On Speaking to the Dead

Mediumship is a demonstration of intimacy between strangers, both living and deceased.

No one who is telling you a story is trying to be alone. – Minna Zallman Proctor

There were a lot of souls competing for supremacy. The way the medium described it they were all lining up waiting for their turn. You could sort of imagine them racing to find the front of the queue and bartering with each other. If you let me go before you, yeah, I’ll distract the rest of this lot and you can speak with your ex-wife for a couple minutes longer.

Besides the people studying mediumship themselves, I assumed at least half of the 40 people (all women or female presenting) were here for the same reason I was: someone had died in strange and unsettling circumstances without saying goodbye.

Five minutes before the call, I decided to write the names of four dead family members in a notepad: T, E, M and N. Instead of putting E first, I put him second, suddenly apprehensive that it might work and then I’d have to speak to him. Revelations could be unpleasant. If he gave me a message to pass on to my family then I’d feel obliged by the bending laws of nature to do so. The medium might start sweating and convulsing and acting out his final moment in a play of absurdity I’d never be able to forget. I decided that if he was meant to “come through”, he would make it happen.

The medium introduced the initial soul. They were like this, died like this, felt like this, acted like this, and a few people in the group raised their hands to claim them. From there, it was a process of elimination based on further personality traits of the dead and vibes (the medium was mysteriously drawn to one living person over the rest). Disappointment was palpable through the screen when the others were dismissed to leave the winner in a three-way communication with the medium and the deceased. 

With yes or no answers about the soul she was dealing with, the medium was edging towards a shared reality. I’d liken it to painting a portrait in front of an emotional live audience. Trust was placed in the medium to be the conduit to the other side and in the suspension of disbelief was quiet hope. Things were said that would only be uttered in specific contexts: in therapy offices, at funerals, in churches. The need for contact was greater than the need for privacy. When the mediumship was successful, each three-way conversation was as evocative as being beside someone’s death bed, smelling their perfume and laundry detergent. The breach was sometimes crossed in ways that didn’t make sense but seemed to work: the medium told one woman their dead parent wanted them to go to page 15 in the book they were currently reading. Missteps (an incorrect name, an observation that didn’t make sense to the living) returned you to the land of flesh and blood and human error. Whether it was real or unreal started to feel like an irrelevant question – this was about the attempt to tell a story. It was an experiment in intimacy with total strangers. 

For reasons I wouldn’t be able to explain, I knew it was my turn as soon as I heard the words: “I have a woman”. She died of cancer, she was a stubborn character, if you’d say the sky was blue, she’d say it was red, she’s not afraid to speak her mind but she takes time to consider her opinion before she gives it, she’s very thorough in her processes, she didn’t make rash decisions and when she made a decision she sticks with it and she leaves three significant people behind. Quite a number of us put our hands up. Immediately, the medium came to me and dismissed the others.

It continued something like this: 

There’s a soft side to her but there’s only certain people she’d show it to.

Yes.

She was very particular about her home and business, as in information pertaining to her.

Yes.

She’s a gossip.

Yes. (Lol.)

There was a kind gentle lady there but you had to gain her trust first.

Yes.

[Specific events from her childhood that hardened her].

I don’t know. 

There was an unsettlement there. It feels like she was passed around the family or moving between places that gave her the sense that she couldn’t trust. 

Yes, I think I know what you’re referring to. 

People had let her down and she wasn’t going to allow anyone to do that again. That’s why her manner and behaviour was what it was.

I imagine that could be true.

There was a softening to her at the end that you would have seen. 

Yes, absolutely. The last two or three years. 

It’s as if suddenly she’s let go and you see the person inside and you started to have good conversations with her. 

Yes.

I know there’s a feeling that you wanted to know more about her but she just wanted to move past the bad times and thought there was a risk that returning to them would lead her to shut down again.

I don’t know.

She wants to apologise for not giving you everything you wanted to know. I do feel that not everyone got the proper chance to say goodbye to her but I feel that there was an exchange between the two of you. 

Yes.

She’s grateful for that. I know there are letters in her handwriting. She’s signing her name like this with a big curl at the end. The loop is the softness that was there. 

Yes, that’s her. 

Does the name Lily mean anything to you?

No. 

She is showing me one of those powder compacts; does that mean anything to you?

No. 

Okay, well she’s put that reference there so don’t be surprised if you go out and you see one or someone shows you one. I know the last couple of months you’ve been thinking of her a lot and wondering what she’d think of your life. I do know you allowed her to be herself at a time when she didn’t know how to be who she was. I’m leaving her love with you now.  

I wondered if it was possible that she had come through because I put her first on my list, then I pinned someone else’s video to the screen: the woman from earlier was reading a hardback book in front of her laptop. She had tears in her eyes, then put the book aside. Her dog leapt up into her arms like a big baby to comfort her.

This was different from the vague anecdotes I’d heard around communion with the dead where possible coincidence acquires meaning. I saw a Cardinal butterfly – his favourite – and I knew it was a sign. Or I was thinking of her and suddenly felt her presence in the room. Or I heard his favourite song on the radio and knew he was speaking to me. The sort of semiotic relationship between sign and signifier that would reanimate Saussure from his grave. If that made people feel closer to people they loved and lost, sure. I couldn’t place how I felt about my experience but I found it interesting. Complete dismissal wasn’t really an option: I always like to reduce the high possibility that I might be wrong about something. Who fucking knows what is possible?

Before going to bed that night, I messaged someone saying that I’d had a weird evening and as soon as I woke up, the thought materialised. Earlier that week, the same person had bought me a compact mirror. It was new but old fashioned from the gift shop at Monet’s house in Giverny and had floating lilies on the lid. I got it from out of its paper bag, unclipped it and let it sit open in the palm of my hand like a butterfly.