For those who know me, it’ll come as no surprise when I declare that I’m a firm believer in the afterlife. I’ll wax poetic about the topic whenever I’m given the opportunity. But I should rephrase my use of “the afterlife.” That’s an incorrect statement in my book. There’s no “after.'” There’s just life. When we shuffle off this mortal coil, I believe life continues–that we continue–just not in this organic body. Our body, just like every other carbon-based life-form, is supposed to breakdown over time. Our meatsuits have an inescapable shelf life. We expire. However, our souls do not. Those are pure energy, which can neither be created or destroyed, but instead transformed. That’s not mysticism, it’s science!
Throughout my life, I’ve witnessed proof that our souls preemptively step out of our bodies from time to time. These experiences are why I’ve come to believe that the body is just a temporary vehicle for our souls. This life is just a training ground. This is where we grow and learn lessons and we need these fleshy vehicles in order to expedite the process. They don’t always look or function the way we’d like them to but I also believe that’s exactly what we signed up for before we came into this world. Anyways, enough of the super woo woo and on to my story.
Almost a decade ago, I stumbled into a job that I did not expect to love as much as I did. A housemate of mine had been helping out a friend who happened to own a private elder care home. Whenever the owner needed a night off, she’d call my housemate to fill in. I started venturing over there with her because I was studying animal-assisted therapy at the time. The house had two spaniels and I enjoyed getting them to interact with the residents. It’s a win-win for all parties involved. Everyone walks away enriched and exercised.
Well, after a little while, the owner of the house hired me on full time. So in an unexpected turn of events, I became the caregiver of four people with dementia and an 85 year old woman with cancer. I was with them for about two years and I loved every second. Being completely immersed in their world to the degree that I was, I was a constant witness to baffling phenomenon. First of all, the experience very much felt like each of them were straddling two (or perhaps more) worlds. And since they were in different stages of their dementia, they straddled worlds in varying degrees. As they progressed, the more the other world(s) stole them away. They often had long, animated conversations with people who weren’t there. Sometimes those people tried to steal their shoes, sometimes they whispered sweet nothings until tears stained their cheeks, and sometimes they left them in complete awe. Every day, every hour, every second was a new adventure.
Over time, I grew accustomed to them chit-chatting with unseen visitors and I usually just brushed it off as the ravings of an unwell mind. That changed for me one day when I was taking care of Mickey. She was in her 90s and bedridden, but she still had the gift of gab. Wow was she a spitfire! Needless to say, I adored her. She’d always be in her room jovially chatting with someone, especially right before bedtime. One day, I asked her about who she was talking to. She pointed to the corner of the room and matter of factly said “Bob.” She proceeded to tell me all about Bob and how he was an artist. What sort of art he made and where he used to live before coming here.
Hearing his name startled me because the owner of the home had just shown me some artwork that a previous resident had made for her. I believe it was a painting hanging on the wall in the kitchen and I had remarked on how I liked it, which led to her telling me about the artist, Bob, who once lived at the house. He was very accomplished and had exhibitions in NYC. It just so happened that he passed away in Mickey’s room. Now let me be clear before you try to debunk this–Mickey never met Bob. He was there before her and his passing led to a room being open and them being able to then take Mickey. His possessions were all gone besides the artwork in the kitchen, which Mickey was never mobile enough to venture into. She literally never knew him, yet she would talk to him in… I guess for all intents and purposes, their shared room… every day. That’s when I realized that I was taking care of people who really could see things–bonafide, verifiable things–that I wasn’t able to.
Fast forward to about six months ago, I attended an IANDS (International Association for Near-Death Studies) meeting. The first half of the meeting is usually a guest speaker and the second half is a sharing circle. There was an older woman there who spoke up and asked if anyone could help her. Her husband was dying of dementia and he was in the end stages where he was completely bedbound and unresponsive most of the time. The family had set up cameras in his room and around the house for added security; People with dementia have a tendency to wander. For the last week or so, the security cameras were picking up on strange orbs in his room–just his room. They would swoop in the room and at the same time, her husband would always wake up and start mumbling to someone who wasn’t there. They were able to witness all of this through security camera. The family assumed the orbs were a glitch in the camera so they actually replaced it and the same thing kept happening with the new one. The phenomena was driving her crazy and she was just looking for an explanation.
I should back up and explain orbs. Orbs are often seen in still photography and in video footage and they’re often proven to be dust floating through the air or insects flying around. However, some orbs are seen by the naked eye and are not so easily explained away. Those orbs are thought to be energy bodies…think, spirits!
I told her about my experience with Mickey and Bob. I had also viewed countless orb videos of people in her exact same circumstance. The same thing always happens: the atmosphere is calm, the patient is sleeping, no dust is being kicked up, just stillness, then suddenly about a half dozen glowing orbs appear to zoom around the room and the person in bed is clearly seeing and communicating with someone. This is what hospice workers witness as well. They’re called deathbed visitations. They can occur in the hours, days, or weeks before someone passes.
For people with dementia, all of this just seems to ramp up much earlier. These visitations can start years before someone passes. I’m guessing that it’s because the part of your brain which tells you what is and is not in the realm of possibility gets destroyed over time. The debunking brain is gone, leaving the veil between worlds whisper thin. I think this is why people with dementia straddle worlds. Their souls move in and out of their bodies long before death. So when someone looks like they’re resting, they may not even be in there at times. Perhaps that’s what some of the orb activity really is. It’s not necessarily a visitation from someone else but it’s their own energy coming and going.
This activity reminds me of a video I once saw where someone captured an orb on camera just as someone took their last breath. It was their final exit. On to the next. It was a pretty cool catch and to be able to share with the world is such a gift.
Anyways, that was a long exposition on me just feeling like my experience was able to give comfort to a woman who just didn’t know what was happening in her house and to her husband. It also gives me comfort because I don’t like to think of people suffering in broken bodies. It’s terrifying to think that you can be locked in. But what I’ve witnessed and if my theory holds true, is that what we see is mostly someone on autopilot. They’re doing the same things that they’ve always done and their souls are someplace else. For example, Suzanne was the CEO of a huge corporation in her younger years, so her autopilot was to be the CEO at the house. She’d boss me around for a little while and then she’d venture back to her desk and do invisible paperwork for most of the day. But there’d be beautiful moments when she’d be completely lucid and right there with you. You can tell that she had returned from wherever she was. Her eyes had such a clarity to them. But as time went on, her soul ventured out longer and longer until she left for good.
There can be such cruelty in the death and dying process. Dementia seems to me like one of the cruelest ways because it takes so long. But to me, I’m also comforted, especially when I think about the people I cared for. I’d like to think that Mickey drops in on the next person in her room, giving them comfort, just like Bob did with her. We live on and to me, they’re proof.
The Unmaker 