being deceived in life and is considered useful to our brain for survival in our day to day experience. Also, filtering out what it thinks is irrelevant material, like it does, the brain might consider this spiritual stuff as made up fluff. Truth is… for many people, the brain has little use for a wild goose chase beyond the five physical senses. But… just because our finite brain doesn’t always understand or comprehend the spiritual stuff, it doesn’t mean it is not a “real” experience.

As far as Jan’s example of the traumatized brain playing tricks on one by re-creating departed loved ones? I have seen plenty of spiritual phenomena, including departed beings, while I was and was not traumatized by grief. It’s a thing! If it were true that grief-traumatized beings could hallucinate their departed loved one into existence… then why doesn’t it happen to the bereaved all the time? Honestly, you can’t manufacture an after-death communication. You can only provide the best space for it to occur.

It is common for a caretaker to feel guilty for one thing or another. As for Jan, the reality is that it was not your fault that your mother fell. I’m just impressed that your mother was still walking around at 99 years of age!

Also, your dreams were not regular dreams. They were vivid, distinct, memorable, remarkable and more real that the average non-sensical dreams. Your mother was definitely reaching out to you, repeatedly, just in case you had any doubts. Your mother doesn’t want you to feel guilty about her fall and that is was her time to go. She is at peace and out of pain. Your mother wanted you to know that and to comfort you in your sorrow over her passing. She has gone to great effort to show you that she is watching over you. The good news is that you are sensitive enough to allow her connection. 

The great thing is she let you know, for a certainty, that she lives. She survived the grave. She called your name so it would be clear to you that she was really with you and was really talking to you. The hand writing on paper represented the continued contact by your mother, in case you had any doubts of what she was doing. If there was an important message she was trying to leave you that you could not read, she would have made that message very clear. That part of that demonstration was abstract.

Now, since these amazing Twilight Bridge experiences don’t happen all the time, actually they do but we just don’t remember them, it is important for us to know that just because we don’t consciously see, hear, feel or experience them in some way, don’t for one moment think they don’t happen and that our departed loved ones are not present in our everyday lives. We only experience spiritual phenomena when we do and when there is a clear space for it to happen.

The only thing I would advise for anyone to do differently is to not “try” to wake up. Do not immediately engage in the physical world. In doing so, you are not only engaging the conscious brain with your return to this solid and fixed realm, but more importantly, you are pulling yourself out of the glorious, lucid space of your connection with your mom on the bridge. You have connected so many times with her in the space on the Twilight Bridge, already. Next time, stay there a little longer in that bliss to see what else happens.

In the meantime, trust your experiences. They are yours. 

A Representation of the Twilight Bridge (Image by Pixabay)