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Kate Fratti
October 1, 2004 6:33 AM


Comfort from beyond is not just for the birds


I think the red cardinal I sometimes spot in my back yard is my late father. Well, not my father so much as a cheerful sign from him.

I'm not even sure it's the same cardinal I see every time. It's just that when I do spy it from the kitchen window, all I can think is, "Hi, Dad." And I feel happy, like when I run into an old friend I haven't seen in a very long time.

I can't explain it, and if you believe Christine Marie Duminiak of Bensalem, there's no need to.

Christine, author of "God's Gift of Love: After-Death Communications For Those Who Grieve," has talked to hundreds of people like me who are pretty sure their dead loved ones stay close by. She also hears from many others who desperately wish for a sign.

Christine, a hospice volunteer, will talk about the ways deceased friends and family members reach out to cheer us when she leads a workshop from 7-8:30 p.m. tonight in the auditorium of Boscov's department store at the Neshaminy Mall in Bensalem.

She'll outline about 20 common ways, ranging from visions and dreams to scents and touches to messages left on answering machines to WHOA! ... birds.

She'll also share signs from her late dad, like the way he used to tap her lightly on the head while she was cooking dinner, a reminder, she thinks, to call her mom. Or the dimes he still leaves around the house.

Still reading? Bless your open-minded heart.

Christine believes signs from beyond are nothing more than comforting, playful reminders from those who've gone before us to say, "Hey, I'm with you still."

A devout Roman Catholic and a parishioner at St. Ephrem's in Bensalem, Christine says she never planned to write a book or teach a workshop or start a prayer group and message board dedicated to signs from beyond. She was an executive business secretary turned stay-at-home mom who - at 50 years old - was considering heading back to work.

It was about that time, in 1998, that her dead in-laws visited.

Say it ain't so, Chris. Not the in-laws.

Her husband's mom and dad appeared to her in the wee hours one morning and stayed with her - silent, filmy holograms - for more than an hour. In the weeks that followed, they appeared again and again. One time, it was as silhouettes playing pinochle. They never said a word.

Christine started to research after-life communications just to find out what the elder Duminiaks were up to. Out of that research grew a commitment to spread the message that "our loved ones survive death, are still a part of our lives, and that God allows them to communicate with us from heaven."

Researchers estimate 50 million to 100 million Americans have had one such experience or more.

In September 2000, Christine founded Prayer Wave for After-Death Communication - www.geocities.com/adcfriends. It's an Internet grief support, spiritual and prayer Web site where people ask for prayers to receive an afterlife sign, learn how to recognize signs, and share their stories in a loving environment where they don't risk ridicule.

Like the kind I'm going to get when my brother hears dad comes to me as a little bird.

Columnist Kate Fratti, whose opinion column appears on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, will one day visit her survivors as an insatiable craving for carbohydrates.

kfratti@phillyburbs.com