Forgive me, the dead man begged his son

I’M NOT a prophet or an oracle — I’m just a conduit. But in my work I’ve learned that we’re not meant to retreat into our pain and grief alone.

There are vibrant cords of light that bind the living and the dead — a vast endless cycle of love that is the most healing force of all.

But what happens if you had reason to hate or fear the person who passed away?

One day, I did a reading over the phone for a woman in her 50s called Barb, and at the end of it she insisted that she passed me over to her husband, Tony.

‘He doesn’t believe in any of this,’ Barb told me. ‘He thinks when you die, that’s it — you go in the ground and you’re gone.’

Before I could object, she’d handed the phone to Tony, who said a grumpy hello. Oh great, I thought. How’s this going to work? Will the Other Side even come through for a sceptic?

I took a deep breath — and suddenly Tony’s father was there. His name was Robert and he said he had an urgent message.

‘Your father wants me to tell you that he’s so sorry for what he did with the belt,’ I told Tony. ‘He’s asking for your forgiveness.’

As Tony quietly begin to weep, his father showed me his son as a boy, sitting on his bed with the bedroom door closed.

He was holding a belt, and I could tell the belt meant a lot to him.

When I relayed this to Tony, he told me a story he’d kept secret all his life: at the age of seven, at a Boy Scouts meeting, he’d been given a kit to make a leather belt.

He was very excited because he wanted to give it to his dad for Christmas — so he’d worked hard on it, carving designs and making holes. Then one night, when he was working on the belt, he forgot to take the rubbish out.

Full of rage, Tony’s dad stormed up to his bedroom and threw open the door. Spying the belt, he grabbed it and whipped his son with it. The beating was brief, but it did terrible damage to their relationship.

‘I never ended up giving him the belt,’ Tony told me. ‘But it’s made me sad, all these years.’

Tony’s father came through again, again asking for forgiveness and telling him how much he loved him. I found myself fighting back tears — not because of this sad story, but because I’d just seen a beautiful light pass between Tony and his father.

‘It’s OK, Dad!’ Tony said, his voice cracking with deep emotion. ‘It’s OK! Please tell my father it’s OK.’

‘You don’t need me to tell him,’ I said. ‘You can tell him yourself — he’s with you all the time.’