I'm anxiously watching the last days of March clicking down, wondering which is going to hold my fate.
Seriously.
This past August I spent the better part of a week in Lily Dale, New York. I've written a few (1, 2, 3) previous posts here about my experiences there.
As I wrote in those earlier posts, Lily Dale is a small town in upstate New York that is entirely owned and run by followers of the Spiritualist religion. "Entirely" as in they run all the hotels, restaurants, post office, fire department...everything.
Spiritualists believe that ghosts act as intermediaries between the living and God, often providing advice and guidance to the living.
So, obviously, Lily Dale is an unusual place.
During my first public service on my first day in Lily Dale, a medium named Brenda told me she had a message for me.
"I'm sensing a spirit…a maternal spirit, please…perhaps a mother or grandmother. Is your grandmother on your mother’s side in spirit, please?"
Assuming that "in spirit" was a euphemism for "dead," I responded "Yes."
"Okay, that's it," Brenda said. "Tell me, please, was she a little round in the bottom?"
Now how was I supposed to answer that? My grandmother wasn't really overweight, but she wasn't rail thin, either. Imagine how pissed off my grandmother would be if she traveled back from Grandma Heaven to deliver a message to her oldest grandchild just to arrive as he said, "Oh yeah, Grannie had a huge ass!"
I just shrugged my shoulders and said nothing.
"That's okay," Brenda said. "I feel the spirit that is reaching out to you is definitely Grandma."
Brenda paused for a moment.
"She wants to surround you with light and love right now and let you know that she watches over you and is proud of you," Brenda said. "She knows that you have a job that is difficult and demanding and she is proud that you do this work. She says that you will be given a wonderful opportunity to advance your career, in March. Yes. In March. It will be a good thing, nothing to fear.
"That…that is mostly it…she just wants you to know that she misses you and knows how much you loved her. She wants to leave you with blessings…oh. There is one more thing, please. Grandma wasn't much of a car person, was she, please?" Brenda asked.
"No," I replied.
"Well," Brenda said with a slight chuckle. "Grandma wants you to check your tire pressure over the coming weeks, please."
“My tire pressure?"
"Yes, she says that it is nothing dangerous; just make sure you are watching it carefully to be safe. That’s it. And I leave you with God's light and love."
Then Brenda got a message from some woman's Uncle Floyd and was off in another direction.
Tire pressure? Job opportunity in March?
I drove seven and a half hours to get there, just to have my dead grandmother tell me to watch my tire pressure and wait seven months for good career news? Others came to Lily Dale to connect one more time with the recently departed, find out what will happen to themselves and their loved ones, understand the afterlife and how to prepare for it, and finally figure out where Aunt Myra hid her jewelry. All I got was some car and career advice from a woman who couldn't tell a tire gauge from a meat thermometer…oh, and had been dead for more than twenty years.
Nine days after returning from Lily Dale a few friends and I were on our way to a movie. I was driving and my friend Joe was giving me directions. Bad directions. After turning the wrong way down a street, I attempted a three-point turn to head the other direction. In the middle of my second turn, I bumped up against a curb and heard a loud pop.
A flat tire.
The mechanic later told me it blew because it was only half full.
I should have checked my pressure, he said.
Needless to say, since then I've always wondered what was going to happen in March. Seeing that it is now late on Friday, and there are only two more business days to go, I'm fully expecting that either Monday or Tuesday will be very exciting.
We'll see.






