Episode 21

Looking for “Signs” with Author & Artist, Mitch Carmody – Part I

Published on: 22nd October, 2020

The journey of grief is a personal journey, which is different for everyone. Along the way we are all looking for “tools” and bits of wisdom to help us on difficult days and with our journey. We are also mindful of the fact our loved one is not here, but we would like to know they are ok! There are days that we need reminders, or we are looking for “signs” that our loved one is ok. 

Today Mitch Carmody joins us to talk about some examples of these signs. Mitch has been on his journey of grief for almost 33-years, since his son Kelly died. Mitch has had many people share with him the signs they have received on their journeys of grief. 

This episode of “Signs – Part I” will be released on our You Tube Channel the following week, if you would like to “see” some of these “signs”! Subscribe Now at: http://bit.ly/HTGPodYouTube

Please join us next week for “Signs – Part II” with Mitch Carmody!

 

We welcome your comments and questions! Send an email to hopethrugrief@gmail.com and please share our show with anyone you know that is struggling with loss and grief. You can find us on the internet to continue the conversation!

 

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Jordan Smelski Foundation: http://www.jordansmelskifoundation.org

 

Tune in for new episodes every Thursday morning wherever you listen to podcasts!

 

Marshall Adler and Steve Smelski, co-hosts of Hope Thru Grief are not medical, or mental health professionals, therefore we cannot and will not give any medical, or mental health advice. If you, or anyone you know needs medical, or mental health treatment, please contact a medical, or mental health professional immediately.

 

Thank you

Marshall Adler

Steve Smelski

Transcript
Steve Smelski:

Hello everybody and welcome to today's episode of Hope Thru

Steve Smelski:

Grief.

Steve Smelski:

I'm one of your co-hosts Steve Smelski and I'm here with my good

Steve Smelski:

friend and cohost Marshall Adler.

Marshall Adler:

Hello everybody.

Marshall Adler:

Hope everyone is doing very well today.

Steve Smelski:

So today's special guest is Mitch Carmody.

Steve Smelski:

Shelley and I met Mitch back in 2015 in Dallas at the first national conference we

Steve Smelski:

ever went to for the Compassionate Friend.

Steve Smelski:

Mitch was doing a breakout session on signs and that's when we first met him.

Steve Smelski:

We've gotten to know Mitch over the last few years.

Steve Smelski:

We we've met him several times at different sessions and at the national

Steve Smelski:

conferences for TCF and Shelly and I were amazed the first time we saw his

Steve Smelski:

presentation for the breakout session.

Steve Smelski:

And we thought it'd be a great idea to bring him on the show today and

Steve Smelski:

share with everybody because as difficult as grief is, sometimes it's

Steve Smelski:

good to see a little sign that helps you make it through your tough day.

Mitch Carmody:

Well, thank you, Steve and Marshall, it's a really a pleasure

Mitch Carmody:

and honor to be here with you guys.

Marshall Adler:

Again, thank you so much, Mitch, for being our guest.

Marshall Adler:

I think I'm really looking forward to today's conversation.

Marshall Adler:

Yeah, it's an important

Mitch Carmody:

aspect of the grief journey to recognize in a body mind,

Mitch Carmody:

soul and spirit, and the four components of our being and, and the spirit part

Mitch Carmody:

is so valuable and often overlooked.

Mitch Carmody:

And I think this really touches that aspect that we are, we are so connected,

Mitch Carmody:

with everybody on the planet, but especially with our children who have

Mitch Carmody:

died, that we can just, we can feel that they need to communicate with us and we

Mitch Carmody:

can open ourselves up and that can happen.

Marshall Adler:

Mitch, if you could start out by just telling us your story so we'll

Marshall Adler:

sort of have a baseline to see where your journey began, then we'd go from there.

Mitch Carmody:

Oh, sure.

Mitch Carmody:

Yeah.

Mitch Carmody:

About signs, but I mean, it goes back to when I was 15, my

Mitch Carmody:

father died of heart disease.

Mitch Carmody:

He had triple bypass surgery and so I was 15 and my mom, you know, my mom

Mitch Carmody:

says, well, you're the man of the family now and you know, youngest of seven.

Mitch Carmody:

And, on a farm, I take care of the horses.

Mitch Carmody:

I get a job and, and, and she said, you buck up and get over it.

Mitch Carmody:

You know, and, and dad, his dad, she did, she was an atheist too so she

Mitch Carmody:

said, dad is dead, Don is gone, there is nothing after that, you know?

Mitch Carmody:

And then I had a dream of my dad coming home, shaking his boots off

Mitch Carmody:

and coming into the house and, for a whole week after he died and I

Mitch Carmody:

said, dad, what are you doing home?

Mitch Carmody:

You know, you're dead and he goes, I'm just here to watch you for a while.

Mitch Carmody:

And what was so odd about it is that he'd get on the couch like he always did, took

Mitch Carmody:

his shirt off, like in the summertime, put his boots up, open a bottle of beer.

Mitch Carmody:

And he had this bright red, scar on his chest, you know, and I could see

Mitch Carmody:

the scar all the way down his chest.

Mitch Carmody:

And so I knew it was like post-mortem because he never

Mitch Carmody:

came home from the hospital.

Mitch Carmody:

He died in the hospital and, and so it was just that I accepted it that week I had

Mitch Carmody:

those dreams and so dad's here to visit comes in door, open shakes, his boots

Mitch Carmody:

off, sits on the couch, opens a beer, put his feet up and I just look at him on the

Mitch Carmody:

couch and it was just, it was amazing.

Mitch Carmody:

So, I mean, I just catalog that, my mom said it was nonsense,

Mitch Carmody:

so I just cataloged it.

Mitch Carmody:

But you know, he died in the summertime and his big job was to, only job

Mitch Carmody:

he had at home, cause he worked two jobs, but he had a Christmas cactus

Mitch Carmody:

that he had that he had gotten.

Mitch Carmody:

His mother was, when she was pregnant with my dad, had had Christmas cactus'.

Mitch Carmody:

So my dad had it all these years, great big Christmas cactus.

Mitch Carmody:

And so it would always bloom at Christmas.

Mitch Carmody:

Solid blooms, you know, and everybody was pride at this Christmas cactus.

Mitch Carmody:

And, but my dad's job was every year to take it outside, put it

Mitch Carmody:

on the North side of the house.

Mitch Carmody:

In the fall he'd bring it back inside and it would bloom for Christmas profusedly.

Mitch Carmody:

So now Fall comes, my dad is dead and I'm looking around and

Mitch Carmody:

everythings getting brown and I go, Oh shit, Oh shit, excuse me.

Mitch Carmody:

Oh, I got to bring in that um, the Christmas cactus.

Mitch Carmody:

And so I did, and I felt strangely, like, you know, I'm picking up the

Mitch Carmody:

ball, I'm picking up from my dad and I, so I brought the Christmas cactus

Mitch Carmody:

in and it did not bloom at all.

Mitch Carmody:

And my mom says, oh, you brought it in too late or something, you know?

Mitch Carmody:

I said, no, I think it's grieving for my dad.

Mitch Carmody:

She said, Oh honey, that's ridiculous.

Mitch Carmody:

So that it never did bloom all, all winter.

Mitch Carmody:

So summertime came and I said, well, we lived on an Island on the Mississippi

Mitch Carmody:

and I said, I'm going to go bury it.

Mitch Carmody:

I'm going to bring it out to the cemetery.

Mitch Carmody:

It's a natural cemetery.

Mitch Carmody:

I said, I'm just going to put it out there and said, you can join dad,

Mitch Carmody:

I'm not taking care of it, I'm not going to bring it in the Fall anymore.

Mitch Carmody:

You didn't bloom.

Mitch Carmody:

You're done.

Mitch Carmody:

So I put it out on his grave and I left it out there, I said, I'm not

Mitch Carmody:

a graveyard person, never went to visit, you know, but then Fall came.

Mitch Carmody:

I thought, you know, I should go check and see if that things survived.

Mitch Carmody:

I didn't water it and take care of it.

Mitch Carmody:

Go out there,it was still alive, brought it back home, that Christmas

Mitch Carmody:

you couldn't even see green on it was so filled with flowers.

Mitch Carmody:

And I knew then, and I said, there something to this.

Mitch Carmody:

There's something to this.

Mitch Carmody:

I didn't know I needed that.

Mitch Carmody:

I didn't talk about it to anybody for years.

Mitch Carmody:

I just knew it was my little secret until my son died and I asked him

Mitch Carmody:

for a sign and got a sign from him.

Mitch Carmody:

And I realized, wow, you know, this, this will save my life.

Mitch Carmody:

And my little gift from my dad, that, that I knew that I could survive

Mitch Carmody:

this journey of losing my son.

Mitch Carmody:

I lost my, my, my son and my dad.

Mitch Carmody:

And I was ripped off at both ends and I was really pissed off at God.

Mitch Carmody:

And, uh, but the sign that my son wasn't completely gone, it wasn't a

Mitch Carmody:

hundred percent gone, brought me back.

Mitch Carmody:

There was just that crack of light you need to bring your soul back.

Mitch Carmody:

So that's where it brought me.

Mitch Carmody:

I wrote a book about this and I'll talk about the other sign that my son gave

Mitch Carmody:

me more powerful it's in the slideshow.

Mitch Carmody:

But when I asked him for a sign specifically, and after we moved back from

Mitch Carmody:

Mexico and we were living and I caught the sign and I said, Oh my gosh, he actually

Mitch Carmody:

sent exactly what I asked him for it.

Mitch Carmody:

And so I took a picture of it, put it in my book, I wrote a book and I

Mitch Carmody:

said, okay, I'm going to share this to other people that there is life after

Mitch Carmody:

death on both sides of the equation.

Mitch Carmody:

So our, our loved one, our child died and for us who are left behind.

Mitch Carmody:

It's going to be a sucky life for a long time, but we can do it together and

Mitch Carmody:

that's what, okay, I got to share this story with people that there is a way

Mitch Carmody:

through this, um, and it's not, without them not putting a black cloak over their

Mitch Carmody:

picture and the mirrors of the house.

Mitch Carmody:

Maybe they did that in the past and it worked for people

Mitch Carmody:

but it didn't work for me.

Marshall Adler:

Did you have any personal beliefs about signs before you lost

Marshall Adler:

your father, because I will tell you that I have had many signs from my son,

Marshall Adler:

Matt, after he passed away a little over two years ago and I absolutely

Marshall Adler:

believe those are signs from him, but before he passed away, I didn't

Marshall Adler:

believe there were things such as signs.

Marshall Adler:

I just, I'm a lawyer, but my vast majority of family members are medical

Marshall Adler:

people and they all just believe when life ends on this planet, it ends,

Marshall Adler:

there is no afterlife and, you know, I'm, I'm Jewish and my parents both

Marshall Adler:

believed there was no afterlife.

Marshall Adler:

And I have been learning more about the Jewish view of afterlife, but

Marshall Adler:

to me just, there's been too much empirical evidence from Matt over the

Marshall Adler:

past two plus years that he's been gone for me not to say that this is him.

Marshall Adler:

So I've done a total 180.

Marshall Adler:

I thought there was no signs there was nothing after somebody passed

Marshall Adler:

and now I'm absolutely totally convinced based on the evidence

Marshall Adler:

that I've seen from Matt's passing.

Marshall Adler:

How did you feel that before your father passed and started seeing signs?

Marshall Adler:

I mean...

Mitch Carmody:

Before my father passed, I didn't, you know, I was 15 so, you

Mitch Carmody:

know, I really didn't, you know, I was, after he died, then I didn't have

Mitch Carmody:

to go to Catholic school anymore so I started reading the Tibetan book of the

Mitch Carmody:

dead and, you know, I started studying the Kabbalah and, you know, I was, I

Mitch Carmody:

was researching everything I could.

Mitch Carmody:

I wrote to Shirley McClain, I mean, when she wrote out on a limb.

Mitch Carmody:

I said, what a great book Shirley.

Mitch Carmody:

She wrote me back, I have that letter, you know.

Mitch Carmody:

And, and so I started, maybe, I did never went to a psychic, but I just started

Mitch Carmody:

going with them and realizing, wow.

Mitch Carmody:

And I did some writing that I felt like it was almost automatic writing, um,

Mitch Carmody:

because it just flowed from the knowledge base that I don't think I really had.

Mitch Carmody:

So I, I believed it, yes, and so it seemed like I was totally prepared

Mitch Carmody:

when I asked my son for sign that I truly believed that I would get one.

Marshall Adler:

Have you had signs continuously from him through

Marshall Adler:

the, it's been 33 years am I correct that that he's passed,

Mitch Carmody:

Right, not...

Mitch Carmody:

oh yes continually, not all the time, not on command.

Mitch Carmody:

You know, the, the one that I asked him for, and that took months, you know.

Mitch Carmody:

I mean, I asked him in February for sign growing in our yard and a corn

Mitch Carmody:

stock grew up in our yard in the spring so it took a long time, but I

Mitch Carmody:

said, Oh my God, I asked for something growing in our yard and I get a corn

Mitch Carmody:

stock going out of Kentucky bluegrass.

Mitch Carmody:

So I, you know, I said, wow, this is incredible!

Mitch Carmody:

And so that really gave me the faith to ask for more or not even

Mitch Carmody:

to look for more, you know, and not even ask as much as to look for and

Mitch Carmody:

be aware that there can be a sign.

Mitch Carmody:

That's why, when I even look at, picture that earlier, I saw the Jordan's

Mitch Carmody:

message on the radio and it said 11:35 was the time and the station with 97.7

Mitch Carmody:

or three, and sometimes 11:35 may be a significant time in Jordan's life

Mitch Carmody:

that has a connection to it as well.

Mitch Carmody:

So, I look at everything.

Mitch Carmody:

Time of day, the feeling, what you were doing, the smell, the time of year.

Mitch Carmody:

Our body remembers so much of all the details during a time of

Mitch Carmody:

trauma, you know, that when we lived through this, even the smell of the

Mitch Carmody:

Fall leaves can trigger something.

Mitch Carmody:

So yeah, I was prepared and accepted it and it does keep coming.

Mitch Carmody:

Now, 33 years at the end of the slideshow, I'll show you one that we just got this

Mitch Carmody:

summer in Florida, unbelievable sign.

Mitch Carmody:

And I've sharing that for the last.

Marshall Adler:

You know, it's interesting because Steve knows

Marshall Adler:

this and the audience knows this, my son, Matt passed away and then two

Marshall Adler:

days later, my mother passed away.

Marshall Adler:

So we had two funerals, two eulogies, and, two obituaries we had to do

Marshall Adler:

within 48 hours of each other.

Marshall Adler:

And obviously I miss my mother, but having my son pass 48 hours

Marshall Adler:

before my mother passed, I've not really had the opportunity to grieve

Marshall Adler:

my mother's passing because I've been grieving my son's passing.

Marshall Adler:

So I almost think that it's almost your sensitivity and

Marshall Adler:

awareness for looking for signs.

Marshall Adler:

There might be signs that both of my parents are sending, but I'm not picking

Marshall Adler:

them up because I'm looking for signs from Matt more than signs from my parents.

Mitch Carmody:

Oh, exactly, exactly Marshall, because you know before

Mitch Carmody:

Kelly, three years before Kelly died at nine, my twin sister and her two

Mitch Carmody:

sons were killed in a car accident.

Mitch Carmody:

And, and, you know, I had to actually put my grief in my, then my son got

Mitch Carmody:

diagnosed a year after they were killed.

Mitch Carmody:

And so I couldn't even grieve them, I had to fight for my

Mitch Carmody:

son's life fought for 18 months.

Mitch Carmody:

Then my, then I had to agree for my son.

Mitch Carmody:

I didn't grieve for my twin sister until 10 years later, or almost 15 years later

Mitch Carmody:

when I went to a, um, no, it was 20 years later because I, she was killed

Mitch Carmody:

in a car accident and I asked I called, uh, I saw the driver had a clipping of

Mitch Carmody:

the driver's name and I, I called it.

Mitch Carmody:

We have Google now and I Googled the driver's name and I got it

Mitch Carmody:

and I talked to him and asked him what happened that night.

Mitch Carmody:

And it was, it's a long story, but it was phenomenal how I released his

Mitch Carmody:

anxiety, that I said, we didn't blame you, my sister was a horrible driver.

Mitch Carmody:

We don't know what happened.

Mitch Carmody:

So, I mean, we had a dialogue and, and that I felt, God, I'm talking with my

Mitch Carmody:

sister again and then twinless twins called me and said, could you come and

Mitch Carmody:

speak at a twinless twins conference?

Mitch Carmody:

I'd never been to a twinless conference.

Mitch Carmody:

It never heard of them.

Mitch Carmody:

And go to a room with 125 people that are twins and see all, none of us look

Mitch Carmody:

alike, because all our twins are dead.

Mitch Carmody:

And, but it was just a, but we all had the same feeling you know,

Mitch Carmody:

that, that we're something we're losing our car keys are always lost.

Mitch Carmody:

There's always something missing.

Mitch Carmody:

And the closest thing I can compare that to is the loss of my son, liken

Mitch Carmody:

to a twin because I lost my brother as well and, and I didn't have that same

Mitch Carmody:

connection with my brother as I did with my twin sister, because we were

Mitch Carmody:

roommates we had a relationship for nine months and that makes a difference.

Mitch Carmody:

And in fact, the twins called us that are not twins, singletons.

Mitch Carmody:

They say the singletons just don't get our grief, you know, and my sisters don't.

Mitch Carmody:

My other siblings don't get the grief I have for my siblings.

Mitch Carmody:

So, we cannot expect other people to know what a child is like if they don't know.

Mitch Carmody:

Um, but we can, I I'm, I'm sorry.

Mitch Carmody:

I'm kind of going off on a tangent here, but, um, after my sister

Mitch Carmody:

had died, I asked her for a sign.

Mitch Carmody:

And, and I finally got this, I saw her in a dream.

Mitch Carmody:

She said, Mickey, Mickey, Mickey, Mickey, Mickey, I love you.

Mitch Carmody:

No one calls me Mickey anymore.

Mitch Carmody:

Oh my God it was her and she looked so beautiful.

Mitch Carmody:

And a psychic had told me once that my, after my twin sister, a psychic

Mitch Carmody:

came to me, I didn't go to her, but she said I had a reading or your sister

Mitch Carmody:

came to me and says that, um, she just wanted me to tell you, yes, there are

Mitch Carmody:

golden trees with apples in heaven.

Mitch Carmody:

And that she's in charge of all the little children that died to come over too early.

Mitch Carmody:

So, that was three years before my son died and that when I, when my son died, I

Mitch Carmody:

said, Oh my God, I know my twin sister is there to receiver, you know, it just like,

Mitch Carmody:

I think even your, your mom was there to help out your son who was probably in

Mitch Carmody:

that, still, I don't, I'm writing another whole book about that whole state that

Mitch Carmody:

happens after, because my first book was letters to my son and it's all about me.

Mitch Carmody:

Now, the other book is letters to my dad and it's about Kelly, talking to

Mitch Carmody:

me what happened after he died and how he tried to help us through these years

Mitch Carmody:

with the signs and through the grief and it's just been kind of a fun book

Mitch Carmody:

to, concept to work with him again and in a, in a dialogue, talking to him and

Mitch Carmody:

feeling inspiration in the morning from him and so it doesn't have to go away.

Mitch Carmody:

That's all part of the sign that it could bring a lot of our life back

Mitch Carmody:

that we thought was gone forever.

Steve Smelski:

Interesting.

Steve Smelski:

So I wanted to let everybody know that we're actually recording

Steve Smelski:

video of today's podcast.

Steve Smelski:

We'll be releasing the podcast for audio, but a couple of weeks following that,

Steve Smelski:

you'll be able to watch the video of our recording and our discussion today,

Steve Smelski:

as we talk through this topic of signs.

Steve Smelski:

Mitch has a PowerPoint that we're going to share, and we'll talk from, as we go

Steve Smelski:

through the podcast, but you'll be able to actually see this on our YouTube channel a

Steve Smelski:

couple of weeks after the podcast is out.

Steve Smelski:

So with that, Mitch, would you, should I go ahead and pull up?

Mitch Carmody:

Yes, go ahead and see...

Mitch Carmody:

.... first slide.

Steve Smelski:

You should be able to see it right.

Mitch Carmody:

There you go.

Mitch Carmody:

Yep.

Mitch Carmody:

I see.

Mitch Carmody:

Okay, you can just get through that, that's just the introduction of Whispers

Mitch Carmody:

Of Love and the Signs Of Butterflies get.

Mitch Carmody:

So I talk about, you know, this is like an introductory to, for signs and for

Mitch Carmody:

people to be able to identify it, they need to know what to identify and when

Mitch Carmody:

they happen, so I'm going to go through each one of these one by one, but the

Mitch Carmody:

prior to death, because that does, people have signs or portents, or, uh,

Mitch Carmody:

uh, actually find something following the death that indicated that they knew

Mitch Carmody:

the love room's going to die in some way, even though it wasn't like cancer

Mitch Carmody:

or suicide that they werqe planning.

Mitch Carmody:

It was just a, like a young girl got killed on a, uh, one day, but

Mitch Carmody:

she left behind on her computer.

Mitch Carmody:

Uh, the 'not yet file'.

Mitch Carmody:

All that she wanted for funerals.

Mitch Carmody:

The songs, the stuff she didn't want.

Mitch Carmody:

She had planned her whole funeral and a couple of weeks

Mitch Carmody:

she was killed in a car accident.

Mitch Carmody:

She didn't, it was just kind of completely accident, but yet on some

Mitch Carmody:

level, her spirit, I think knows, and that we talked about prior to

Mitch Carmody:

death, then at some level, the spirit knows and can get, get inkle or help.

Mitch Carmody:

I'm not sure how the process works, but I've, I've interviewed many bereaved

Mitch Carmody:

parents that many have said, they have pause and they think back prior to the

Mitch Carmody:

death, you know, a couple of weeks, a couple of days, what was, what has

Mitch Carmody:

changed, what something happened that they said that would give you a pause

Mitch Carmody:

and so that can happen then during the dying process, you know, after the

Mitch Carmody:

death has occurred and during the dying process, I was with my son when he died.

Mitch Carmody:

I was with my mother when she died.

Mitch Carmody:

I was with my grandmother when she died.

Mitch Carmody:

And when my grandmother died, you know, I, I was working midnight

Mitch Carmody:

shift and she was working, uh, you know, at that she was actively dying.

Mitch Carmody:

I'd go there every morning and see her.

Mitch Carmody:

And I saw her one morning and she's, and she's talking like

Mitch Carmody:

this with her arms in the air.

Mitch Carmody:

And I go, grandma, who you're talking to, she goes, well,

Mitch Carmody:

grandpa Ernie, can't you see him?

Mitch Carmody:

I said, yes, I do grandma, you know, it's good to see you again, grandpa.

Mitch Carmody:

So I was just placating her, I thought she was had dementia,

Mitch Carmody:

but then the next morning I said, you know, she's doing okay.

Mitch Carmody:

I'm not going to go tomorrow, that next day.

Mitch Carmody:

Every morning I went there for a week.

Mitch Carmody:

I didn't go that next morning and she died.

Mitch Carmody:

And so I think she was waiting for me to not be there.

Mitch Carmody:

So it would be easier for her to leave.

Mitch Carmody:

So that was the first exposure is watching someone.

Mitch Carmody:

You know, I didn't actually see her die, but I saw her, in the dying process.

Mitch Carmody:

When my son died and his lights went out, I mean, he was paralyzed

Mitch Carmody:

and when he, when he died, his eyes glowed and he was looking through me

Mitch Carmody:

and smiling, and he'd been paralyzed by the tumor, but his mouth relaxed.

Mitch Carmody:

And he actually smiled and his eyes glowed almost like a poof,

Mitch Carmody:

you know, quite blue again?

Mitch Carmody:

And then they went grey and he, he died.

Mitch Carmody:

And it felt so wonderful to see what he was seeing.

Mitch Carmody:

He was seeing something that I know someone was there to greet him,

Mitch Carmody:

which I assumed was my twin sister.

Mitch Carmody:

And then my aunt come in and she said, I had a dream and she said

Mitch Carmody:

to bring three angels to you today.

Mitch Carmody:

And I come over here and Kelly is dying.

Mitch Carmody:

And she said, I brought these three angels to escort him to heaven.

Mitch Carmody:

I mean, so these little things that continually happened, I mean,

Mitch Carmody:

that happened on his death day.

Mitch Carmody:

And then my mother died, I'm with her.

Mitch Carmody:

And she's the atheist, mind you?

Mitch Carmody:

I told her she didn't believe in God.

Mitch Carmody:

She's an atheist.

Mitch Carmody:

It's over when it's over.

Mitch Carmody:

Why do you believe in signs?

Mitch Carmody:

Your dad is dead, why do you continue to torture yourself?

Mitch Carmody:

And I said, mom, I'll be tortured without my son, my rest of my life.

Mitch Carmody:

So like, we don't need to talk about it anymore because I am tortured.

Mitch Carmody:

And she said, well, put it behind you, blah, blah, blah.

Mitch Carmody:

Now she's dying and actively dying.

Mitch Carmody:

She's changed talking, she hadn't spoken in hours and we're gathered around her and

Mitch Carmody:

said, yes, it's going to be any minute.

Mitch Carmody:

And all of a sudden she opened up her eyes and she said, grandma, Oh,

Mitch Carmody:

I can't wait to get your cherry pie.

Mitch Carmody:

And she died.

Mitch Carmody:

And my, my, my grandma, my wife's aunt and my sister said, Oh my gosh, thank God.

Mitch Carmody:

She played that one close.

Mitch Carmody:

You're not believing in God at the last second.

Mitch Carmody:

Yeah, but to see her face again, to see her face, see somebody to

Mitch Carmody:

see Kelly's face, see somebody.

Mitch Carmody:

I saw the reflection of God's presence more than seeing it.

Mitch Carmody:

So that, that helped buoy me up after the deep grief the next day

Mitch Carmody:

and the next week, the next years of drinking beer all the time.

Mitch Carmody:

And, but those signs helped me come out of that.

Mitch Carmody:

They really did.

Mitch Carmody:

And so again, I'm just going all over the map, but that's during the dying process,

Mitch Carmody:

then most of the time we'll be talking about signs and people in grief world,

Mitch Carmody:

and I've been doing for 20 years is, the signs have come after they have died.

Mitch Carmody:

And it's in recognizing those and what we're talking about here.

Mitch Carmody:

Now we can move the slide now.

Steve Smelski:

So Mitch, just to clarify for everybody that's listening, what

Steve Smelski:

we're going to talk about and actually see today is from a lot of people that

Steve Smelski:

have come to you and share their signs.

Steve Smelski:

These aren't all your signs correct?

Mitch Carmody:

Oh gosh, no, these are from people, I mean, a lot of these people,

Mitch Carmody:

a lot of these people, all their other children that are in here are good friends

Mitch Carmody:

of ours today, you know, because they're sharing their child across the country

Mitch Carmody:

for 10 years and people know their child.

Mitch Carmody:

When you think, Oh, they don't know it yet, no, one's gonna remember them.

Mitch Carmody:

Not with you, not when you believe this, Y believed that they were still

Mitch Carmody:

connected, then everybody gets to have the joy of their lives still.

Mitch Carmody:

And so that we're like an avatar for them.

Mitch Carmody:

And, and to, to bring back their knowledge and their love to other

Mitch Carmody:

people that recognize that same love and, and people start to do it.

Mitch Carmody:

When they first, they get over the business that you're crazy or not going to

Mitch Carmody:

get over this, they start to realize, wow, maybe they aren't going to get over this.

Mitch Carmody:

And I say, you're right.

Mitch Carmody:

You'll learn to live with it.

Mitch Carmody:

And that's how we get by.

Mitch Carmody:

And we look at everything that can make that journey better, like.....uh.

Mitch Carmody:

I talked about the prior to death, we talked about the dreams of

Mitch Carmody:

drawings, writings of people, the premonitions, you have.

Mitch Carmody:

Maybe people, some people are psychics, some people are not.

Mitch Carmody:

You get that gut feeling and you just kinda start to act on

Mitch Carmody:

it instead of shutting it down.

Mitch Carmody:

You know, little kids used to talk about having invisible friends

Mitch Carmody:

and we always shut them down.

Mitch Carmody:

All your net.

Mitch Carmody:

Nice.

Mitch Carmody:

You got little invisible friends and I did the same thing.

Mitch Carmody:

Now.

Mitch Carmody:

I know tha little children are talking to spirits.

Mitch Carmody:

There are, they do have invisible friends.

Mitch Carmody:

You know, they talked to grandpa in the backseat and who are you talking to?

Mitch Carmody:

Oh, grandpa was here.

Mitch Carmody:

I've heard hundreds of these stories of little kids under five,

Mitch Carmody:

especially are still connected.

Mitch Carmody:

They haven't been walled up and they are still very open once they get in

Mitch Carmody:

school, you know, it gets embarrassing.

Mitch Carmody:

They're not gonna talk about in visible friends.

Mitch Carmody:

They're not going to talk about, so everybody gets shut down and becomes

Mitch Carmody:

normalized, you know, and we really lose that gift that we have as a child.

Mitch Carmody:

And so when we start to understand that way, we can look at these things

Mitch Carmody:

that happened prior and say, Oh, maybe there's some indication, that yes,

Mitch Carmody:

I can get through the grief because I know it's not completely gone.

Mitch Carmody:

So prior to another, it's important thing to look in retrospect in your grief.

Mitch Carmody:

And, and maybe there are some things that, wow, these things did happen prior.

Mitch Carmody:

So we can move now.

Steve Smelski:

I think the first time Shelly and I got a couple, Shelly's like,

Steve Smelski:

don't, you dare tell anybody, they're going to think you're going crazy.

Steve Smelski:

You're in grief.

Steve Smelski:

They're going to think you've gone off the deep end.

Steve Smelski:

Don't talk about that.

Steve Smelski:

Don't share.

Steve Smelski:

And I'm like, okay, it does seem a little strange, but then after a

Steve Smelski:

little while, I'm like, you know, I don't think God would have given us

Steve Smelski:

that gift to keep it to ourselves.

Steve Smelski:

So I started sharing after that.

Steve Smelski:

I don't think they really saw me as crazy.

Steve Smelski:

They, actually, people were curious.

Mitch Carmody:

Yes, they are!

Mitch Carmody:

Cause people, everybody wants to have proof of God.

Mitch Carmody:

Everybody wants to have proof of divinity and life after death.

Mitch Carmody:

You know, we joke about it, but no one really believes it.

Mitch Carmody:

So I was fortunate enough, people thought I was crazy before my son died.

Mitch Carmody:

So, you know, they think, OK, Mitch going on, you know, and, uh, but, but

Mitch Carmody:

yet there was a, there was a caveat with my daughter who thought, well now,

Mitch Carmody:

you know, I was, you know, I'm an only child now and Kelly was a center of the

Mitch Carmody:

universe for two years while they fought cancer, being bounced all over the place.

Mitch Carmody:

And now I get to be center of the universe and dad says death, Kelly's

Mitch Carmody:

not dead, he lives on, you know, so she was, yeah, I can understand her, you

Mitch Carmody:

know, we talked about it as an adult.

Mitch Carmody:

She didn't talk about it back then I was too blind to even see it.

Mitch Carmody:

But when she became a mother, she said, I want to forgive

Mitch Carmody:

you dad because now I'm a mom.

Mitch Carmody:

I get it.

Mitch Carmody:

So, um, yeah.

Mitch Carmody:

So during the dying process, let's go onto the next slide.

Steve Smelski:

I think this is the next one, right?

Mitch Carmody:

Oh, And we talked about my mother and, um,

Mitch Carmody:

Oh, maybe this is right, yes.

Mitch Carmody:

That was my mother did see relatives.

Mitch Carmody:

Some people do see the figure of God or Michael, Michael the Archangel or

Mitch Carmody:

people, you know, people, we'll see people receiving them, especially

Mitch Carmody:

in nursing homes and working with the elderly that the amount of

Mitch Carmody:

evidence is, tremendous, that who are those people at the end of my bed?

Mitch Carmody:

You know, so during the dying process, the angels are coming,

Mitch Carmody:

relatives are coming and they're, I mean, they're, they talked about it

Mitch Carmody:

without nonplus, you know, of course.

Mitch Carmody:

Why you don't see them?

Mitch Carmody:

And so you have to, again, to take pause that, that there's, they're not crazy.

Mitch Carmody:

There's not all these people, all of a sudden getting dementia when

Mitch Carmody:

they're dying or they're seeing the relatives that are coming and gathering.

Marshall Adler:

It's interesting you mentioned that my, my father died in

Marshall Adler:

2012 and he had Alzheimer's and he was talking to one of his childhood friends

Marshall Adler:

who passed about five years before he did.

Marshall Adler:

And we just sort of said, well, it's Alzheimer's, he's out of it.

Marshall Adler:

He's not getting enough oxygen to his brain, who knows what.

Marshall Adler:

My mother, when she passed, my mother was sharp as a tack.

Marshall Adler:

I mean, she was the antithesis of my father.

Marshall Adler:

Unbelievably physically falling apart, but mentally unbelievably sharp.

Marshall Adler:

And she did the same thing.

Marshall Adler:

She was talking to her sister that had passed and were saying, well,

Marshall Adler:

this is not an Alzheimer thing.

Marshall Adler:

This is something that we noticed.

Marshall Adler:

My wife's grandmother also did this, where she was talking only to people

Marshall Adler:

that weren't here and so we had three times where we're saying, wait a second.

Marshall Adler:

Once, sort of interesting twice, is this a pattern?

Marshall Adler:

The third time we're very conscious of that because we've physically experienced

Marshall Adler:

this where they're just, they're leaving and they're talking to people that

Marshall Adler:

aren't here, but there somewhere else.

Mitch Carmody:

Yes.

Mitch Carmody:

There's so many instances that, I mean, surely in hospice workers, I

Mitch Carmody:

was a hospice volunteer talking to so many people that experienced that and

Mitch Carmody:

it took it as just a normal process.

Mitch Carmody:

They didn't even say, Oh, like, Oh my God, did that happen?

Mitch Carmody:

They said, no, that happens all the time.

Mitch Carmody:

Then after the death has occurred, this is where most people are looking

Mitch Carmody:

for signs and the prior ones we can, will come back to us eventually.

Mitch Carmody:

You know, when we start opening up more and our brains start to put

Mitch Carmody:

things together, but after the death occurred, there's the visual signs

Mitch Carmody:

or audio or even smell, you know, but there's some sort of sense that we get.

Mitch Carmody:

It you can smell, I know some people have smelled their, you could smell their child

Mitch Carmody:

in the wind, or, I mean, you know what, your child smells like you when they're

Mitch Carmody:

come in from a workout or they've been a little kid from the snow and they,

Mitch Carmody:

you know, they have their certain smell.

Mitch Carmody:

And every once in a while I would get a whiff of my son, like when he came in

Mitch Carmody:

from outside playing, you know, and I would just, just stop and just breathe

Mitch Carmody:

it in and know where'd it come from?

Mitch Carmody:

I don't know.

Mitch Carmody:

But these, so it can come in all of our inputs.

Mitch Carmody:

We can get a sign.

Mitch Carmody:

And so to be aware, that psychic information that we get, or from other

Mitch Carmody:

people and dreams, visitation, and a dream and a visitation are different.

Mitch Carmody:

A dream is like a dream you have.

Mitch Carmody:

Well, I wish, well, are we a dream of something you did before with your child

Mitch Carmody:

or your loved one in life and, and they're kind of a modge-podge of everything.

Mitch Carmody:

But when you have a visitation dream, like when I saw my sister.

Mitch Carmody:

I mean, I woke my wife up and I said, honey, Sandy's here!.

Mitch Carmody:

I mean, she was in full color, high def, high smell.

Mitch Carmody:

I mean everything about it and I could still, where I'm talking to you now,

Mitch Carmody:

I see her smiling face and Mickey, Mickey Mickey in my head, it's a video.

Mitch Carmody:

I can not get out of my head.

Mitch Carmody:

And I had the same one when my book was published.

Mitch Carmody:

I have not had dream of my dad, since he died, nothing at all.

Mitch Carmody:

You know, and I was, so I have so many deaths after that, you

Mitch Carmody:

know, that I never really even tapped on it or asked him for any.

Mitch Carmody:

But when I published my book, I kind of pined, like God, you know, I, my dad

Mitch Carmody:

died way too young to be proud of me.

Mitch Carmody:

I was never good in sports.

Mitch Carmody:

I was never good in this.

Mitch Carmody:

And I always felt I was a disappointment at 15, you know?

Mitch Carmody:

And so I really couldn't, uh, you know, I never could get his

Mitch Carmody:

accolades for doing a good job.

Mitch Carmody:

I had a dream, my book was published.

Mitch Carmody:

It came in, it came in the mail, the whole case of books and,

Mitch Carmody:

and I, Oh my God, they're done.

Mitch Carmody:

I can send them out.

Mitch Carmody:

And I had a dream that night.

Mitch Carmody:

My dad who died in his dress blues as a police officer coming down a valley, down

Mitch Carmody:

a hill, coming down this Hill, walking in his dress, blues and looking at me and

Mitch Carmody:

I I'm coming down the hill, I go, dad, and he goes, I'm so proud of you son.

Mitch Carmody:

And then it ended.

Mitch Carmody:

He never crossed the valley.

Mitch Carmody:

I never went down, but he just pointed at me and said, I'm so proud of you son.

Mitch Carmody:

So I finally got it from him.

Mitch Carmody:

And so there's no time limit on these either, you know, and I

Mitch Carmody:

never did get a sign from my mom.

Mitch Carmody:

You know, I tell, on her birthday.

Mitch Carmody:

One of those black balloons from someone's 50th birthday party

Mitch Carmody:

or something, whatever, our dogs were barking in the yard.

Mitch Carmody:

And I go running out in the yard and, and I go, what are the dogs barking at?

Mitch Carmody:

And they're in the garden, barking in the garden and look in the garden.

Mitch Carmody:

There is a black balloon with a silver string on it, bouncing around

Mitch Carmody:

in the garden, on my mom's birthday.

Mitch Carmody:

And I said, Oh mom, you....

Mitch Carmody:

so I knew it was her.

Mitch Carmody:

I just knew it was her.

Mitch Carmody:

It had been all years since, but I just, okay, fine.

Mitch Carmody:

I've got a sign for my mom, my dad, I got a sign from them all.

Mitch Carmody:

And I don't even ask.

Mitch Carmody:

It's just whatever, whatever, whatever they need, you know, maybe

Mitch Carmody:

they're on a different task that God has planned, I don't know.

Mitch Carmody:

Or we resolved everything.

Mitch Carmody:

I pretty much resolved everything with my mother and there was

Mitch Carmody:

nothing except I wanted a sign.

Mitch Carmody:

So she sent me a sign, but that was it.

Mitch Carmody:

There was never any dialogue.

Mitch Carmody:

And I knew she was doing good and she made it and, and we never had any issues.

Mitch Carmody:

So it brings up a lot of good grief issues too.

Mitch Carmody:

When you're wishing for signs, you start to think, think about things that you

Mitch Carmody:

look at the guilt and regret that we have and, and, and study them and it's okay.

Mitch Carmody:

I did.

Mitch Carmody:

I haven't, I, you know, I didn't know this was going to happen.

Mitch Carmody:

But maybe I can talk about it with mom again, you know, so it can

Mitch Carmody:

open up the being in the present with them, which is so important.

Mitch Carmody:

So being in the present, looking for these signs, that's, what's

Mitch Carmody:

so important just being aware.

Steve Smelski:

So, one of the first ones I have experienced was

Steve Smelski:

actually a cold touch on my shoulder.

Steve Smelski:

So I promised Jordan, I would run.

Steve Smelski:

And so I would get up early.

Steve Smelski:

Shelly slept late cause she didn't want to get up.

Steve Smelski:

Me, I had trouble sleeping after Jordan died, so I'd go for a run.

Steve Smelski:

I'd come home, I'd quietly go out on the patio and I'd sit there.

Steve Smelski:

And one morning it's in Florida, it's hot.

Steve Smelski:

It's like August and so I felt drawn to the lake.

Steve Smelski:

So I walked outside, I sat down on the grass and we had a couple of trees there.

Steve Smelski:

They're probably 20 yards apart.

Steve Smelski:

And I was, it was, the lake was so still, it looked like a, a mirror.

Steve Smelski:

It was reflecting everything from the far side.

Steve Smelski:

And all of a sudden I noticed something moving along the

Steve Smelski:

edge and it was a dragon fly.

Steve Smelski:

And it was probably three feet off shore and I counted 29 times that it went

Steve Smelski:

back and forth between those trees.

Steve Smelski:

And I could see it, like, it was like a foot over the water, so it

Steve Smelski:

was maybe three feet off shore.

Steve Smelski:

And I'm like, I saw it, I noticed it, I started counting.

Steve Smelski:

I counted 29 times and on the 29th time, my right shoulder got

Steve Smelski:

so cold, it was like, somebody touched it with an ice cube.

Steve Smelski:

And I was like, wow Jordan, is that you?

Steve Smelski:

And I told Shelly about it and she's like, don't you tell anybody about that!

Steve Smelski:

And I'm like, dragonflies, don't go back and forth like 30 times so,

Mitch Carmody:

...is 29 significant at all?

Steve Smelski:

No.

Steve Smelski:

I just counted.

Steve Smelski:

Of course, I don't know how many I missed before that, before I saw it.

Steve Smelski:

So,

Mitch Carmody:

Wow, but that's incredible.

Mitch Carmody:

and then the feeling that, I mean, people do get the physical sensation to the

Mitch Carmody:

ice cold or get really warm or just, you know, feel the feel of breeze walk by

Mitch Carmody:

that like someone was there, you know?

Mitch Carmody:

Like Marshall saw peripherally.

Mitch Carmody:

People just feel it.

Mitch Carmody:

And many people will feel, especially widows that I've talked to will

Mitch Carmody:

feel their husbands sit on the bed and they go, Oh my God, I felt

Mitch Carmody:

him sit on the edge of the bed!

Mitch Carmody:

I'm not crazy and I'm not on drugs, and I don't drink!

Mitch Carmody:

This lady was telling me and I, then I'm 80 years old and

Mitch Carmody:

I know Hank sat on my bed.

Mitch Carmody:

And he sat at the same spot every time, to take his shoes off

Mitch Carmody:

and I knew it was him you know?

Mitch Carmody:

And it can be just that feeling that you feel on the edge of the bed.

Mitch Carmody:

No, no smell, no sight, no people, everybody wants the billboard and that

Mitch Carmody:

is, those are nice, but they're rare, you know, where you'll get a visual people,

Mitch Carmody:

see them and actually talk to them.

Mitch Carmody:

What I've taught.

Mitch Carmody:

I have people that have experienced that, but that's not the norm.

Mitch Carmody:

Most of it's just that subtle stuff like the bed and or

Mitch Carmody:

finding a corridor on the bed.

Mitch Carmody:

And then, wasn't there before then it disappears that it's there

Mitch Carmody:

again and little things like that.

Mitch Carmody:

So that's how all of the, after the death has occurred, we're talking

Mitch Carmody:

about all these things that can happen.

Mitch Carmody:

And then during the near-death experiences, I, talked with my mother

Mitch Carmody:

and I kept pretty much been over that with my mother, how she saw my

Mitch Carmody:

grandmother and my son, saw somebody, so, we can just skip through this slide.

Mitch Carmody:

But this is an important picture because of the near-death

Mitch Carmody:

experience that my son had.

Mitch Carmody:

Because he had surgery, to remove the brain tumor.

Mitch Carmody:

They took as much as they could, and it's at the base of the neck here, so

Mitch Carmody:

it, it, his heart started to skip a beat and, you know, it's the respiratory

Mitch Carmody:

center, it's everything, but they, it's so wrapped around everything they had

Mitch Carmody:

to get as much, and they were going a little too deep and his heart stopped.

Mitch Carmody:

So he was dead for a couple minutes.

Mitch Carmody:

They, they brought him back and they were success, he was success.

Mitch Carmody:

But he was in a coma for a week, intubated and we're just praying,

Mitch Carmody:

hoping, praying that he would survive.

Mitch Carmody:

And then he did and when he finally did get intubated out, we said a said, He

Mitch Carmody:

said, first thing, he said that that, that his role was raspy but dad, he goes,

Mitch Carmody:

I gotta tell you, you won't believe it.

Mitch Carmody:

He said, I left during surgery.

Mitch Carmody:

I saw the surgery.

Mitch Carmody:

I left up, floated out of my body.

Mitch Carmody:

I'm on the ceiling.

Mitch Carmody:

He said, I saw all the walls in the room, all the bright lights and the doctors all

Mitch Carmody:

over me and he counted the nurses I can't remember, but he gave all these facts.

Mitch Carmody:

And I, I said, you're kidding.

Mitch Carmody:

I said, you really left your body?

Mitch Carmody:

Yes, yes!

Mitch Carmody:

I just floated up and I was there and he said, I was holding hands with Jesus.

Mitch Carmody:

And I said, you were holding?

Mitch Carmody:

He said, yeah.

Mitch Carmody:

I said, did he say anything?

Mitch Carmody:

He says, yes, Kelly, you will be well.

Mitch Carmody:

And we're very lukewarm Catholic family so, and he wasn't going to catechism

Mitch Carmody:

and so I'm like, you know, where is he coming from where he seeing Jesus?

Mitch Carmody:

Yeah, I believe in Jesus, but I'm not looking forward to seeing him right away.

Mitch Carmody:

But when Kelly said that he saw Jesus, I said, well, what did he look like?

Mitch Carmody:

He's said, he looked just like Half Nelson.

Mitch Carmody:

I said half Nelson, who's that?

Mitch Carmody:

He said one of my Garbage Pail Kid cards.

Mitch Carmody:

Because Kelly was sick, you know, 18 months we had 5,000 Garbage

Mitch Carmody:

Pail Kid cards, you know, that we collected, that was what he did.

Mitch Carmody:

And now they're my granddaughters.

Mitch Carmody:

But, so th that's just what his, he pulled.

Mitch Carmody:

I had to go home and pull out what Jesus looked like.

Mitch Carmody:

And I was working for the Catholic Church at the time.

Mitch Carmody:

And I showed pastor father Jim, you know, saying father, Jim, this

Mitch Carmody:

is my son said, Jesus looked like.

Mitch Carmody:

He said it's not the Romanesque version.

Mitch Carmody:

Um, but he said, actually I see the full implications of

Mitch Carmody:

your son seeing full spirit.

Mitch Carmody:

Anima, animus, sensitivity, strength.

Mitch Carmody:

Our body defines our gender.

Mitch Carmody:

Our soul does not.

Mitch Carmody:

And he said that is what's the beauty of it.

Mitch Carmody:

He's saying pure, beautiful spirit, both sides of the equation, both the masculine,

Mitch Carmody:

the feminine, the yin, the yang.

Mitch Carmody:

All, everything is the best way he could describe it.

Mitch Carmody:

Yeah, that was profound to me, you know?

Mitch Carmody:

Yeah, I see it.

Mitch Carmody:

The strength, the sensitivity, he was describing spirit.

Mitch Carmody:

The only way he could to his context of a Garbage Pail Kid card, you know?

Mitch Carmody:

And some people will think it was sacreligious and no, are you kiding?

Mitch Carmody:

This is what my son saw, I think it's funny, you know, I think it's great.

Mitch Carmody:

I love it.

Mitch Carmody:

You know?

Mitch Carmody:

And, uh, so I share that a lot that he did, you know?

Mitch Carmody:

And so I use that.

Mitch Carmody:

I've always used that in this, presentation because

Mitch Carmody:

that again gave us evidence.

Mitch Carmody:

It gave us strength to go through the journey after he

Mitch Carmody:

did die, that he had met Jesus.

Mitch Carmody:

And, he said you will be, well, we thought we'll be, well, he would be healed,

Mitch Carmody:

but we know that's not always the case.

Mitch Carmody:

You know what sometimes dying is, is the ultimate, you know, when he, his

Mitch Carmody:

tumors were all over his body, I was praying for his death at night because

Mitch Carmody:

he was screaming all night, you know, you know, that's nothing else would,

Mitch Carmody:

you know, unless it's death would get him out of it, you know, and nothing

Mitch Carmody:

we couldn't do anymore suppositories.

Mitch Carmody:

He was so skinny and, and so when death did take him, it was a relief that

Mitch Carmody:

he would die so he was out of pain.

Mitch Carmody:

And so the undiagnosed tumor that he did have turned out to be a blessing

Mitch Carmody:

that we did not know, but that actually killed, stopped his brain before

Mitch Carmody:

the tumors in his spine would just get bigger and bigger and bigger.

Mitch Carmody:

And so again, there's things that can kind of help us that, uh, following the

Mitch Carmody:

loss that happened prior to the loss.

Mitch Carmody:

And I keep going back and forth on signs because there is no they're,

Mitch Carmody:

they're all kind of mixed together.

Mitch Carmody:

So then the peaceful transitions, I call it soul speed.

Mitch Carmody:

You know, while we're in soul speak that we're, we're in that

Mitch Carmody:

spot where we're in meditation.

Mitch Carmody:

We're in prayer where we're reading the Torah, whatever, we're in that sacred

Mitch Carmody:

divine spot where we're communicating.

Mitch Carmody:

You know, with God at a higher power.

Mitch Carmody:

So we're in that space in a dream world I think.

Mitch Carmody:

We're in that and the dying process.

Mitch Carmody:

And to know that we are, and to actually feel that cause so many people will feel

Mitch Carmody:

it if we allow it, we can feel our arm.

Mitch Carmody:

We can feel the energy, the room gets warm.

Mitch Carmody:

There's a lot of things that that can transpire at during the dying process,

Mitch Carmody:

if we're aware and not everybody has the opportunity to be there.

Mitch Carmody:

So I don't talk about it as being the best thing that can happen.

Mitch Carmody:

But yet it can be helpful for the journey, but can also have, you're not there, if

Mitch Carmody:

it's a mixed bag, you know, I, I wish I'd not even seen my son in the casket.

Mitch Carmody:

You know, I just, that was not him in there.

Mitch Carmody:

And, and I can't get that out of my head.

Mitch Carmody:

People that find their loved one in the bathroom that had completed

Mitch Carmody:

suicide or had had, I had a horrible accident and you have to see

Mitch Carmody:

that, you can't unsee that stuff.

Mitch Carmody:

So sometimes we regret and a lot of people will say, well, I'd never

Mitch Carmody:

had the chance to say goodbye.

Mitch Carmody:

And I said, well, I had the chance to say goodbye.

Mitch Carmody:

I did with my sister, but I did with my son, I did with my mother.

Mitch Carmody:

But when it came to that point to say goodbye, I couldn't.

Mitch Carmody:

All I could say was, I love you.

Mitch Carmody:

I love you.

Mitch Carmody:

I shouldn't say goodbye.

Mitch Carmody:

Cause I know it's not the bond.

Steve Smelski:

Right.

Steve Smelski:

So we were with Jordan.

Steve Smelski:

He died from an amoeba and he was in a coma for a couple of days and we were

Steve Smelski:

holding his hands when they unplugged him from the ventilator and he passed

Steve Smelski:

away maybe a minute and a half later.

Steve Smelski:

And we were there and we did not say goodbye.

Steve Smelski:

We said, we love you.

Mitch Carmody:

Over because you can't.

Steve Smelski:

And his skin, his skin started to change after about 10 or

Steve Smelski:

15 minutes and we were gone after 20 minutes, it's like, we were, he wasn't

Steve Smelski:

there anymore, we weren't going to stay.

Mitch Carmody:

When spark goes out, it's just a shell, you know, and, and,

Mitch Carmody:

and truly, and, and, uh, you know, but yet when the mortician was there

Mitch Carmody:

to come, you know, we had a, it was a death in the home, so the, the, the

Mitch Carmody:

police had to come, uh, and, uh, the mortician and to take his body away.

Mitch Carmody:

And he put thim in, in that bag and I just, I said, no, I will take my

Mitch Carmody:

son out to the hearse, you will not.

Mitch Carmody:

So I carried him down the stairs.

Mitch Carmody:

And I, and I, I still remember that I talked, I don't know.

Mitch Carmody:

I think I was trying to hurt the mortician cause he's taken my son away, cause back

Mitch Carmody:

in the day when the kids were young, I owned a big black, 1980 hearse, landau

Mitch Carmody:

roof on it, all the lights in the back, rollers, beautiful hearse and we

Mitch Carmody:

used it for camping for, they called us the Adams Family, we'd go camping

Mitch Carmody:

because this big old hearse, we pull into the camp ground and it was fun.

Mitch Carmody:

It was great.

Mitch Carmody:

Anyway, that had that hearse.

Mitch Carmody:

Now, at this point, Kelly died, we'd lost everything we had was gone.

Mitch Carmody:

But when I put him in, I lifted, I put him in the back of the hearse and

Mitch Carmody:

I looked right into the morticians eyes and I said, you know, this

Mitch Carmody:

isn't his first ride in hearse.

Mitch Carmody:

And I walked away.

Mitch Carmody:

I do, I still kind of have guilt for that, that I, that I, that I what's he think,

Mitch Carmody:

I wonder what he thought, you know, but it was like, I couldn't help myself.

Mitch Carmody:

And so we act really strange in the dying, in the dying process and, and

Mitch Carmody:

all the things that lead up to it, whether it's instantaneous or like with

Mitch Carmody:

suicide, or it's like all these different things, all those change everything.

Mitch Carmody:

But what doesn't change is that they can communicate to us after they have died.

Mitch Carmody:

And so let's go on to the next one.

Mitch Carmody:

Here's a little boy and we have a special rosary that this little boy is wearing.

Mitch Carmody:

I forget I'm describing this, I have a picture of a boy, Tyler, who some parents

Mitch Carmody:

have read my book and, or they actually came to a Compassionate Friends meeting

Mitch Carmody:

and they were in the audience and then we, everybody introduces yourself, you know,

Mitch Carmody:

what is your name and what is your loss?

Mitch Carmody:

When it came around to this boys parents and they said, well, we're Tyler Haraker's

Mitch Carmody:

parents, and but, he's not dead yet.

Mitch Carmody:

And I've never been to a compassionate friend's grief group or someone

Mitch Carmody:

with any advance, you know?

Mitch Carmody:

And I, I was just, you know, and I do, I talk about proactive grieving,

Mitch Carmody:

and, and I was kind of startled.

Mitch Carmody:

I said, your son has not died?

Mitch Carmody:

No, he is dying actively.

Mitch Carmody:

But we know you wrote a book about your son who died of cancer, and

Mitch Carmody:

we want to know, is there anything we can do to save his life?

Mitch Carmody:

I said, yes, I have, I have, it's very special rosary, that my son had that he,

Mitch Carmody:

he didn't pray with it like a Catholic.

Mitch Carmody:

I mean, he didn't even know how to it, he just held it like an

Mitch Carmody:

amulet, you know, and, and so when he died, it was put away into a the

Mitch Carmody:

chest of things with all his stuff.

Mitch Carmody:

You know, I didn't think about it for years, because it was his sacred rosary.

Mitch Carmody:

Until a friend of mine, you know, almost 20 years now, got cancer,

Mitch Carmody:

he had to have a bone marrow transplant, completely unsuspected.

Mitch Carmody:

They said, you've got cancer.

Mitch Carmody:

It's coming on fast.

Mitch Carmody:

You need a bone marrow transplant.

Mitch Carmody:

And so he said, okay.

Mitch Carmody:

So he, he got the bone marrow transplant, got, umbilical cord blood from a little

Mitch Carmody:

girl in Italy, matched him perfectly.

Mitch Carmody:

He still survived.

Mitch Carmody:

He's doing great, but he said, I need something and I I've

Mitch Carmody:

lasted my Catholic roots.

Mitch Carmody:

And so I said, David, take this rosary.

Mitch Carmody:

It's it's a very powerful rosary.

Mitch Carmody:

Prayed with it and he kept with it and then he got better and so

Mitch Carmody:

I said, can I get the rosary back?

Mitch Carmody:

Another friend of mine has got an informal cancer, a rare form of cancer.

Mitch Carmody:

And he was like no.

Mitch Carmody:

I don't want to give it back.

Mitch Carmody:

It needs to go to someone else, David.

Mitch Carmody:

And so David gave it away.

Mitch Carmody:

And so I gave it to someone else, and went to someone else, it went to someone else.

Mitch Carmody:

I mean, now David had a cancer liver cancer three months ago.

Mitch Carmody:

The rosary had finally made it back to me again.

Mitch Carmody:

Eighteen different people have had it since David had it.

Mitch Carmody:

And I gave it to him for his surgery, for his liver cancer.

Mitch Carmody:

And we went for a Fall ride the other day, his cancer was completely gone, he's doing

Mitch Carmody:

great, and he gave me the rosary back.

Mitch Carmody:

I gave it to my cousin who also had it once before, but her cancer came back.

Mitch Carmody:

So it's a very special rosary, but it happened to be home,

Mitch Carmody:

you know, for a few days.

Mitch Carmody:

It's weird how it had magic of its own.

Mitch Carmody:

It travels on its own.

Mitch Carmody:

I'm just it's caretaker.

Mitch Carmody:

So, the rosary came back and so the Haraker's asked about the rosary.

Mitch Carmody:

I said, no, it's with somebody right now, they read about it in the book.

Mitch Carmody:

And I said, I, I wish I could give it to you.

Mitch Carmody:

I went home the next day and I got a phone call from my sister and says, someone

Mitch Carmody:

came by, saw my mailbox and said, I got, they said, I want drop this rosary off.

Mitch Carmody:

I saw my kids graduate, I don't need it anymore.

Mitch Carmody:

And then she died a year, about a year after that, but all she

Mitch Carmody:

want to do is get well to see her kids graduate, which she did.

Mitch Carmody:

And then she said, I don't need any anymore.

Mitch Carmody:

I never spoke to her, but it went to my sister.

Mitch Carmody:

So, I called the Haraker's right away and said, the rosary came back.

Mitch Carmody:

You won't believe it came back yesterday or I mean today.

Mitch Carmody:

And they said, well, we'll meet you at Taco Bell in Hastings, so two hours

Mitch Carmody:

each way, we, we met, I said, no, why don't you just come to our house?

Mitch Carmody:

So they came to our house.

Mitch Carmody:

Came over, I gave him the Rosary, he put it on and all of a sudden

Mitch Carmody:

he started to smile and he said, I want something to eat.

Mitch Carmody:

And they said, he hadn't eaten anything in days, and he

Mitch Carmody:

wanted Cheetos and a root beer.

Mitch Carmody:

And the parents looked and said, Oh my God, he wants Cheetos and a

Mitch Carmody:

root beer and he hadn't even eaten.

Mitch Carmody:

And so he did and, and he's talking, he said, I really feel good.

Mitch Carmody:

And then I took his brother, as you can see in the back and he can't

Mitch Carmody:

see it if you're listening, but in this picture, there's a brother

Mitch Carmody:

in his back in the background.

Mitch Carmody:

His older brother was about four years older that he's about seven years old,

Mitch Carmody:

Tyler and his brother was about 10 or 12.

Mitch Carmody:

And I said, you know guys, you know what, I'm thinking, the

Mitch Carmody:

emotional risk, because I've been bereaved and working with people.

Mitch Carmody:

I say, you know, Tyler's dying.

Mitch Carmody:

This rosary is going to help him, but just in case he does die, go in

Mitch Carmody:

the back room and you guys make up a sign, tell each, tell a sign that only

Mitch Carmody:

you guys know that Tyler can send you when you know, that when he has gone.

Mitch Carmody:

So Jacob said, okay, let's go to the back.

Mitch Carmody:

So he and Tyler did, they came out and they said, okay, we did it.

Mitch Carmody:

That was, again, it was a week later, the Haraker's called

Mitch Carmody:

and said that Tyler had died.

Mitch Carmody:

He held the rosary in his hand holding it and he went and he

Mitch Carmody:

started using it like a key.

Mitch Carmody:

And he said, I'm trying, and the dad said, what are you doing, honey?

Mitch Carmody:

They're laying in bed, he said, I'm trying to open the door to

Mitch Carmody:

heaven, but they won't open it.

Mitch Carmody:

And his dad said, honey, don't worry the angels will come.

Mitch Carmody:

The angels will come.

Mitch Carmody:

And he said, daddy, I think they're coming.

Mitch Carmody:

I see Jesus!

Mitch Carmody:

And he died in his dad's arms and he too carried him out to the hearse, he told me.

Mitch Carmody:

That's two boys that saw Jesus, both one, a little, didn't even know

Mitch Carmody:

anything about the rosary one that really didn't know about it either,

Mitch Carmody:

and he was Catholic, so they saw it.

Mitch Carmody:

So that was so any stuff he hadn't had no more night terrors.

Mitch Carmody:

He was having night terrors about dying every, since he got the rosary,

Mitch Carmody:

he'd no more night nightmares.

Mitch Carmody:

He just sort of blended into his death, instead of him being

Mitch Carmody:

terrified of it from this.

Mitch Carmody:

So then three months later, Jacob calls me.

Mitch Carmody:

He goes, Mitch, I got to call you your books, numbers in the book.

Mitch Carmody:

I said, I haven't even talked to my parents yet, they're at work,

Mitch Carmody:

but I got home from school and I'm sitting in the room and I'm having

Mitch Carmody:

a bad Tyler day sitting on my bed, the bunk beds that I have alone now.

Mitch Carmody:

And I said, Tyler, where's my sign?

Mitch Carmody:

And a Red Tail Hawk came and landed on the window sill and looked through the window.

Mitch Carmody:

And he said, Mitch, we made a sign of a Red Tail Hawk!

Mitch Carmody:

How does this happen?

Mitch Carmody:

I said, you are so lucky, Jacob, your brother knows it was so strong.

Mitch Carmody:

I love that, you know, that will change that boys philosophy on life

Mitch Carmody:

and death, the rest of his life, because they have the opportunities.

Mitch Carmody:

So, I talk to anybody I can, if you have an opportunity with my

Mitch Carmody:

mother-in-law, I've already talked to him, my sister, we've already given

Mitch Carmody:

signs to everybody to say, well, here make this a sign that is feasible.

Mitch Carmody:

You know, that we can get back and we laugh about it

Mitch Carmody:

now because we're not dying.

Mitch Carmody:

But yeah, I think it's a good thing to plant that seed.

Mitch Carmody:

And, um, so when we can do that, So that's preparing for the journey.

Mitch Carmody:

So I believe these boys are together like Peter Pan, you know, they're up

Mitch Carmody:

there, Tyler and Kelly are playing together, and, and I really do.

Mitch Carmody:

I think that they, our angels are boys.

Mitch Carmody:

They coordinate our children are whatever our loved ones communicate

Mitch Carmody:

in some sort of, I don't know.

Mitch Carmody:

But I think they do.

Mitch Carmody:

So science again, here, after the deaths occurred, we can get through this.

Mitch Carmody:

This is the lead on.

Mitch Carmody:

We're talking about visible signs.

Mitch Carmody:

It was deep, like I have a picture here of a grilled cheese sandwich.

Mitch Carmody:

That's actually found in Florida 10 years ago.

Mitch Carmody:

Where a woman, her daughter was took a bite out of the cheese

Mitch Carmody:

sandwich and the mom screams, stop!

Mitch Carmody:

The Virgin Mary's in there!

Mitch Carmody:

And the girl stopped, she froze it and sold it on eBay for thousands

Mitch Carmody:

of dollars because it looks just in the cheese sandwhich look just like

Mitch Carmody:

Marilyn Monroe in the, I didn't think it looked like Mary as much as it does

Mitch Carmody:

look like Marilyn Monroe, but it's an actual face in this cheese sandwich.

Mitch Carmody:

So, then they can look in the clouds and people.

Mitch Carmody:

I put a Sharpie around this, a picture that someone had sent me

Mitch Carmody:

and it shows like an Ark Angel.

Mitch Carmody:

You can see the face and you see the wings going up behind it.

Mitch Carmody:

So this is a term called apophenia, APOPHENIA, apophenia, and its ability

Mitch Carmody:

for the mind to see random bits of information in a recognizable discernible

Mitch Carmody:

form as you see a face in some wood on a floor and a door or something.

Mitch Carmody:

You see a poodle in this guy where you see an angel in the

Mitch Carmody:

sky, you see a heart and this sky.

Mitch Carmody:

You do see it.

Mitch Carmody:

We see it, our mind puts it together and we see it.

Mitch Carmody:

It looks like a heart.

Marshall Adler:

Yeah.

Mitch Carmody:

So then I asked the mother, yeah, I hear

Mitch Carmody:

there's a heart in the sky here.

Mitch Carmody:

I have some more pictures of, this is that a different, uh, Bobby Resciniti Healing

Mitch Carmody:

Hearts Foundation, event in Florida that I've gone through every year for 10 years.

Mitch Carmody:

And this was at Tradewinds Park.

Mitch Carmody:

And I looked at all the people and I could see thei big, huge heart, in the sky.

Mitch Carmody:

And it wasn't me.

Mitch Carmody:

I wasn't even taking a picture of the heart.

Mitch Carmody:

So sometimes look at your pictures later, when you take pictures at events

Mitch Carmody:

where a loved one would be there, or the spirit is filled when people are filled

Mitch Carmody:

with spirit and grief, just like you were in a church or in the graveyard,

Mitch Carmody:

spirits congregate around that power.

Mitch Carmody:

And a lot of things happen when people are congregant.

Mitch Carmody:

And here, this is in our backyard on Kelly's birthday.

Mitch Carmody:

And, you know, this is before cell phone and like, Oh my God, I gotta

Mitch Carmody:

run out, you know, with like Pentax.

Mitch Carmody:

And, but it looked like, can you see the big heart?

Mitch Carmody:

It's just a heart in the sky with the sun is peeking through and little

Mitch Carmody:

holes, but it looks like a heart that has been, you know, with a BB gun on

Mitch Carmody:

a piece of metal, you know, and you can see the heart coming through and,

Mitch Carmody:

and it can only last for a second sometimes, but that's why it's so nice.

Mitch Carmody:

Nowadays, people have the advantage of having your cell phones with you and even

Mitch Carmody:

showing up moving orbs now are showing up and we'll talk about orbs in a second.

Mitch Carmody:

So we can hear you just more hearts, here's a heart in a coffee cup, like a

Mitch Carmody:

stain in the bottom of the coffee cup, looks like a heart, the Father Jim at

Mitch Carmody:

the church that looked like he saw a chalice of Christ within the hearts.

Mitch Carmody:

And so he saw that.

Mitch Carmody:

And then a waffle batter came out of the dishwasher with a heart on it

Mitch Carmody:

and see us, keep looking for hearts.

Mitch Carmody:

And we have some more slides as arts here, uh, hearts in a tulip flower.

Mitch Carmody:

Our hearts in a Walnut.

Mitch Carmody:

Hearts underneath a pile of leaves.

Mitch Carmody:

Tony Rambis sent me or, uh, the Rambis' has sent me this picture

Mitch Carmody:

of all these that they get.

Mitch Carmody:

They get lots of hearts and, and with a loved one, that's giving signs at the,

Mitch Carmody:

these after, after death signs, they usually apply it with their signature.

Mitch Carmody:

So, once you know that they know that, you know, that they know, you know

Mitch Carmody:

what I need, they will send you no.

Mitch Carmody:

So they make sure, and their personality comes through.

Mitch Carmody:

And so I call it a signature and boys love to tease their moms.

Mitch Carmody:

If the dishwasher comes out and off and on and off and on again, she goes,

Mitch Carmody:

why is the dishwasher coming off?

Mitch Carmody:

You've never loaded it or started it your whole life when you were living.

Mitch Carmody:

And now you're turning it on and off, will you please stop it.

Mitch Carmody:

And I, I like to talk to moms, that you can still yell at your children

Mitch Carmody:

because they're not completely gone.

Mitch Carmody:

So yes.

Mitch Carmody:

And siblings will be jealous of the affection you have for your lost child,

Mitch Carmody:

but siblings will always be jealous and parents can always yell at their

Mitch Carmody:

child or whether they're alive or dead.

Mitch Carmody:

And so just keep them in the, in the, in the, in the present is really helpful.

Mitch Carmody:

So there's so many different hearts can come over.

Mitch Carmody:

All these arts, I got pictures of were found in my garden.

Mitch Carmody:

So if my grandchildren grew up with proactive, grieving, they

Mitch Carmody:

know to look for signs and they found all these in our garden.

Mitch Carmody:

We were on the farm for 25 years, it was probably an old farm and gardens.

Mitch Carmody:

They used to throw stuff in and so heart, heart, leather, heart showed up a little,

Mitch Carmody:

uh, ruby heart, and a heart that was inside of a stone and my granddaughter

Mitch Carmody:

said, Papa looked at the heart stone, but it's whole, but it's broken.

Mitch Carmody:

And I just started crying.

Mitch Carmody:

I said, yes honey.

Mitch Carmody:

I mean, you're describing my heart.

Mitch Carmody:

It's whole and still beating, but it's been broken and, but yet it's

Mitch Carmody:

still holding and can function.

Mitch Carmody:

And so it, it gives an opportunity to, to learn, to teach children.

Mitch Carmody:

These are the Stillwater stones.

Mitch Carmody:

There's a, excuse me, a town in Stillwater, Minnesota, which is one

Mitch Carmody:

of the oldest towns in Minnesota.

Mitch Carmody:

And so people always go there on the weekends.

Mitch Carmody:

It's a river town and all the old buildings and antique shops and,

Mitch Carmody:

so some friends of ours and you'll see their daughter in the

Mitch Carmody:

slideshow coming up, live in Chicago.

Mitch Carmody:

So they're now really good friends with us and we've been

Mitch Carmody:

down in Chicago to visit them.

Mitch Carmody:

In fact, my son loved Trains, Planes, and Automobiles.

Mitch Carmody:

We saw it the day before he died.

Mitch Carmody:

And John Candy was his all-time favorite actor.

Mitch Carmody:

So we saw the movie the day before he died, and I'm so glad that we, as a

Mitch Carmody:

family can actually laugh together the day before he died, when it was all

Mitch Carmody:

much, so much pain and tearsand so we had that, that, that John Candy moment.

Mitch Carmody:

But when we went, so we went to go visit our friends and they're

Mitch Carmody:

bereave, and I'll talk about their daughter later, but we went to go.

Mitch Carmody:

I said, I want to recreate Trains, Planes, and Automobiles.

Mitch Carmody:

So out of TCF conferences, we're going to come down to your house

Mitch Carmody:

on Thanksgiving in Chicago.

Mitch Carmody:

We're going to take the train down.

Mitch Carmody:

You're going to drive us around and we're going to fly back.

Mitch Carmody:

And your wife is going to make Thanksgiving dinner for us, just

Mitch Carmody:

like Steve Martin's wife did.

Mitch Carmody:

And she did, we went down there, we took a train down there.

Mitch Carmody:

We took a car down there and we flew back and we had

Mitch Carmody:

Thanksgiving dinner at their house.

Mitch Carmody:

And when they came up to visit us we went into Stillwater, this little town, and

Mitch Carmody:

we're walking on a Monday afternoon after a summer busy weekend in a Rivertown.

Mitch Carmody:

And it's quieter on Monday.

Mitch Carmody:

And I looked down cause I'm always looking for signs.

Mitch Carmody:

I was looking for everything.

Mitch Carmody:

I mean, I just, it become part of your life.

Mitch Carmody:

And I saw a stone and I got it here and it said, I love you written

Mitch Carmody:

on it with little flowers and just like some kid had made in a project.

Mitch Carmody:

Or church project or whatever.

Mitch Carmody:

And it said, love you.

Mitch Carmody:

And so I said, Oh my God, look at that and I showed it to my friend, Lenny,

Mitch Carmody:

who was walking with me, my, our wives were miles ahead of us window shopping.

Mitch Carmody:

We were taking pictures.

Mitch Carmody:

And I said, look, man, he says, love you.

Mitch Carmody:

And he goes, wow, that's so cool.

Mitch Carmody:

That must be a sign from Kelly.

Mitch Carmody:

And I said, well, I'll take it.

Mitch Carmody:

Well, I wasn't sure if I should take it.

Mitch Carmody:

It was sitting in front of a window in front of a shop, but

Mitch Carmody:

that's what the shop is closed.

Mitch Carmody:

And, and it's on the outside so I said I'm to take it.

Mitch Carmody:

And that's what we walked a little farther and my, and my buddies go,

Mitch Carmody:

hey, man, I can't believe that and he looked down by a drain pipe in the

Mitch Carmody:

alley and he goes, there's another one.

Mitch Carmody:

And it's a stone painted yellow with the word, believe on it.

Mitch Carmody:

He goes, I do believe, I do believe.

Mitch Carmody:

And so we run up, to show our wives and I show up and he'd go show us

Mitch Carmody:

this why he goes, look, MItch's said, love you and I said, Oh my Go it says

Mitch Carmody:

believe and his wife turns it around and it says, You matter on the other

Mitch Carmody:

side of the believes and we go, Oh my God, love you, believe you matter.

Mitch Carmody:

And then my wife said, well, where's mine.

Mitch Carmody:

I've got to find one.

Mitch Carmody:

So we walked a couple more blocks, nothing.

Mitch Carmody:

We walked on the other block, going the other direction, some more shops and

Mitch Carmody:

she went down underneath the doorway.

Mitch Carmody:

It was closed like to an apartment.

Mitch Carmody:

And she saw this rock sitting on the stool.

Mitch Carmody:

It said on the stoop, you are worth this fight.

Mitch Carmody:

Turn it over and it says love.

Mitch Carmody:

And she got, this is getting crazy, but we got, we got to go to a

Mitch Carmody:

restaurant and we got a reservation.

Mitch Carmody:

So we went down a couple more blocks, took a ride, another left

Mitch Carmody:

and went to this restaurant and there was a little flower pot sitting

Mitch Carmody:

on outdoor bistro table going in.

Mitch Carmody:

And we walked in the door, everybody walked in, and my wife, just naturally

Mitch Carmody:

kind of pushed the flowers aside, the ad underneath that was another rock

Mitch Carmody:

and it said it's all okay, be brave.

Mitch Carmody:

I'm beginning to think that this is like a Hansel and Gretel thing for someone that

Mitch Carmody:

was dying and I'm walking behind picking up all these rocks meant for someone

Mitch Carmody:

else and should I go put them back?

Mitch Carmody:

And I asked them the restaurant and I said, we found this rock and she goes,

Mitch Carmody:

Oh, I saw that this morning when we opened up, I have no idea where it came from.

Mitch Carmody:

So now I know that those rocks were there in those places all day

Mitch Carmody:

long, no one saw them except us.

Mitch Carmody:

And when you read it all together for a bereaved parent, I love you.

Mitch Carmody:

Believe you matter.

Mitch Carmody:

You are worth this fight.

Mitch Carmody:

Love.

Mitch Carmody:

It's all okay.

Mitch Carmody:

Be brave.

Mitch Carmody:

Now isn't that a message for a bereaved parent that was so effectively put

Mitch Carmody:

together by four bereaved parents walking who believe, who have had signs, and we

Mitch Carmody:

know that our children, our buddies in heaven, because it goes now they don't

Mitch Carmody:

have any grief, their only daughter died.

Mitch Carmody:

So now our grandchildren are their grandchildren.

Mitch Carmody:

They said, when you come on down with our grandchildren, to Chicago again.

Mitch Carmody:

And so we did for Christmas and we saw all the lights at

Mitch Carmody:

Christmas, in Chicago with them.

Mitch Carmody:

So these are the collateral blessings that come into our lives.

Mitch Carmody:

We have collateral damage from the anniversary day, the angel versary

Mitch Carmody:

days, but we have collateral blessings from the people that we met, like

Mitch Carmody:

meeting you two guys today, or, well, I've met Steve before, but these are

Mitch Carmody:

blessings that do come into our life.

Mitch Carmody:

So, if we're open and aware, there are stuff speaking to us all the time.

Mitch Carmody:

This is the picture of a, of a truck.

Mitch Carmody:

You could see the truck down below it's parked in the driveway behind

Mitch Carmody:

it is a tree with a long limb.

Mitch Carmody:

A young man hung himself on that limb on his backyard.

Mitch Carmody:

The parents called me Not the parents, friends of the parents called me they,

Mitch Carmody:

and this kid's name was Mitch is Mitch, excuse me, I said there was word.

Mitch Carmody:

But Mitch worked at the, at the, grocery store.

Mitch Carmody:

I mean the hardware, Hardware Hank in town.

Mitch Carmody:

So I'd go to the guy once a while, I'd see him and I go, hey Mitch.

Mitch Carmody:

He'd go, hey, Mitch, you know, we'd laugh, but I didn't really know him

Mitch Carmody:

but then when I heard that he had died of suicide, I said, I had written

Mitch Carmody:

a poem when a child dies by suicide and it was in my book, which I, I, I

Mitch Carmody:

put my book in all the funeral homes, a dentist office, doctor's offic,.

Mitch Carmody:

I just put it for people to have and to get.

Mitch Carmody:

And, so they saw it and they said, we want to use that poem

Mitch Carmody:

in the funeral is that all right?

Mitch Carmody:

And I said, yeah, certainly I will bring you your own book out.

Mitch Carmody:

So I went out to their house two days after Mitch had taken his life.

Mitch Carmody:

And I walk into that house and, you know, yeah.

Mitch Carmody:

You know what it's like sitting in the kitchen table at a, at a

Mitch Carmody:

home where someone had just had a loss, no matter what the loss is.

Mitch Carmody:

Where people are all gathered in hushed tones drinking coffee

Mitch Carmody:

and eating snacks and, you know, you know, it's, it's horrible.

Mitch Carmody:

I walked in, I didn't know anybody in there.

Mitch Carmody:

I only barely knew Mitch.

Mitch Carmody:

And then I walked in and the, and the mom goes, looked right at me and she goes,

Mitch Carmody:

why are you wearing a camouflage bandana?

Mitch Carmody:

And I don't want to be smart ass with it.

Mitch Carmody:

What the bereaved mom who just lost her son but I said, because it goes with my

Mitch Carmody:

camouflage Chuck Taylor, tennis shoes.

Mitch Carmody:

I said, I work at the school and I said, I wear different Chuck Taylors every day

Mitch Carmody:

and I wear a different bandana to match.

Mitch Carmody:

She goes, why did you wear a camoflauge bandana today?

Mitch Carmody:

I said, because I don't know, I just pulled it out of the drawer.

Mitch Carmody:

And she goes, look at the couch.

Mitch Carmody:

There's my Mitch's clothes on the couch, all camouflaged.

Mitch Carmody:

I go, what?

Mitch Carmody:

She goes, at the funeral we're having everybody in his high school, you know he

Mitch Carmody:

died in high school, all the high school, every kid is either hunters in small

Mitch Carmody:

town of Hastings, everybody's wearing their camouflage gear to the church.

Mitch Carmody:

Everybody wore camo and she goes, then you walk in here with camo on.

Mitch Carmody:

And so right there was like a sign for her.

Mitch Carmody:

And then the dad says, well, Mitch, come here, I'm going to show you

Mitch Carmody:

something and he goes me out in the yard and he said, I got to show

Mitch Carmody:

you where Mitch's truck was parked.

Mitch Carmody:

We're going to use his truck to haul the coffin, his mud truck,

Mitch Carmody:

to haul the coffin to the funeral.

Mitch Carmody:

And when we moved the truck to clean it up, there's this huge oil stain underneath

Mitch Carmody:

the truck in perfect shape of a heart if you guys could see on the screen.

Mitch Carmody:

And he said, he said, I saw the, in your book that you had pictures of

Mitch Carmody:

examples, like the Walnut and he saw the pictures in the book that had the

Mitch Carmody:

examples of hearts and he said, so I knew what to expect and I didn't expect it,

Mitch Carmody:

but now I know that it was from Mitch.

Mitch Carmody:

And then my, then my wife says you had the camouflage on and he

Mitch Carmody:

said, I don't even know what to do.

Mitch Carmody:

He goes, what do I do with the tree?

Mitch Carmody:

I don't know.

Mitch Carmody:

I don't know what you need to do with that tree.

Mitch Carmody:

He eventually went to a native American chief that lived on, he

Mitch Carmody:

works at the Prairie Island, nuclear plant near a native American.

Mitch Carmody:

And he, he knew a native American.

Mitch Carmody:

He said, what should I do with that tree?

Mitch Carmody:

And he said, water it well my son.

Mitch Carmody:

I said, Oh, so I did, is that okay if I needed someone to tell me it was okay

Mitch Carmody:

that I didn't have to cut it down or I should not have to look at it every day.

Mitch Carmody:

It was just so there's so many aspects of this, but because they were aware a

Mitch Carmody:

little bit ahead of time of signs, how much it helped them two days following

Mitch Carmody:

when they're in complete shock.

Mitch Carmody:

And again, they love it.

Mitch Carmody:

They, they have a cabin up in Northern Michigan.

Mitch Carmody:

Now we've been up there a couple of times, gone skiing in Northern

Mitch Carmody:

Michigan and I've gone to their daughter's wedding and the collateral

Mitch Carmody:

blessing is we are fast friends.

Mitch Carmody:

And the signs that can happen.

Mitch Carmody:

That, with this family, just with them, the little things that have happened, they

Mitch Carmody:

said come over to our house you want to have at our house, we lived on the farm

Mitch Carmody:

and we came over and, I had just redone my bathroom because I had a 2010 year.

Mitch Carmody:

I said, I had a stronger than a bucket list.

Mitch Carmody:

It started with a different continent.

Mitch Carmody:

It's a lot stronger, than bucket.

Mitch Carmody:

And so I said, there's some things I really want to do.

Mitch Carmody:

And I have this box of old newspapers that my dad had from World War I, World

Mitch Carmody:

War II, all the when Kennedy was shot.

Mitch Carmody:

I mean, all these newspapers.

Mitch Carmody:

I said, I asked my daughter, well I don't want them.

Mitch Carmody:

I said, well, we're cleaning stuff out and I said, I don't know what to do

Mitch Carmody:

with all these and you don't want them.

Mitch Carmody:

So I wallpapered the bathroom down in the basement.

Mitch Carmody:

My wife thought I was crazy.

Mitch Carmody:

I wallpapered the whole room with all these old, old newspapers.

Mitch Carmody:

This couple comes over and then we're, we're, we're tight friends is bereaved

Mitch Carmody:

and, and, and believing in signs.

Mitch Carmody:

And the dad goes into the bathroom and he comes back out and men read

Mitch Carmody:

things on the wall differently than women do in a bathroom.

Mitch Carmody:

So, uh, he comes out and he says, Mitch, I have to ask you why in the

Mitch Carmody:

hell do you have a picture of my wife glued onto your bathroom wall?

Mitch Carmody:

I said, what are you talking about?

Mitch Carmody:

These are old newspapers in my basement.

Mitch Carmody:

He said, come in here.

Mitch Carmody:

And I, and he brought was wife.

Mitch Carmody:

Look, Lynn, we go in there and she goes, Oh my God, that's me!

Mitch Carmody:

It was an advertisement, how to hang wallpaper.

Mitch Carmody:

And I thought, Oh, I'll be funny and hang, this 1978 ad about hanging wallpaper

Mitch Carmody:

and she worked at plywood, Minnesota at that time as the wallpaper expert and

Mitch Carmody:

she, it was her picture in the paper.

Mitch Carmody:

Yeah, I mean, you can't make the, there's not even a category for that.

Mitch Carmody:

That's why I tell theat story because they taught me so many, way more, they're

Mitch Carmody:

more like validations than signs anymore.

Mitch Carmody:

You know, that there is some spiritual connection then, and

Mitch Carmody:

we were meant to be together.

Mitch Carmody:

This meant to help each other on this journey.

Mitch Carmody:

So here we have more, someone asked for sign.

Mitch Carmody:

Here's hearts on a picture up of hearts and a garage wall.

Mitch Carmody:

And, let's go onto the next one.

Mitch Carmody:

And then there's a van that his wife gets bunnies because the sign for their

Mitch Carmody:

daughter was about bunnies all the time, bunny, rabbits, bunnies, bunnies, that,

Mitch Carmody:

and the dad had never gotten a sign.

Mitch Carmody:

Then he's walking along the beach and he trips over a rock and a rock flips

Mitch Carmody:

up and it's a bunny rabbit on this rock.

Mitch Carmody:

It looks like a Playboy sticker if you can't see it here, but it looks

Mitch Carmody:

like a Playboy sticker with the eye and the ears and everything.

Mitch Carmody:

And I had to laugh, I said, I put this on the slide show and I said, you know,

Mitch Carmody:

it doesn't have to be a real bunny.

Mitch Carmody:

It can just be the sign of a bunny, you know, and our picture of a bunny.

Mitch Carmody:

And that's the, again, all these things have been coming from other

Mitch Carmody:

children and other people to show the flexibility of the sign that

Mitch Carmody:

can be almost any different way.

Mitch Carmody:

So let's go and butterfly, so many people get butterflies.

Mitch Carmody:

Well Aaron's mindset.

Mitch Carmody:

You know, I get butterflies with my son, my husband, again never gets butterflies.

Mitch Carmody:

He's on the beach.

Mitch Carmody:

He, a butterfly shell walks up.

Mitch Carmody:

I mean, it's a split crack molusk shell, just like a blue swallow tail

Mitch Carmody:

that landed right between his feet.

Mitch Carmody:

And so these things, then they go back to the next year and they go back

Mitch Carmody:

there and they see his face in the water, a reflection of his face in

Mitch Carmody:

the water, which you can see on the right-hand side of this picture but

Mitch Carmody:

on the radio, you can not obviously, but they could just see the image.

Mitch Carmody:

I mean, it kind of looks like Jim Morrison reflection in the water, and

Mitch Carmody:

then he did, Aaron did look like that.

Mitch Carmody:

This ones a picture of Brandy's mom gave me this picture of a cat-scan of

Mitch Carmody:

her daughter who died of a brain tumor.

Mitch Carmody:

So we had a connection right away, we talked.

Mitch Carmody:

And at the conference, she comes down with a picture she took of the mirror

Mitch Carmody:

in her hotel room, which anybody else would have called room service and said

Mitch Carmody:

the maid was really sloppy and left this sponge print on the window, but it wasn't

Mitch Carmody:

on there until she took a shower and this big, huge sponge print showed up on the

Mitch Carmody:

mirror, which looks like a healthy brain.

Mitch Carmody:

And she said, this is my Brandy telling me that she's okay.

Mitch Carmody:

She has a healthy brain, even she's in heaven.

Mitch Carmody:

So this wouldn't mean anything to anybody else, but to Brandy's

Mitch Carmody:

mom it meant everything.

Mitch Carmody:

And this is a, uh, cat.

Mitch Carmody:

Uh, what do you call the, the ultrasound for a child?

Mitch Carmody:

This was in the TCF Taps Conference.

Mitch Carmody:

I, uh, caps mom and said her daughter was having a baby, but, uh, her

Mitch Carmody:

nephew had, was killed in Afghanistan.

Mitch Carmody:

And he was, couldn't wait to see his nephew.

Mitch Carmody:

Garrett could not wait to see his nephew and then he died the baby was still in

Mitch Carmody:

utero and they had this ultrasound and it shows a picture of Garrett doing goochie,

Mitch Carmody:

goochie, goo underneath this child's chin.

Mitch Carmody:

And since I've had this for several years, I've had more

Mitch Carmody:

people send me ultrasound pictures.

Mitch Carmody:

It's amazing because it come through this show, some sort of

Mitch Carmody:

something, that maybe other people say, Oh, it's wishful thinking,

Mitch Carmody:

you're looking so hard, you know?

Mitch Carmody:

Well, yes we are.

Mitch Carmody:

You know, and I found it, thank God.

Mitch Carmody:

You know, so yeah.

Mitch Carmody:

So don't try to intimidate me with your doubt.

Mitch Carmody:

Uh, just say thank you and or appreciate that, that, you know, I don't want to

Mitch Carmody:

yell at people, but here's what I know.

Mitch Carmody:

This is one of Steve's favorites.

Steve Smelski:

This is one of my favorites.

Steve Smelski:

This one made Shelly and I, the hair on the back of our neck stood up.

Mitch Carmody:

Well, why don't you tell it?

Mitch Carmody:

Can you, can you remember?

Steve Smelski:

Nope, Nope, no.

Steve Smelski:

I want to hear it again,so

Mitch Carmody:

You know, it was so funny is today.

Mitch Carmody:

The man who gave me this picture.

Mitch Carmody:

This is over 10 years ago.

Mitch Carmody:

He just sent me a Facebook picture today, I haven't heard from him in

Mitch Carmody:

years and he said, I voted for Biden.

Mitch Carmody:

We're not getting political here, but anyway, I haven't heard from him in 10

Mitch Carmody:

years and it just so, so good to see him.

Mitch Carmody:

And if I ever, I go to Atlanta, I always look up him.

Mitch Carmody:

Again, another collateral blessing.

Mitch Carmody:

Jim is a collateral blessing that Michelle's dad is, and, and

Mitch Carmody:

we always meet at Waffle House in Atlanta whenever I go there.

Mitch Carmody:

So it was a picture.

Mitch Carmody:

His, his daughter, Michelle had died.

Mitch Carmody:

Then his other daughter was taking, took his old Pentax camera and it was still

Mitch Carmody:

in high school and she'd get a project for high school photography class and

Mitch Carmody:

she was taking mountain pictures and she took some like in Asheville, North

Mitch Carmody:

Carolina, when they're visiting and she's doing these different mountain pictures.

Mitch Carmody:

And so the principals hanging them up for the show and she had like a series

Mitch Carmody:

of mountain pictures and they had this one, when they were going to hang

Mitch Carmody:

it up on the wall, it was sideways.

Mitch Carmody:

They're looking at it sideways and they go, Oh my God, you can freaking

Mitch Carmody:

show Marshall when you, when you turn it sideways, it looks just

Mitch Carmody:

like the silhouette, not silhouette, but the three quarter view of his

Mitch Carmody:

daughter, Michelle, like she's wearing a beautiful feather hat.

Mitch Carmody:

You can see your eyes through it, her nose, now back the

Mitch Carmody:

shoulder that countenance of just, uh, of peace and reflection.

Mitch Carmody:

And then this is the, what we're seeing on this road picture.

Mitch Carmody:

Then the next picture, I'll show a picture of Michelle next to it and

Mitch Carmody:

you can see the similarity of her.

Mitch Carmody:

So, Jim, when I met him it was an all day workshop.

Mitch Carmody:

In the morning, we talked about our children's death and he talked that he

Mitch Carmody:

had gone camping, in Florida and that the daughter had gone missing and they

Mitch Carmody:

couldn't find her looking at the beach and they found her purse and her clothes

Mitch Carmody:

and, and saw her arm floating in the water, she had been eaten by an alligator.

Mitch Carmody:

And so then I see him in the afternoon, he's got this picture in his hand, like

Mitch Carmody:

he's got a grandfather with a grand baby and he got to see this picture, you've

Mitch Carmody:

got to see this picture and I can see how much that I could see it as, uh,

Mitch Carmody:

you know, the witnessing people and see them how they were in the morning,

Mitch Carmody:

uh, at the, uh, the pain of the grief.

Mitch Carmody:

And then I see them in the afternoon when we're talking about signs and

Mitch Carmody:

see them glow with a recognition that their, their child lives on.

Mitch Carmody:

And so this picture phenomenal and it's so....

Steve Smelski:

I, I didn't get the chance to go back when you did your

Steve Smelski:

presentation the first time, but were like, Whoa, where did that come from?

Steve Smelski:

And now you go back and you look it and it's like, there's no way

Steve Smelski:

you could have seen that and tell that somebody hung it up wrong.

Mitch Carmody:

It's just a long road, roads, trees, and

Mitch Carmody:

a mountain in the background.

Mitch Carmody:

The mountains are shoulder.

Mitch Carmody:

I mean, the road is kind of the silhouette behind her.

Mitch Carmody:

The trees are her lips and her eyes and it's just, it's, it's amazing.

Mitch Carmody:

You see all that don't you Marshall?

Marshall Adler:

Yeah.

Marshall Adler:

It's, it's incredible because I'm looking at to try to turn my head, to

Marshall Adler:

see the road and you know, your, your brain just, it's almost hard to...

Mitch Carmody:

Hard to go back once you see it, right?

Marshall Adler:

Yeah, that's incredible.

Marshall Adler:

That is amazing.

Mitch Carmody:

Thank you, Jim Reaves.

Mitch Carmody:

I'm going to have to tell them we did this today.

Mitch Carmody:

And let me know when you get the copy of this so I can send it to

Mitch Carmody:

him so we know we talked about it.

Mitch Carmody:

Uh, so synchronicity or serendipity, you know, these words are used

Mitch Carmody:

interchangeably about with things just happen at the right time.

Mitch Carmody:

Synchronicity is more of the timing that it happens like a synchronicity as when

Mitch Carmody:

you find the dime on the ground and when you bend over to pick it up, the, the

Mitch Carmody:

falling debris that was going to hit you in the head went swinging by and

Mitch Carmody:

you miss that, that was the serendipity.

Mitch Carmody:

That was the luck or the good fortune that came from the synchronicity.

Mitch Carmody:

So, those things happen when you sit at a conference and you sit next to somebody,

Mitch Carmody:

you have no idea why, and you realize, Oh my God, they had their child at the same

Mitch Carmody:

loss or same birthday or you will know that you were meant to sit at that table.

Mitch Carmody:

There's some manipulation, some God, not guidance, I guess, or pushes

Mitch Carmody:

or nudges that gets us to feel these synchronicities, that happen.

Mitch Carmody:

License plates, billboards, seeing a falling star, seeing a double rainbow,

Mitch Carmody:

seeing a rainbow, in a, in a clear sky, all of a sudden seeing a rainbow.

Mitch Carmody:

Billboards with your child's name or loved one.

Mitch Carmody:

License plates are obvious, those happen a lot.

Mitch Carmody:

People that you're supposed to meet.

Mitch Carmody:

Repeated numbers.

Mitch Carmody:

And numbers, another huge thing for so many people that the same

Mitch Carmody:

number comes up all the time.

Mitch Carmody:

And for my number and it's been coming up for years as 420, which is embarrassing

Mitch Carmody:

now because it's kind of a college term for smoking dope, but, but I get it when I

Mitch Carmody:

get a room number or I get change or, and I it's it's happened so much all the time

Mitch Carmody:

that even my granddaughter, we arrived at a hotel in Canada at a TCF conference

Mitch Carmody:

and, and we moved to the hotel and she goes, pop pop, 420, duh, it's Kelly.

Mitch Carmody:

And then we'd go next couple days, we went downtown and touristing and

Mitch Carmody:

we'd go to a parking lot and we'd get out and punch the parking to leave.

Mitch Carmody:

And she goes, what time does it say on their pop pop?

Mitch Carmody:

420.

Mitch Carmody:

She goes, see?

Mitch Carmody:

So it happens.

Mitch Carmody:

all these, these 420's kind of happen all the time.

Mitch Carmody:

Then I looked when my granddaughter was born because she was born on

Mitch Carmody:

my son's death day and so I was curious what day she would, what

Mitch Carmody:

hour she was born at compared to what hour Kelly was born at, because

Mitch Carmody:

I knew it was early in the morning.

Mitch Carmody:

We look up Kelly's birth certificate.

Mitch Carmody:

Guessed what time he was born at 4:20 in the morning.

Mitch Carmody:

So now I get it.

Mitch Carmody:

And even I was going through stuff, cleaning up my office and I found the

Mitch Carmody:

the invoice from Beaver's Pond Press for my book, it was first published and

Mitch Carmody:

the invoice for the cover art was $420.

Mitch Carmody:

So I mean, it just, it, once you recognize it, you'll see it all over

Mitch Carmody:

the place and so, I don't know if you guys have had any numbers at all.

Steve Smelski:

Shelly sees 11 all the time.

Mitch Carmody:

11 is a lot to 11...

Steve Smelski:

So, Jordan was born in November, which was

Steve Smelski:

the 11th month, ninth day.

Steve Smelski:

She sees Eleven's all the time.

Mitch Carmody:

It happens a lot, it truly does.

Mitch Carmody:

Now here with, this is us Austin, Sanford, Dylan, Jerry Morris sent me this and

Mitch Carmody:

it's confusing, but Dylan's brother died.

Mitch Carmody:

His brother, Austin, people were getting signs and he says, it's my brother.

Mitch Carmody:

We were the best of buddies.

Mitch Carmody:

We are only three years apart.

Mitch Carmody:

And he said, how come I don't get signs from him?

Mitch Carmody:

And so they were going to Wisconsin Dells and he said, Oh, let's do one more set

Mitch Carmody:

of rides and he went, I'm going to get a hundred bucks worth of change and he

Mitch Carmody:

goes to an ATM and puts the money in.

Mitch Carmody:

All his money drops out of the ATM, the twenties one at a time

Mitch Carmody:

while the last one comes out, has Austin written out in magic marker.

Mitch Carmody:

And Dylan's girlfriend says I work in a bank, we destroy those.

Mitch Carmody:

That can't be.

Mitch Carmody:

How could that get in there and to count Austin out of an ATM when you haven't

Mitch Carmody:

had a sign and not, I mean, It was incredible, that did so much for Dylan,

Mitch Carmody:

and he said, finally, Austin,you got me.

Steve Smelski:

So was that the last 20 that came out of the ATM?

Mitch Carmody:

That was the last 20 out of the a hundred, yeah.

Mitch Carmody:

They kept falling out the last one had Austin written that

Mitch Carmody:

like, here you go, brother.

Steve Smelski:

Wow.

Steve Smelski:

That's cool.

Mitch Carmody:

And this one is phenomenal, because this is years, years later, you

Mitch Carmody:

know, it's probably only five years ago.

Mitch Carmody:

And, I know, you know, Alan Peterson, right Steve?

Steve Smelski:

Actually Marshall's, Marshall's met

Steve Smelski:

him, Alan's been on the show.

Mitch Carmody:

I thought you said he had.

Steve Smelski:

Yeah.

Mitch Carmody:

So Alan and I we've been, we're not doing stuff on together anymore,

Mitch Carmody:

but we are on the road for lot, did a lot of conferences together, and the Horsley's

Mitch Carmody:

leads have a Open To Hope program.

Mitch Carmody:

Anybody that's listening, check out OpenToHope.com.

Mitch Carmody:

It's a vast plethora wheelhouse of information for the bereaved.

Mitch Carmody:

And we were doing a filming, in Hollywood, not in Hollywood, but in that area,

Mitch Carmody:

because the Horsley's have a studio and we filmed, we are there all day filming.

Mitch Carmody:

And actually with your Stanford University, that's where it was.

Mitch Carmody:

So we are, and we are, we are all done.

Mitch Carmody:

We said, Oh, let's go to a pizza college pizza place, eight o'clock at night,

Mitch Carmody:

we're wiped out in the studio all day.

Mitch Carmody:

And we go into a busy restaurant or a college restaurant, you know, the big,

Mitch Carmody:

tall pizza place with all the big booze, with all the burnt, you know, names

Mitch Carmody:

written into the scrawled, into it and on every place in the whole building,

Mitch Carmody:

kind of there's one place in Chicago.

Mitch Carmody:

I've been to it's like that too.

Mitch Carmody:

Probably a lot of places.

Mitch Carmody:

But anyway, we go in and we're going to sit down at a table, it was open.

Mitch Carmody:

And Alan's wife says, I don't like sitting at a table, I want to sit in a booth.

Mitch Carmody:

And I said, well, because it's the only table open and, she goes, I don't care.

Mitch Carmody:

And she goes there's people are leaving over there.

Mitch Carmody:

And so a few people got up and left, we ran over there and

Mitch Carmody:

sat down in the dirty booth.

Mitch Carmody:

And, and so we'll wait for the waitress.

Mitch Carmody:

The waitress came over, said, I'll clear your table.

Mitch Carmody:

She clears the stuff in front of me.

Mitch Carmody:

And I looked down and it says, KC, which is my son's initials, Shelly

Mitch Carmody:

Carmody you know, and I always wanted to call him KC, is I never, he never

Mitch Carmody:

got old enough to give him a nickname to call him, hey, KC, you know, but

Mitch Carmody:

anyways, KC's there and I said, Oh my God and there's a heart beneath it.

Mitch Carmody:

That's like a sign the cart with my son and then I looked further

Mitch Carmody:

down it says, Mitch, underneath the heart, Kelly, Carmody above it, the

Mitch Carmody:

heart and Mitch underneath the heart.

Mitch Carmody:

Well, you can't make this stuff up either.

Mitch Carmody:

And I said, Allen.

Mitch Carmody:

I thought Allen.

Mitch Carmody:

Hey, look at what I got, I got, cause now we've been on a grief journey long enough.

Mitch Carmody:

We, we can say it almost with humor.

Mitch Carmody:

Hey, look at, I got buddy, you know, come on where's Ashley sign?

Mitch Carmody:

He goes, well, I don't know.

Mitch Carmody:

So say they moved some more stuff and if you go to the next slide, his

Mitch Carmody:

daughters, Ashley, Ashley Peterson, or the giant AP in front of him.

Mitch Carmody:

He, I won't tell you what he said.

Mitch Carmody:

And he said, oh my God.

Mitch Carmody:

And then Denise, he, uh, wife you know, sitting there waiting, and she's looked

Mitch Carmody:

all glum and she goes, Oh, I see Carolee.

Mitch Carmody:

And we know, I mean, we talk about our kids all the time.

Mitch Carmody:

I see Kelly and I see Ashley's there, but where's my Seanee?

Mitch Carmody:

How come, I don't get assigned from Sean?

Mitch Carmody:

And I said, well, I don't know all the tables are dry.

Mitch Carmody:

I said, she said, Oh, wait a minute.

Mitch Carmody:

And she moved that little six pack of, ketchup and mustard and all that stuff.

Mitch Carmody:

She moved that aside, underneath it, it says, love Sean, Di.

Mitch Carmody:

And her name is Denise.

Mitch Carmody:

And a heart and a big heart.

Mitch Carmody:

Love Sean with a heart.

Mitch Carmody:

A Kelly and a heart.

Mitch Carmody:

This is the beyond on comprehension.

Mitch Carmody:

That the three of us would have our children's name on the table

Mitch Carmody:

and Diane Denise's name and my name Mitch Alan's initials, Dennis'

Mitch Carmody:

daughters intials are the same.

Mitch Carmody:

So that was, that worked out for him.

Mitch Carmody:

He had, so you can't even break this down, it's just impossible.

Steve Smelski:

Thank you for joining us today on hope through grief with Mr.

Steve Smelski:

Mitch Carmody and our discussion on signs.

Steve Smelski:

I think we're going to break the episode here because the content goes quite long.

Steve Smelski:

You'll have a chance to listen to part two next Thursday.

Steve Smelski:

It'll be out as episode 22 and we'll continue our discussion on signs

Steve Smelski:

and then we'll follow up with the video recordings for you of this

Steve Smelski:

discussion and what Mitch has shared with us online you'll be able to see

Steve Smelski:

everything the second weekend afterward.

Steve Smelski:

We finish up part two.

Steve Smelski:

Thank you for joining us today and be sure to look for part two next Thursday.

Steve Smelski:

Thanks.

Steve Smelski:

Thank you for joining us on hope through grief with your cohost

Steve Smelski:

Marshall Adler and Steve smellscape.

Steve Smelski:

We hope our episode today was helpful and informative since we are not

Steve Smelski:

medical or mental health professionals.

Marshall Adler:

We cannot and will not provide any medical, psychological,

Marshall Adler:

or mental health advice there for a few or anyone, you know, requires

Marshall Adler:

medical or mental health treatment.

Marshall Adler:

Please contact a medical or mental health professional, immediate

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About the Podcast

Hope Thru Grief
Our mission is to create a community to bring hope through grief. Providing healing through our first hand experiences. Each day provides us an opportunity to continue to heal, as we get to meet and help others.
Have you recently lost a loved one? Are you struggling with grief? Don’t understand why the world has moved on and you are stuck? Wondering what will help? Have you lost all hope you will get back to any kind of “normal”?

Hope Thru Grief features husband and wife co-hosts Steve Smelski and Shelly Smelski to discuss their journeys of grief, after losing their son and other family members. They have changed their focus in life since their son’s death and have been helping others to find the support and answers they have been searching for.

Expect the unexpected. Honest and transparent discussions will reveal things hidden and overlooked which are quite common in coping with grief. Steve & Shelly will interview people from all walks of life, sharing their journeys of loss, as well as experts on recovery and finding hope in a world that has been changed forever.

If you are struggling with your grief, let’s talk together about ways to find healing in your journey and make it more meaningful and life-changing.

New Episodes every Thursday morning.

About your hosts

Randy Magray

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Randy has been producing podcasts for a decade as a creator, writer, host, and post-production specialist. He currently is the Podcast Producer for Duck Duck Productions in Orlando Florida and has worked extensively with the Smelski's on Hope Thru Grief and their Jordan Smelski Foundation for Amoeba Awareness.

Steve Smelski

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