'Signs' from the dearly departed

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J.D. Mullane
Bucks County Courier Times
October 11, 2005 6:24 AM

One woman said her dead grandmother appears to her in dreams.

Another said she's received messages on her answering machine from her dead son.

A man said he suspects his late son returned to tuck a penny into a penknife for him to find.

As stories of the dead communicating with the living piled up, perky Christine Duminiak's golden coif gleamed angelic as she made her way around Boscov's community room at the Neshaminy Mall last week, moving a cordless microphone from one testimonial to the next.

Duminiak, who has written a book about this stuff, believes these aren't ghostly phenomena but signs of a divine presence.

"People hear these stories and say, 'Wow, that's just a coincidence.' But, in my mind, it's not. These are blessings from God," she said.

In her "after-death communication workshop," Duminiak of Bensalem never challenged a story as being perhaps just a trick of light or sound brought on by grief.

I would have felt better if Duminiak had given confirmed skeptics like me a reason to reconsider that light flickering in the dining room is Dad passing through to say, "Hi." Or the static on the phone is Aunt Rose calling to wish us well from the Great Beyond. I would have been less doubtful if Duminiak had said:

"As most of us learned in high school science, the First Law of Thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, merely transformed. "As you know, we humans are but a bundle of electrical energy. When we die, that energy - our 'soul' - does not vanish, but transforms to a new life force."

She could have cited some scholarly studies rather than anecdotes from her book.

These included a weird eyewitness account that, "We actually have jobs in Heaven," and the even weirder story of how Duminiak's dead in-laws appeared in her bedroom.

Actually, I expected a roomful of oddballs in tinfoil hats, each one-upping the other about inexplicable door slamming, mysterious footsteps in the attic, disembodied moans, "black shadows" and skeletons dancing on the lawn at midnight.

But the room was filled with perfectly average folks, many who had lost a loved one suddenly or tragically and are grieving. That's a tough situation, especially when the death is premature.

With sudden death, there's no time to prepare or to say goodbye.

Survivors are left with nagging remorse that might make them wish for a few minutes more, perhaps to embrace their loved one, perhaps to say something they had always meant to say but never did.

So when pennies suddenly appear on the family room floor, it's attributed to a sign from the departed.

Or if a loved one's favorite singer was Frank Sinatra and "Summer Wind" begins to play on the radio, it's no coincidence.

Or if one is grieving and a car pulls in front with a vanity plate that says "U B HAPY," it's a "sign."

Wishful thinking, if you ask me. But harmless and perhaps helpful.

So I'll cut these folks some slack.

Skeptics could be wrong.

None of us knows what is at the intersection of life, death and the First Law of Thermodynamics. Maybe it is Dad saying hi.

Besides, who hasn't looked into the silence of a clear night sky and wondered:

"Are you out there, somewhere?

And do you miss me? Because I sure miss you."

Jmullane@phillyburbs.com

Mullane's opinion column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday.

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