A Pause on the Rainbow Bridge

Full transcript of the My True Ghost Stories episode “A Pause on the Rainbow Bridge.” Listen to this episode.

Hello and welcome to episode 93 of My True Ghost Stories. Last week I told you all about my caterpillar project and how I put out host plants for caterpillars and bring the caterpillars inside so that they can safely turn into chrysalis and then safely turn into butterflies after which I set them free as soon as they are ready to fly. I told you that whole story in some uncanny way that the universe decided to support me in that endeavor. The story that I told you about last week was about just the caterpillars and just my experience. But this whole obsession with caterpillars and butterflies started with me trying to spread the word to neighbors that they should plant butterfly gardens.

They should plant pollinator gardens. Now at the time the people who lived around me were only interested in butterflies and they didn't want any bees coming onto their property so I had to sort of fib and say that oh these flowers only attract butterflies but in reality I want to plant for all pollinators. So this project of mine where I spread the word to neighbors with flyers and public talks and articles in the newspaper, city council meeting, stuff like that, that was a really big project of mine for a while. But then I had children and so the public part of it, the spreading the words to neighbors, took about like I'd say a 20 year hiatus where I only focused on my own garden and bringing in my own caterpillars and planting my own pollinator garden because you know children take up a lot of time and they make you put projects on hold. But I never forgot about it and I did occasionally spread the word to the occasional neighbor and my children all helped me in my pollinator garden and they all have an awareness of planting for pollinators.

But my children are all out of college now so I really have gotten my brain and my energy back as far as these types of projects. So I recently started spreading the word to neighbors again that they should plant pollinator gardens and they should plant host plants and if they get caterpillars I haven't yet asked them to bring the caterpillars into their house but I've asked them to contact me if they have caterpillars and I will come get them. That level of commitment I don't think my neighbors are up for having a caterpillar farm inside their house. That's just me. So with regaining this energy and one of the neighbors that I approached immediately after getting my psychic energy back and resuming this butterfly project, one of those neighbors connected me with another neighbor who lives farther down the block and she said you should talk to Tom about this.

So I did. I talked to him and he is a gardening enthusiast. He is a wildlife enthusiast and he is also retired and a person who is extremely organized and efficient. Perfect. So we've got my dreamy idea about spreading gardens for the butterflies everywhere and then we've got Tom with his spreadsheets, email lists and organization and it is a perfect match to get this project really really off the ground.

One of the organized and efficient things that Tom was able to do was that he arranged for us to have a table at a local block party. Now there are block parties all over the neighborhood these days which makes for really really bad driving because every block you try to go down is blocked off because they all take place in the last two weeks of September but he arranged for this table at a block party where we would just have all this information about butterfly gardens. We would have a sign up sheet. See this is the stuff that I would not be able to put together. He would have a sign up sheet where people are interested in planting for butterflies and then we had other people who had extra plants for butterflies and so we really got this table going and I was able to completely and totally resurrect my spiel from when I started this project like 25 years ago my spiel about planting for butterflies and how exciting it is and if the more people that plant we're just going to turn this neighborhood into a big meadow where pollinators can flourish and I was able to give my spiel with as much enthusiasm as I did when I first came up with the idea.

Now I was at this table. I was by myself. I took different shifts. Tom took half the day and I took the other half of the day. I took the first half of the day and Tom took the second half of the day and I'm standing there at this table and I'm just talking and talking and so many people were interested.

It was wonderful. These people are not afraid of having bees come into their backyard. The demographic has changed a little bit so I didn't have to lie and say that these plants only attract butterflies. I was able to say these plants are good for pollinators and everybody knows how important pollinators are. So I was at this table and I was talking to people and my friend Gina, I'm going to call her Gina.

My friend Gina came up to the table and said hello and I have not seen Gina. She's a good friend of mine and I haven't seen her since my wedding two months ago. So we just caught up a little bit. She told me how wonderful my wedding was. Thank God she told me that because I really want to hear about that.

And then I asked her how she was doing and she said that she was really sad because they had to put their little dog down the day before. So I'm just going to give the dog a name I'm going to call him Ben. That was not his name but I'm going to call him Ben. I always change the names. So she had adopted this dog from a rescue shelter when he was very old and she just gave him the best end of his life.

It was a couple years that she had him. But I had seen him and he had gotten very ill and he couldn't walk and the time had come for them to put him down. So she told me that she was really sad that this had happened and she was asking me if he was okay. Now my friend Gina, she knows all about me. I've told her all my stories about being a medium.

She's seen me in action clearing spaces and has even assisted me a few times. So she knew exactly what she was doing when she said can you tell me if Ben is okay. So I said yes just give me a second and she knows me. She knows that I can't just like immediately say it. I have to focus.

So I sat down in the chair that was behind the table and luckily nobody was approaching to ask about the butterfly project and I just sat down and I tilted my head a little bit to the left and I just tried to get an image of where Gina's dog Ben who had been put down the day before was where was he in his ascent. Now I know that there's this thing called the rainbow bridge and that's not what I saw. I did not see a rainbow bridge. I saw like a it was like a ramp or a runway and it was very thin and it was going up on a very low diagonal. That's what I saw.

And standing in the middle of it pretty far away but close enough standing in the middle of it just facing away was the spirit of Gina's dog Ben. He had not ascended. He was in the middle of this let's call it a bridge. He was in the middle of this ramp type of bridge. And so I said to Gina I said he's sort of stuck.

He's just sort of standing in the middle of this bridge. I said he might be a little confused. My feeling is that he doesn't know what to do. And Gina said that's what I was afraid of. I asked her what she meant.

She said we didn't say goodbye. She described putting the dog down and she did a beautiful job. She held the dog in her lap. She comforted him. She petted him.

She let him know she was there. And then they gave him the injection and she said that he looked up at her and he looked confused. And I'm not sure exactly how that goes because I haven't gone through that yet but he passed away in her arms and she said that she immediately regretted that she had not told him what was about to happen. That she had not said that. She had held him.

She had said I love you. She had she had stroked him but she had not said now you know you're going to go to a better place. And he didn't know and she said that when they gave him the injection he looked up at her with this confused look. So it was her fear that he was not going to cross over because he didn't know what was going on. And that was pretty much exactly what I saw.

I saw him just part of the way up this bridge and just standing there not knowing what to do next. And Tina said what am I going to do? What am I going to do? I feel so bad. He's just stuck there.

And I said well I have good news for you. You can still tell him. You can tell him right now. So I gave her some instructions. I told her basically to just say what she would have said while he was in her lap the day before before they gave him the injection.

And I said that she needed to say it in the direction and I showed her the direction of where the bridge was. And I said you need to face this way. And you need to say exactly what you would have said yesterday while he was in your lap. And she said I will go do that. And she disappeared into her house right away.

The table just happened to be right in front of her house. So she went into her house to do that. And there was a few people waiting to hear about the Butterfly project. And so I began my spiel all over again. And I continued to talk for like another hour about my Butterfly project until I was exhausted.

And I could barely talk anymore. And I didn't want to talk about it anymore as much as I loved that project. I was like I can't say it anymore. I needed break. Luckily Tom was coming to take over.

So my shift was over. And he came and thank God I had brought a bottle of water. I downed that bottle of water and I started to walk away from the table. And Gina came out of her house. And she told me that she had done it.

She said that she had sat down in her room and faced the exact direction that I told her to face and prepared. And she was getting ready to say all the words that she would have said to Ben while he was in her lap the day before. And that her son came into the room right as she was doing this. Her son who was a late teen. And he said I feel so bad that we didn't say goodbye to Ben.

We didn't tell him what was going on. So he came in an echoed exactly what she had been worrying about. So he had had the same feeling and she said, well guess what? We're going to say goodbye to him right now. And so he stood by her while she looked up in the direction that I had told her to look up at and she said the words, you're going to a better place.

You're going to be happy there. And she explained, I don't know exactly what she said because I wasn't there, but I know the gist of it. And she explained to him what was going on. She said that she felt him pass on. So we're standing there and she's telling me this story.

And she said, you know, has he passed on? And at that point I couldn't really tell if I could sense that he had passed on or if it was because she had told me that she felt him pass on, but he definitely felt that he had passed on. And he wasn't stuck in the middle of that bridge anymore. But it was a very good thing. And I'm glad that Gina got some closure on the event and that Ben got to cross over and go to wherever doggies go when they pass on.

Thank you for listening to today's episode. If you enjoy my storytelling style, you can subscribe to the Patreon. In my Patreon, I tell interesting stories of my life in New York City and beyond. And the link to the Patreon is in the show notes. And if you have enjoyed this episode of my two ghost stories, please take a second to review, subscribe and share it with a friend to help the show grow. Until next time.