My last long and sorrowful tale actually came out unintentionally because I was trying to describe my visit to the medium. Blogging is so therapeutic! After my initial visit to the medium three years ago, I remained skeptical but still held a little spooky kernal of fascination for the afterlife/psychics/communication world. After Chopstix I felt that if ever there was a person who would come out to talk, it would be her! So I booked an appointment but could not get in for TWO FUCKING YEARS.

In that time I became much more interested in examining my feelings about mortality, existence, legacy, etc. Following Chopstix death, there was a lot of work to do to take care of her things and her affairs because her mother and sister are really all the family she has and they live hours away. There was an entire giant house filled with shit (we had similar living styles which we called our Incense Palaces). There was an entire attic studio filled floor to ceiling with cloth and a downstairs full of dyes and art supplies. It was insane. I spent hours and hours sitting in the attic folding cloth and tagging it all for a sale. In that deeply personal space where she spent hours working and where she loved to be, I would sit there alone in the night and think "if there was a spirit presence or lingering of some disembodied soul, this would be where she'd go". Nothing ever happened. No mysterious breeze, no rustling of paper, no doors closing on their own, no tingling sensation of a presence. It was an empty house. Memories continued to throb and exist in their almost tangible way, but no Chopstix presence that I could detect.

My friend's husband Jeff was then found dead in a car under suspicious circumstances of an overdose. I offered to feed the cats while she went home to Virginia to figure things out. I let myself into the house where he had just been living the day before and when I saw his shoes just sitting by the door I had a little breakdown because for some reason, shoes seem so personal to me, such a symbol of a person who is going to be running out the door and living. So I was sitting there cradling a shoe and crying while the cats looked at me like I was an idiot (but that's pretty much how cats always look at you). Anyway, the point is, again I was in the space of someone who recently died and I felt absolutely no presence. There was no activity that would indicate any afterlife clinging to the space. You can bet that if there was an afterlife, when I kick it, I'd be throwing glitter and causing all kinds of spills and havoc for the fun of it. Glitter Ghost.

So I went to the same medium, Robyn, in the hopes that THIS time there would be some kind of message that was clearly from Chopstix or Jeff that I could identify. It was partially an experiment and partially just that wistful dream that maybe you get to talk to them. Other people have made her sound like an amazing genius with earth shattering skill, so I gave her one more try. Rough outline of my first visit with her:
- some dark haired lady from my maternal side steps forward and takes the spotlight for a long time. she talks about how i have the psychic gift, how i should travel to home (okinawa) and take my mom with me. i'm like my grandmother and less like my mom blah blah. She says the women of the family are what held things together and that they were very strong willed, even in times when women had a secondary position.
- my paternal grandfather steps forward and has more practical information such the fact that I have the ability to influence my father and that he thinks my father is not necessarily on the right track with his religion. he talks about what it looks like on "the other side". asks me if i have a boyfriend, tells me i'll meet someone who works near water, possibly in the service industry who was too shy to say anything to me (oh my god! so accurate!! oh wait)
- all the time that she's talking to me, she's having this weirdo conversation with the air on either side of her and laughing and responding to the "person" who has stepped forward
- she thinks that i have the gift and asks me to unfocus my eyes and see if i can detect anything. which i can't

So THIS visit goes like this:
- she asks if there's anyone specific i'd like to talk to so I tell her to freestyle first and then i'll ask
- same grandmother lady hogs the spotlight and says a bunch of shit that isn't that great
- Robyn asks when my grandmother died, which she hasn't. she's alive and well in Okinawa
- she asks about jewelry and porcelain that was supposed to be left for me. there is no such thing as these items
- grandfather comes forward and says pretty much the same stuff as before. he also says i was precocious and asked a million questions as a child (duh. anyone looking at me could guess that) and that my sister and i were a little afraid of him when we were little (completely untrue. he looked like Colonel Sanders, what's not to love?). he also said that my grandmother had a little altar that she kept and took with her whenever they moved. They never moved. They lived and died in the same house that his parents built. So that was totally not true.
- finally I ask about my list of people: Chopstix, Jeff, Tom, and Bijou
Tom: she starts with tom. he says his chest hurt, he had a lot of chest pain. he didn't want to bother anyone and tell them what was going on. he was sorry. i tell her that i didn't know Tom very well, he's a dead loved one of a friend. more on that later

Jeff: she got nothing

Bijou: he loved me, she was getting really excited almost puppy-like happiness coming from him. he was happy, he was sorry to leave etc. he says he is in a magical heavenly place. Was he middle aged, like 56? (i guess so). He got sick and he knew he couldn't heal himself, so what more could he do? He didn't want to prolong things. He says he COULD hear everything. He thinks i light up a room and bring the light with me. he thanks me for everything. He knows that people drink to him at parties and he likes that. Don't worry about cemetaries, he's alright.

Chopstix: the last person she hears from and only for a few seconds. (what??) "he was young, too young. but it was no one's fault. His whole body hurt. He could see the pity in everyone's eyes. he was frightened and angry when it happened, he tried to stay but he couldn't. He loved me a lot in all the appropriate and inappropriate ways. he is the one who moves photos around my house"

ok

Bijou is my cat. he is comfortably buried in a plastic tote in the backyard and I am planning to dig him up and re-articulate his skeleton. so he might've mentioned his decomposition level to give me a heads up on the skeleton project. She did not seem to mention anything particularly feline.

I was wearing Chopstix' necklace, bracelet, yarn, and bag that she always had and was even holding when she died. If anything should've jumped out at this lady, it would be her. HER. Robyn kept referring to "him" throughout the supposed reading.

Tom with the chest pains was not my loved one, but had died on New Years Day and he was.... a hermit crab. No mention of this fact from the medium.

So 90$ later I learned my lesson and feel a bit more solid in my belief that there is no afterlife and spirit mediums are kooky geniuses that are gifted at cold reading and providing an experience for people who are craving one. I paid for the performance and for someone to size me up and try to read ME. That's what everyone is getting, a stranger's estimation of what moves you or stimulates some emotion in you. I was a stony scribe with no facial expressions writing the whole time she was talking, so she had nothing to play off of, nothing to use as a key for the next aspect of the performance and that left her aimlessly reaching for old standby "visitors". I appreciate her swift thinking and her ability to drift out, bounce an idea out and see if she got a reaction and then quickly change to the next thing with a seamless talking style that showed no hesitation. She is a very sweet and pleasant lady and I talked her into becoming a patient at my office, so i got some work done too!

Since there is no afterlife, i maintain my position that it is crucial that i take pictures of people, have my picture taken with friends, tell people i love them and be as open and expressive as possible because you never want to regret what you didn't do. It may seem annoying when I try to video or photograph everything, but now that Chops is gone, all I have are pictures and two little videos. One is trying to teach her how to snap her fingers and the other one is her laughing hysterically while being beaten with a Twizzler. I only have 4 pictures of us together because I was always taking pictures of other people. Now I try to have my picture with everyone. I believe immortality IS a thing, just not in the way that was previously imagined. I believe eternity is digital, and maybe Paul and Joe would weigh in on this. It seems that you can be floating around google images, facebook, blogs, etsy shops, dating sites, etc forever. blogs and things i've written 10+ years ago are still there, dusty but untouched. So I suppose this will be part of my eternity that can haunt everyone when I'm gone. Thanks spirit medium, for giving me fodder for this Very Long Post.