4Dr. Steven E. Hodes, Metaphysician on Call for Better Health: Metaphysics and Medicine for Mind, Body and Spirit (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers), 58–59.
A Tribute to Natalie
Natalie Smith-Blakeslee†
You can shed tears that she is gone,
Or you can smile because she has lived.
You can close your eyes and pray that she’ll come back,
Or you can open your eyes and see all she’s left.
Your heart can be empty because you can’t see her,
Or you can be full of the love you shared.
You can turn your back on tomorrow and live yesterday,
Or you can be happy for tomorrow because of yesterday.
You can remember her only that she is gone,
Or you can cherish her memory and let it live on.
You can cry and close your mind,
Be empty and turn your back.
Or you can do what she’d want:
Smile, open your eyes, love, and go on.
As a special tribute to Natalie Smith-Blakeslee, I begin this book with this beautiful poem by David Harkins. She was a special friend who knew firsthand the meaning of loving and giving to others. When I was doing research for my book Visits from Heaven, I came in contact with Natalie, a gifted medium and bereaved mom.
Natalie and I became fast friends. I quickly came to know what a beautiful person she was—an absolute blessing beyond words. She offered to help put me in contact with several bereaved parents who had evidential afterlife communication experiences (what I refer to as visits from heaven). She never wavered in her love and support. In addition to giving me many contacts, she contributed to a story about her daughter Carrie, whom she lost to leukemia. She wrote the preface for Visits from Heaven.
Unbeknownst to me, Natalie was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer in September 2008. She never let on that she was sick, and our phone conversations and e-mails went on as usual. Natalie also agreed to share her near-death experience (NDE) in this book and spoke about how excited she was for me. I never had a clue that anything was wrong until her e-mails slowed, and I no longer heard her voice.
Natalie passed on October 28, 2009. I was completely stunned. When I spoke to her husband, he told me that she did not tell me and many others on purpose. She wanted us to remember her as she was, not stricken with a horrible cancer but alive and well.
We shared many conversations about the afterlife, and I do know that her spirit is alive and well. I know that her love lives on. My only hope is that she knows how much she touched not only my life but the lives of so many others and how very grateful I am to her for everything that she did for me. Her memory and love will live on forever within my heart.
Below is the story of Natalie’s NDE, which occurred when she was suffering from anorexia. The full details of her NDE can be found in her book Close to You . . . A Memoir by a Mother in Mourning, coauthored by Martha D. Humphreys. For more information, please visit her Web site www.loveandlight.com.
HALFWAY HOME
Let go . . . .release . . . .my body was barely there . . . there was so little mass of flesh, skin, and bones it wasn’t hard for me to believe I could float above myself . . . and so I did.
Gently, softly, spiritually I rose above the bed.
I wasn’t cold anymore . . . I wasn’t warm either.
I was looking down at me still curled up like a seashell beneath the sheets. The sheets were still. No movement of my shoulders or chest . . . surrounded by darkness, deep grey, no light beneath the door into the hall . . . no filtered light through the shades on the window . . . no light anywhere.
Panic, frantic, terror surged up my throat.
Where were the lights?
Where was the power?
There’s no storm, no wind, no lightening, no rain . . . yet no power.
Didn’t hospitals have generators for power outages?
I could no longer see myself on the bed . . . but I couldn’t feel the bed beneath me either. Please, oh, please turn on the lights!
I felt pins and needles on the tips of my fingers and the tips of my toes . . . as if my muscles were “falling asleep” from the outside in . . . a light, please dear God, a light!
Squeezing my eyes tightly closed like I did when I was a little girl searching for the orange on the inside of my lids indicating light on my face, I waited and prayed for a pinpoint of whiteness in the darkness around me.
Slowly opening my eyes, there was a needle of light aimed at me. Did I die? I was being pulled toward the pinpoint, and it was getting larger the nearer I was to its source. Like filings onto a magnet, I was drawn to the light, the source.
I wasn’t moving. The light was attracting my body through a darkened hallway with people on both sides who weren’t flesh-and-blood people with distinct features, rather people with identities I sensed, but didn’t recognize. A ballerina, a firefighter, a cowboy, and a seamstress formed a line on each side of me. I didn’t know who they were, but I understood what they were. Occasionally, a child, a dog, a bird, or another child in a baseball uniform stood between the taller people on either side of me.
Halfway home, I said to myself . . . halfway home to heaven.
A woman stepped from the side, “Natalie?”
It was a soft voice, a melodic voice, a gentle voice, a mother’s voice.
“Yes?” I answered, fear falling away in the gentle embrace of her voice.
“Come with me, Natalie. I’ll take you to the light.”
My anxiety was replaced by warmth, the feeling of being wrapped in a heated baby alpaca blanket without the weight of a wrap. The nearer to the light, the warmer I felt as the current pulled me closer and closer.
No more fear, ever.
The comfort of company . . . loving, supportive, accepting . . . company was lifting me, encouraging me, helping me to my soul’s destination.
The woman beside me felt familiar from my mother’s side of our family . . . although I didn’t recognize her. Petite and slightly slumped, she took my arm as if we were strolling in a park together. She wore an old-fashioned hat with a lacy veil reaching the tip of her nose. The hat matched her navy blue dress hanging well below her knees. She had sturdy shoes, granny shoes with a short thick heel on the patent leather lace up tops. Her dark brown hair indicated she was younger now than when she passed over; I felt her hair was grey at the time of her death. A string of pearls rested gently around her neck.
“You’ve had it rough, haven’t you, Natalie?” She said in her lovely voice.
“Yes,”