Excerpt from "Cracking Open: Adventures of a Reluctant Medium"

Joel continued to be a rock. Someone I could process my thoughts with regardless of how bizarre those thoughts were.

“So, where do I start?” I would say to Joel.

“Anywhere. Pick a place and go,” was his typical reply.

I rested my elbows on my knees and looked down at my feet. A sense of desperation had been hovering over me. “How about ‘I wish I could turn all this off ’?”

“Turn what off ? Seeing spirits?”

I nodded. “More speci?cally, seeing them all the time. They’re everywhere now.” I sighed, and hoped Joel would say something. He didn’t.

“It came in waves at ?rst which seemed manageable. I would see them around me for a few days, then I wouldn’t. It kept going back and forth like that, and now I’m seeing them pretty much all the time.”

I waited for Joel again, but he remained quiet. He does that a lot.

“The worst is at night,” I went on. “I feel like I’m in a stupid horror ?ick. I’d hide under my pillow all night if I could. Do you know how hard it is to sleep when a stranger is standing there watching you?”

“So what do you do?” he asked.

“I drink wine. It’s the only thing that shuts it off. I’ve tried meditation, wearing ‘symbolic necklaces’, I’ve tried everything I can think of. Wine is it so far,” I sighed again. “But it doesn’t last all night... .”

“And?” Joel prompted.

“Wine has other effects too... I end up having to go to the bathroom,” I said. “I have to cover my eyes as I walk.” I showed him by holding my hands over my eyes leaving just enough room at the bottom to see where I would step.

Joel chuckled. “Does that work?”

“Nope. Not always. Last night I saw bloody work boots. Just off to the left, next to the bathroom. I’m pretty sure they were attached to someone,” I said, as I fell back into the couch and pulled my knees up into my chest.

“Did you look to see who?”

“Ah... no! I peed as fast as I could, raced back to bed, and tried to fall back asleep... yes, with the pillow over my head.”

Joel laughed again and then sat for a moment. “Humans can handle anything new once they have a context for what they’re experiencing,” he said.

“So I’ll just keep telling myself that I’m building a context for dead people around me?” But talking about it didn’t stop it from happening. A few nights later I was in my kitchen pouring my typical glass of “make the dead people go away” when a short, elderly man showed up out of nowhere.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Please call my daughter,” he said, with a hopeful look in his eyes. He wore a mechanic’s out?t and I could faintly make out the shape of an old sports car behind him.

“You want me to call your daughter?”

He nodded and I looked away, back at the empty wine glass. “I’m not doing this right now. Please leave me alone. Please.”

“My daughter... ,” he repeated.

“I’m sorry, but I’m tired. I don’t want to do this right now, I just want to go to bed.”

“Please!” He swept in just inches from my face as a chill ran up my spine.

“What if,” I stumbled, “I write down whatever it is you want to say on a piece of paper... .” I picked up a pen and an old envelope from the counter. “I’ll write it down and deal with it in the morning?”

He backed up and began to ?ash images in front of me. I jotted it down as fast as I could but nothing spoke of his daughter. I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to. I just wanted to go back to bed. As I ?nished writing “mechanic” on the paper, I looked up to see a blissful smile and both of his hands extended in front of him holding a partially molded clay pot. Drips of wet clay rolled down his arms and through his ?ngers. This was too weird, even for me. Could it all just be my imagination? I put the paper in the pocket of my robe and headed upstairs. As I was about to step into my bedroom, up popped the mechanic again.

“Put the information in the computer,” he said.

“What?” I said out loud. “No. Nuh-uh. You agreed we could deal with this in the morning!”

“I lied.”

“You lied?! You can’t lie. You’re dead.”

“I lied.”

I scowled at him.

Troy heard me talking to myself so I ?lled him in. He agreed with the mechanic - to put the information into the computer, if just to get back to sleep. Two against one, I gave in. I entered “mechanic that loved pottery obituary” in Google. Fourth result on the page was a nearby funeral home. I found there was indeed a mechanic, named Floyd, who had died three months earlier - a mechanic that loved pottery.

I was dumbfounded. This guy was for real. I turned the chair around to ?nd he was gone. The hallway was empty.

The next morning arrived. Lunch, errands, and dinner all passed by before I saw Floyd again. He was sitting patiently on my living room couch.

“Call my daughter, please,” he said.

“No, Floyd. What am I suppose to say? ‘Hey there, I’m a medium with a message from your dead dad?’ I can’t do that Floyd - it would be horrible!”

“Please?”

He seemed like such a sweet man. “No,” I said, feeling guilty.

For the next two weeks Floyd was everywhere. He was in the garden with me. He was on the couch while I exercised. He was waiting on the stairs when I got up each morning. He sat at the table when we ate. He was like that pesky uncle that overstays his visit. Floyd ?nally stepped way over the line by appearing in my bathroom just as I was stepping out of the shower. This had to stop!

“So what do you think you should do?” Joel said, in our next session.

“I think I need to call the daughter.”

I called her that night. I rehearsed what I would say at least ten times, and ?nally made the call. To my surprise it went okay. I expressed how I wanted nothing from her, that I just wanted to tell her what her father wanted to say so he could move on. Floyd was worried about her. He explained that he knew her boyfriend was starting a business with her but had plans to dump her and run with the money. She said it made sense but that she needed to think about it, that she wasn’t sure what to believe. I completely understood, and again apologized profusely for calling her the way I did.

As I hung up the phone, Floyd smiled so broadly it made all the stress worth it. I could feel his emotions and see he was happy to have had the chance to warn his daughter. I looked at Floyd with an odd newness now. I felt bad it had taken me so long to get the courage to call her. Here was this dear man wanting one last thing said to his daughter, and I was so worried about what she would think of me that I let it stop me from doing what I was supposed to do. Floyd thanked me, and I thanked him. He faded away and I fell back into the pillows of my king-size bed. I stared at the ceiling and took one of the deepest breaths in my life.

“What am I doing?”

“You’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing, silly,” I heard Grandma next to me.

I was excited she was there. I felt less alone. “That whole situation was tough for me, lady.”

“Which part was the toughest? That you had to push yourself onto a stranger or that Floyd lied to you?”

I turned my head to see her face. “Both, as a matter of fact. You’re like Joel. You both seem to be

able to get down to details fast.”

“I’m not worried about anything other than what is affecting you. It’s easy to get to the details that way,” she smiled. I felt normal again for the ?rst time since Floyd showed up. “When it comes to calling a stranger, you have to ask yourself who is more important in the moment.”

“Me, or the stranger? I feel like I’m being set up somehow to be the good guy or the bad guy,”

“When I asked who was more important I was talking about the daughter or Floyd, not you or Floyd. You have nothing to do with it.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better.”

“One day it will,” she said. “Here’s the deal. Floyd is stuck. He’s the important one here. So you upset the daughter a little bit. Who cares? She’ll get over it. She received the information, which is all Floyd wanted. She can use it or not use it. Besides, she’s got a great dinner conversation now,” Grandma laughed.

“So he was stuck?” I asked. “How does that make him more important?”

“You already know that stuck means a person hasn’t crossed over into the light. It was important for Floyd to cross over. More important than keeping Floyd’s daughter in a life of sunshine and butter?ies.”

“Okay, so stuck people need to cross over. Got it.”

“There are three places you can be,” she explained, as an image followed along with her like a sixth grade educational movie. “When you are living, you are on earth. After you die, you cross over into the light and go to the otherside. But in the middle - between earth and the otherside - is a place where people can become stuck or lost.”

“So there actually is an ‘in-between’?” I asked, recalling conversations with others about this mysterious place.

“You can call it that if you like,” she said. “When you die, you ?rst go to the in-between. You are still the exact same person, without the body. You can lie, cheat, manipulate, hate, cry, hurt, and so on and so on. It isn’t until you cross over into the light that you let go of the emotional crap and ?nd peace.”

I watched the movie as the image of a person went through the death process, shedding a layer at each step. First the body, and then, when crossing over, the emotional garbage he carried in life. The next little person went through the same process, but seemed to be stuck in glue or something when he tried to shed the emotional stuff. I imagined giving him a little poke with my ?nger to help him out, and it worked.

“See?” said Grandma. “It’s all so simple.”

“It really is,” I said, as I waited to see if the next little man would need a poke too.

“Some of them just need a bit of help,” she added, “someone like you to give them a boost. That’s all Floyd needed.” Grandma gave me a peculiar smile, and then faded out as she always does.

I told Joel what happened the next time we met.

Joel smiled a huge smile. “I always said ‘Show me a medium that channels your average Joe, the mechanic that works down the street, and I’ll believe.’ Now, here it is. Nice.”

Isabeau Esby is a wife and mother who has touched the lives of people all across the world. Whether it be clearing unwanted energies or guiding people through the transition from life to death, Isabeau brings her unique blend of compassion and full hearted humor to all situations. Many people have found comfort and purpose after receiving a reading from Isabeau and countless families rest easier knowing their loved ones are peaceful and their homes are free of spirits stuck in the in-between. Isabeau has been tested by KRI for her accuracy and uses her experiences to teach other psychics and mediums how to live a life guided by intuition. She is the creator of Discovery Meditation and the author of Cracking Open: Adventures of a Reluctant Medium. A student of Mathematics from the University of Minnesota with minor studies in Biology and Education, Isabeau was her own biggest skeptic but now uses her healthy doubt and tenacity to get to the heart of a person’s struggle. Isabeau also volunteers her time working with psychic youth, assisting with paranormal research and building spiritual communities. To bring balance to her life, Isabeau enjoys yoga, movies, tea with her best friend, and being a kid again with her boys and Apple, her Cocker Spaniel, who was most likely a spiritual guru in a past life.

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