“Joan of Arc is alive and medium well.” My brother read this sentence out of a joke book. I was seven or eight years old. I stared at him blankly. “Funny, right?”
Exasperated: “Joan of Arc was a medium. They burned her at the stake. Get it? Cooked? Medium well?”
“What’s a medium?”
“Someone who communicates with the other world. The dead, stuff like that. Joan of Arc spoke with God.”
That Joan of Arc sentence has rattled around in my brain for the past fifty-five years. It popped out again immediately after Susan told me she was going to see a medium today with a group of friends. “Joan of Arc is alive…”
“WHAT?”
I asked, “What’s the difference between a psychic and a medium?”
She looked it up. “A medium channels the dead. Ooh, maybe I can speak with Abraham Lincoln.”
Me, putting on my best ghostly Abe Lincoln voice: “Susan, tell the good people of Gettysburg to stop obsessing over me. I didn’t even like the town when I visited there to make that speech.”
“Oh wait, it needs to be a loved one. I don’t think I want to talk with a dead relative.” She envisioned her mom coming to the fore: “Susan, tell your father I said to stop discussing the election with neighbors.”
She continued, “or maybe it will be your dad.”
“Ooh, ask him about ‘the mistake’!”
My father died seven weeks ago. For about thirty minutes just one day before he passed, my father enjoyed a bout of coherence. Susan, my father and I discussed a lot of topics during that half hour. I think it was great closure for all three of us. Suddenly, my father blurted out in an ominous tone “I made a mistake.”
Susan laughed. “Jerry, you don’t make mistakes.”
“I made a big mistake with the kids. Jeffrey…” and he trailed off.
“Dad, wait! What mistake?” He didn’t answer, and he never regained coherence again.
Does this sound like something from a movie? An interrupted death-bed confession, a subsequent visit to a medium? What will she learn? A hidden pot of gold coins? A secret adoption? A torrid affair? Someone switched at birth? Susan is with the medium now. I don’t honestly believe she will hear a revelation or speak with my father, but watch the comments section below for breaking news… just in case.
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Previously Published on jefftcann.com and is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
