Dreaming of Arick

Carly, Maggie and Arick

"Death is but the next great adventure." J.K. Rowling

Why is it that some of us are visited by loved ones who have passed away and others are not? I had that very discussion last night with a woman who lost her son at age 19, some 15 years ago. Arick died of a rare type of cancer just 10 months after he was diagnosed. It's hard to imagine how devastating that would be for any parent.

Two days after he died, his mom Julie had a vivid dream in which she was sitting in the living room of a farm house that she had once lived in years earlier. In the dream, she says Arick sat down beside her, picked up her hand and just patted it.

"The first thing I noticed was that he was fully grown.," Julie says. "He hadn't been when we lived in that house. And he had hair! He didn't when he died. I remember turning away to tell his dad that he was there, and when I looked back he was gone and  immediately I was wide awake," So I asked her why she had that experience when others who were also grieving did not. Turns out I'm not the first person who's asked her that.

"I think it was because I needed that experience. For comfort. And he knew it." It wasn't the only time she's felt his presence.

"Shortly after he died I was at home alone, downstairs by myself when I heard the radio coming from upstairs. It was his radio. So I went up and shut it off," she tells me. "I went back downstairs and before I could get back to what I was doing, it turned on again. I went back up there and said, 'Arick, that's enough,' and it stopped."

Arick's sister also dreamed that he came and sat beside her on the couch,when she was going through her own illness. All he said was, "It's tough, isn't it?" But Julie says Maggie felt enormously comforted by it.

And one of Arick's friends actually saw him. She was going to college at NDSU where he had been a student. She was walking home and she heard stomping behind her. She turned to look but nobody was there. She walked again and again heard the stomping. This time when she turned around, she told Julie that Arick was standing there with a big, goofy grin on his face. And she said he was wearing this weird stocking cap with long tails on either side.

"When she told us that my sister said, 'Oh my God!' That was a hat that he used to wear." It turns out that this girl had a medical problem of her own and was scared about it. Julie thinks Arick was once again comforting someone he cared about.

She says she still feels his presence every once in a while, and while she can't prove it, she believes he makes it his mission to offer comfort. And she's received another important gift from her son. She has lost her fear of death.

"Don't get me wrong," she said. "It's not that I want to die, but I'm not afraid of it like I used to be. I know who's there, waiting for me." She says it with conviction and some pretty intense love.

https://www.amazon.com/Gift-Death-Message-Comfort-Hope/dp/0692745610/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1474596023&sr=8-1&keywords=gift+of+death