OK at the Wake

Full transcript of the My True Ghost Stories episode “OK at the Wake.” Listen to this episode.

Hello and welcome to episode 94 of My True Go Stories. If you've been listening to this podcast, you know that I live in a small neighborhood in the big city of New York City and I have been living here for a long time and I know a lot of people here. I know my children's teachers from when they grew up and I know all the cashiers at the supermarket and I know the guy who runs the laundromat and I know people from church and I know people from the gym. The gym's not in my neighborhood but a lot of people that go to my gym live in my neighborhood and all sorts of things like that. So the longer you live someplace, the more you get to know people and this is the kind of neighborhood where people come and stay.

So there's really a lot of opportunities to form long term acquaintanceships with people. So recently I was just walking down the avenue. There's one area of our neighborhood that is called the avenue and I was walking on the avenue and I ran into a friend of mine and she said, did you hear about Randy? And I said, no what happened and she said he passed away. Now he wasn't that young but he was not that old.

So I asked what had happened and it turned out that he had a very prolonged illness, had had a slow decline and it had been very bad in the very end and he had passed away. So I was very sad to hear this and my friend forwarded the information about the wake to my phone and then she asked me if I could forward it to my ex-husband because my ex-husband knew him also very well. Now the way that we knew Randy was that he used to live in our old apartment building. We lived in an apartment building that was all the way on the other side of this neighborhood. It's not that big so it wasn't really that far away but we lived on the other side of the neighborhood and our friend Randy who just passed away also used to live in that building.

So he was someone that I would sometimes run into on the street and say hello and he was a very nice man and what I liked about him was that he was really practical and I had met him when I was pretty young in my 20s still and he was the kind of guy that you could ask practical advice about you know parking and your car and traffic rules and banking stuff like that. I really like people like that and that's how Randy was. So I agreed yes I will forward the information to my ex-husband did that and then I sit about making plans to free up my Tuesday night to go to this wake. It was going to be complicated completely doable but a little complicated because the wakes go from 2 to 5 and then 7 to 9 so I couldn't go to the 2 to the 5 but I could go to the 7 to 9 but I get off work at 6.15 and I have to eat dinner first. I just can't go places without eating dinner and I'm fussy these days about what I eat for dinner so I had to go home and cook so I wound up not taking the bus which was my original plan and then I couldn't take my car because my car was parked on the right side of the street for tomorrow's alternate side of the street parking so I had to somehow get there and my wonderful daughter said mom taken Uber so I said oh yeah that's right.

That's what all the kids are doing taken Ubers so she called an Uber for me and after I finished my dinner I headed on over to that wake which was nearby. Not walking distance and waiting for the bus would have taken a really long time but taking this Uber took like 3 minutes. I'm at Uber ride over there the driver was very friendly and he told me all about these local bars where he follows this one particular English soccer team and he told me all the details about that and it was very interesting so the ride went by very quickly and he said oh you're going to a funeral home when we got there and he said I'm so sorry for your loss and I just said no you know it's an old friend someone I used to know a long time ago and he said well I'm sorry for your loss anyway he was a good Uber driver so I told my daughter to give him a good tip. I walked in to the funeral home and there's the man at the desk and there's a picture of Randy a digital picture up right next to the man sitting at the front desk and I said I'm here for a Randy and he said right chapel B so I went on down the hallway to chapel B and I have been in this funeral home so many times it's like the local funeral home and I've been in there many times and I've even told more than one ghost story on this podcast about things that happened in this funeral home but it's very nice and the ghosts are happy with however they handle things there at the funeral home and I was hoping that would be the case with Randy if I saw him I don't know we see them but I went on in and I hung up my coat and I signed the register and there's that you know that din of a big family reunion a sad occasion for a family reunion but at a lot of funerals that I've been to you know there's a lot of chatter going on and I saw grandchildren running around and all these people standing up and talking and people sitting in the seats and talking and one of the first things I noticed was that I didn't know anybody in there. I had thought maybe my ex-husband would be there and I could chat with him or maybe the woman who had given me the information on the avenue maybe I would see her but no they weren't there they probably went to the two to five sessions so I said okay I don't know anybody here but I am here to pay my respects and hopefully maybe I'll get to speak to a family member or two so I went up and I went up along the side nobody said hello and that's okay they were all very busy in their conversations and I stood to wait to go Neil in front of Randy who was in the coffin up in the front looking just like he always used to look and there was a woman kneeling next to the coffin on the kneeler and she was gently stroking Randy shoulder and she looked well I couldn't see her face but I could tell that this was a real moment for her and she was stroking his shoulder and I could tell that she was talking a little bit and I waited respectfully back you know 10 15 feet just waiting and nobody else was waiting so I waited respectfully for her to finish it took a little while and I said well maybe I'll just sit down so I sat down in one of the chairs and waited for her to finish so I wouldn't just be standing there and I didn't want her to feel any pressure from behind in case my presence was you know going to be giving her any pressure so I just decided to sit down and I did that and then eventually she got up and as soon as she I saw her rising up I got up and I went and I stood where I was standing and she turned around and she smiled at me and I said hi she said hi I'm Mary Randy's sister and I said I'm so pleased to meet you and I said I know Randy he used to live in this in my building that I used to live in long time ago and she said oh that's wonderful and she said it was very nice to meet me she told me about how he had really been okay for the last few years but she said the last four months were really tough and the last week was really bad I asked her do you think he was ready to go and she said yes he had told his wife four months ago right when it started to get bad that he was ready to go and he didn't want to do this anymore and he was ready to go and then she said for the last week he wasn't talking at all and she said we just hoped that he could hear us while we were talking to him I said well you know he's out of pain now I said as soon as they pass on you know all that pain goes away I was acting a little bit like I know everything but I do know that that every time I have seen a spirit pass on all their pain goes away so I felt safe in telling her that and she just agreed I've also talked about in this podcast about how I used to in the beginning of realizing I was a medium I went to a bunch of different wakes and just blurred it out everything that I saw I knew at these wakes and hopefully didn't offend any of the families but I didn't do this at all in this situation except for that one little thing except I said when they pass on all that pain goes away I just said that and that was it so after she told me about how Randy's last few months had gone I told her what I liked about him I told her what I told you all in the beginning I told her about how he was a calm and practical guy and I used to feel safe asking him questions about how do you do this and how do you do that and what would you do in this situation and she was really pleased to hear that she said can you please tell my brother that and so she motioned to this guy to come towards us a guy who was sitting down and he came up and joined our conversation and I told him the same thing that I had told his sister and we had a lovely little conversation talked about it all a little bit more and then it just naturally broke up you know somebody else came over and she said it was nice to meet you and the brother said it was nice to meet you and he sat back down and when I turned around I saw that the kneeler in front of the coffin was empty nobody was there and I started to walk over to the kneeler and then this other guy went and kneeled before I could get there which was fine and he said a quick prayer and crossed himself and then he got up and he looked at me and he looked really familiar to me and he goes hey I know you from the gym and I was like okay finally I know one person here so I got to chat with him about being at the gym and that now we would say hello to each other when we see each other at the gym and then the kneeler was truly free so I went and I kneeled on the kneeler and I said Randy rest in peace and then I decided to say a prayer for Randy and I said God please help Randy's spirit I don't remember exactly what my prayer was but I asked for prayers to help Randy's spirit and then I realized that Randy's spirit was standing at the end of the coffin and I smiled because I got such a positive vibe from this spirit standing at the end of the coffin like near Randy's body's feet there in front of these flowers there was the spirit of Randy so I grinned and I actually stopped my prayer because I said well you know what he's right there so I went over to talk to him but luckily there was the the video screen that they had the pictures of him going was like right sort of behind that so it looked like I was just looking at the pictures and so you know I'm up in the front of the room so I didn't want to be standing there talking to Randy's spirit with all those people behind me none of whom I knew and I just decided that I was going to talk to Randy while pretending to look at these pictures but I was really just looking at his spirit and it was true he was out of pain and he just looked like he used to look when I knew him you know 15 years ago and he was smiling and he gestured at the crowd and he said you know nice turnout I said yeah and I don't remember exactly what our conversation was but he was out of pain he was happy he seemed settled and I realized I am not going to have to help this soul to ascend and then they're St.

Michael and St. Michael said he's fine you don't have to help him he's just fine he's just gonna hang out here for a while till the end of this wake and then he's probably going to go and I said Randy you're doing great I said when you're ready just go through that light and I sort of knew that with him the light was over to the right and so I said just go on through that light it's right there and then I said wait wait Michael is it right there and Michael said yes it's right there so I said just go on through there when you're ready but I think Randy already knew that he looked happy peaceful out of pain settled and I knew that as soon as this wake was over he was just gonna go on through that light so I figured now I'm going to leave I had wanted to talk to his wife but she was you know surrounded by people so I just went over to the brother and the sister that I had met and I said can you tell Randy's wife what I said about Randy and they said they would and so I headed for the door and I turned around I looked back and I saw that Randy's wife was finishing up her conversation with somebody so I said you know what I'm gonna go back in there and tell her so I went over and I said hi and I shook her hand and she did not remember me from the building way back when but I told her about how Randy had been such a calm cool practical guy who I felt comfortable asking for practical advice and she was so pleased she said thank you so much for coming and thank you for telling me that I'm sure it's nice to hear such nice things about your loved one after they passed away so after that I did leave I said there's really no reason for me to hang out here and I walked out the door and I walked all the way up to the front pass the guy the front desk pass the digital picture of Randy and I saw a woman who used to be my daughter's toddler program teacher and I chatted with her for a minute and then I started to walk out the door and then I realized that I had left my coat hanging up and so I went back through but I said I'm not gonna say hello to anybody I'm just gonna get my coat and leave and I got my coat and I left and I caught the bus and I was so glad that that spirit of Randy was not going to need any assistance and he was just gonna go through the light as soon as it was his time. If you have enjoyed this episode of My True Go Stories please take a second to review subscribe and share it with a friend to help the show grow and if you enjoy my storytelling style you can subscribe to the Patreon in the 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. Until next time