I Lied This Week

Note to reader: This is part of an ongoing series about the life of my youngest son, Charlie, who died in July 2022. It’s a love letter to the unspoken places of mothering, parenting, divorce, and grieving. Most of this series is behind a paid paywall for now. If you are new here, you can start at the beginning.

For the first year after Charlie died, I was gifted several readings with mediums who connect with the spirit of a loved one and pass on messages. I was constantly searching for proof of life or I guess proof of afterlife. Those early readings were helpful in small ways but mostly they were entertaining because Charlie usually came through with the medium saying, “He’s in a bathrobe, just chilling out.” That sounds like Charlie. It’s a scene that I imagine Charlie dictating from heaven. I was wanting answers about his death and who to blame and how to make sure justice was served—and Charlie was showing me that what mattered to him at the moment was to be at peace and stay there.

Some of readings with mediums were helpful and some were way off base. Some were playful like the ones where Charlie mentioned that he is a really good-looking angel now (this message came through several times with different mediums). Others were disappointing, like the one when I was told that no justice would be served in his case and that Charlie didn’t want to look at the complicated family dynamics anymore. I guess some things you have to die to escape, including family dysfunction.

“I’ve learned that sometimes people have to die to escape their pain.” ~ Laura Day

After that first year, I stopped getting readings from mediums mainly because I knew I didn’t have to go through someone else to hear from him. I also have a connection to a community of intuitives through author and intuitive Laura Day and Charlie often sends messages through them.

Laura reminds us that we are all intuitive. Faith reminds us that a connection to a loved one can continue after death. Grief reminds us that intuition and faith can crumble under the weight of sadness. And that’s where I found myself last week (which is why this Substack story this is normally sent on Wednesday is arriving on a Sunday). This portal between Charlie’s birthday (July 17th) and death day (July 27th) is sacred time for me. And it has been a really hard week with waves of sadness.

This day four years ago, I was reaching out to two people who knew where Charlie was but they lied to me about it. They said they didn’t know when in fact they were paying for a hotel room for him. If I knew about the hotel room, I could have gone and checked on him after my messages to him went unanswered.

But instead they chose to lie.

After Charlie was found dead in a Sacramento hotel room on July 29th, they both shut me down again. No answers to my questions. Not even an, “I’m sorry.” It’s hard enough to find out your child is dead and even harder to discover he’d been dead a few days before his body was discovered.

I hate that they lied to me.

After Charlie died, Laura Day wrote to me, “I’ve learned that sometimes people have to die to escape their pain.” And then she added, “And then you can have an even stronger connection to them.” That healed connection is exactly what I’ve found since Charlie’s death. He healed and he left all the wounds of the family behind. The challenge is for the rest of us to meet him in that healed space. Wouldn’t it be nice if any of us didn’t have to die to escape family dysfunction and family trauma?

Now Charlie is teaching me the art of presence. He was in so much pain before he died, struggling with family dynamics and estrangement. And now he wants to forgive everyone. Just like that. While I’m still trying to tell the truth about what happened to him because…it matters. (And also because before he died he told me that one day I’d tell his story.)

While the truth won’t bring him back, it may just change how we treat someone or something that has been harmed. And that is the mission of the documentary BODIES OF WATER.

This week has included a visit with his girls Sunny and Ray, now ages 9 and 8. Sunny asked to get her ears pierced because she is “the last of her friends group to not have pierced ears.” But then we got to the mall and discovered that Claire’s, the same shop that allowed me to take Ray to get her ears pierced six months ago, told us that Sunny needed her parents’ permission. Her mom is at home with a new baby and her dad is dead so that left us with one choice. We left Claire’s and I took them to the food court and sat them down. Sunny is tears because we’d been talking for a week about getting her ears pierced and I’d just driven seven hours from LA to make it happen. I was desperate.