Can the Dead Speak to Us?

  Can people who have died communicate with us?

  Good question. One no one has definitively answered. Lots of stories out there, but definitive?

  Still, sometimes you have to wonder.

  My last column was about a woman who died not long after writing her life story. Tish Lewis was an Owyhee County icon and champion horse groom. (A groom, for readers unfamiliar with the term, is a person skilled in caring for horses.) Lewis traveled the world to  competitions, which she often won. She was also an expert sheep dog trainer and a much loved figure in Owyhee County.

  A reader who knew her emailed me early in March to say that Lewis  had written her autobiography and suggested that it might be a good subject for my column. I was delighted. I’d interviewed both Tish and her late husband, Gene Lewis, and thought highly of both of them. Not having heard from or about her in years, I was pleased to learn that she was still around and was looking forward to reading her book.

  I procrastinated for almost a month, however, when it came to setting up an interview with her about it. Finally, on the morning of April 6, I stopped procrastinating. It suddenly seemed important to reach her. I called, but no answer.

  Again, no answers that afternoon or evening.

  The following day, I tried several more times. No result.

  The same thing happened the next day.

  The day after that, The Press published her death notice. She’d died on April 6 – the day it suddenly seemed crucial for me to reach her.

  Was she trying to tell me she’d passed away and that sooner-rather- than-later was the time to write about her book?

  Probably not. Still, the thought occurred to me. Was the book so important to her that even in death she wanted someone to publicize it?

   Again, probably not. But who knows? It’s not uncommon for people to hear, or think they hear, from those who have passed on.

  It happened to my mother-in-law. She was away on a trip when her mother died. They were close, and she felt terrible that she wasn’t with her at the end. It bothered her for weeks.

  Then she had a dream about her mother. In the dream, her mother spoke to her.

  “Are you happy where you are?” my mother-in-law asked her.

  “Oh, yes, Elsa. I’m very happy here.”

  She stopped feeling terrible after that. Regardless of whether her mother actually came to her while she was sleeping or it was just a dream, it gave her closure.

  A friend of mine had something inexplicable happen to him at his brother-in-law’s funeral. A furniture builder, my friend was working at the time of his brother-in-law’s death on a cabinet that required an unusual type of screws for its hinges. You couldn’t just run to the hardware store and buy them. They had to be special-ordered, and he was one screw short of having enough to finish the cabinet. 

  When the funeral service was over, relatives gathered in a chapel at the funeral home. While there, my friend noticed something shiny on the purple carpet. It turned out to be two screws – exactly like the special ones he needed.

  “There were no cabinets in that room that were missing any screws,” he said. “People said maybe it was just a coincidence, but I’ll always be convinced that he (the brother-in-law) did it. He loved to play jokes and make people laugh.”

  A last practical joke?

  Last story:  During my elementary school and junior high school years, the smartest student in our class was a girl named Jackie. Jackie wasn’t just a straight-A student; she seemed wise and dignified beyond her years. Everyone admired and respected her. She could have been anything – a surgeon, a psychiatrist, a scientist – but at the time of her death was working to help the homeless in Seattle.

  One night I had a dream about her. It remains the most vivid dream I’ve ever had. Jackie’s home had a back-yard pool, where some of the members of our class spent many happy hours. In the dream, we were all there again. It was so real, as if it were actually happening! I could hear the water splashing, smell the chlorine, see the printed designs on the swimsuits. 

  A few days later, I went to see a friend who had gone to the same schools I had.

  “Did you hear about Jackie?” she asked as she answered her door.

  “No. What about her?”

  “She died.”

  I wrote a remembrance column about Jackie and in response received a call from her father. He said she died the night I had the dream about her.

   My favorite interpretation was that of a classmate.

  “Maybe it was her way of saying goodbye,” he said.

  Was it?

  No way of knowing.

  But it would be nice to think so.

Tim Woodward’s column appears every other Sunday in The Idaho Press and is posted on woodwardblog.com the following Mondays. Contact him at woodwardcolumn@gmail.com.