David

David

I first met David at a meditation group.  He was “haunting” my mentor’s house and compelling him to play the piano.  For some reason, I was able to see David incredibly clearly.  Not all spirits come through for me like that at first.  I could see his uniform, his blonde hair and blue eyes.  His proud smile.  He introduced himself by his first and last name.  “Tell Mary I’m okay.” He said.  Then he showed me a beautiful river with a large tree next to it.  The roots of this tree created a little cave between the grass and the water.  He showed me his head being cut off and rolling under the tree roots and his headless body being shipped back to his family.  He gave me a big gentle bear hug and told me to tell the group about him when everyone came back. 

When we landed back on earth from the meditation, I told everyone about David.  That’s when my mentor told me about the piano playing and the loud footsteps in his house at night, as if some benevolent spirit was wearing boots.  He also told me that there is an old soldier’s graveyard around the corner from his house. 

I later looked for David on Ancestry.com and found him.  I verified that he was from my mentor’s small town and was a soldier.  I found his regiment number.  I found the last battle he fought in.  I googled the location and saw a large tree on a riverbank.  My heart skipped several beats.  David was a very real human and one of my first historically verified spirit friends.

A few years later, I took a trip to visit my mentor in that same small town that David is from.  We went to the graveyard where David is supposedly buried.  The headstones were in such disrepair that finding him was impossible.  I was dejected.  I wanted to find my friend.  Most of him, anyway.  I could feel him next to me, and he asked to take me on a hunt for a “present” for me.  I agreed and let him lead me around the graveyard by hand.  He took me to a fallen-down fence leaning on some bricks that surrounded a tree.  On the short brick wall was a perfectly formed iron flower that had broken off the fence.  “For you,” he said.  I didn’t stop smiling for the rest of the day.

He was always around after that first meditation.  I was able to call him to me anytime and we gradually became better and better friends.  He told me about his uncle pressuring him to fight when he didn’t want to.  He wasn’t cut out to be a soldier, he said.  He knew he would die.  He didn’t believe in killing other people for any reason. 

I had another medium pick up on him last year.  “A friend that starts with a D.  Male.  Not a lover.  Maybe a lover?  Maybe he wants to be a lover.”  I saw David wink at me in my head.  I laughed and rolled my eyes.  “I don’t know how to say this nicely,” she said, “But is he kind of a… square?  Like if he was alive now, he would wear khakis.”  Nailed it, lady. 

As I explained David to her, I realized what a strange relationship it is.  David and I don’t have any past lives together.  I didn’t know him in my current life.  I’m not related to him.  He is literally just a spirit friend.  He’s not stuck on Earth, he just hasn’t wanted to be reincarnated yet.  He’s very attached to his last life as my sensitive soldier boy.  He likes being on the land he was raised on.  He likes hanging out with me and getting to know my friends.  He likes adventures and learning things.  It’s actually a very HUMAN connection.  We met through a mutual friend and have been inseparable.  He’s just my buddy without a body.  He spends time with me because he wants to.   

Weird.

Things shifted between us even more last summer.  I was on an epic soul-searching road trip, as one does in the summer, and David came with me through all of it.  He literally sat in the passenger’s seat of my car.  Things got tough on that trip.  I had a tight agenda with major soul-revolutionizing events packed close together.  On nights when I collapsed into an unfamiliar bed with tears flowing into a scratchy pillow, David held me.  He coached me through some very human processes and thoughts.  He told me he was proud of me for choosing these healing experiences.  He was like my internal medium, helping my old tired spirit connect to my humanity. 

In those moments, he became one of the best friends I’ve ever had.  I always have a shoulder to rest my astral head on.  I always have someone to bounce ideas off of.  I’m never alone.

When I was in my early twenties, I related my childhood conversations with spirits as a coping mechanism for loneliness. I forced myself to believe this.  That of course, when my grandmother died, I made up her presence next to me instead of dealing with her death.  That’s what children do, right?  Their brains shift to survive.  Now that I know it was all real… I honor my relationships with spirits as if they are human.  And I try to honor my relationships with humans as if they are Spirit.  We’re all just trying to survive and be the best souls we can be.  Some of us are driving the car of life right now and some aren’t. 

David is not.  I am.  We are still connected. He is my friend and protector.  He is a kind man. I am grateful that I can see and hear him so easily.  If that’s not a soul connection, I don’t know what is.

A few nights ago, I went on a paranormal investigation with human friends, both new and old.  Two very, very old friends that David has taken a liking to in particular.  Of course he came with me.  He even put on his uniform and acted as my bodyguard.  It was swoon-worthy, actually. He had a stern talking-to with a misogynist ghost who got fresh with me.  He told him that honorable men are kind to women.  The rude spirit called David a sissy and mirrored some behavior that David had to deal with from his uncle in life.  David stood his ground.  We later went to a section of the house that my guides told me four times not to enter.  David came through the Spirit Box multiple times to tell me to get out.  It was an intense night. 

When we got home, David was crying.  My sweet, brave, strong protector had been hit.  Because he came with me.  Because he stood up for my honor.  Last night, I realized what had actually happened with the Spirit Box.  For those unfamiliar, it’s like a radio that allows spirit voices to come through.  We heard quite a few voices that night, but I was able to hear David easily.  He answered my question in a voice that I recognized as his, even though my actual ears had never heard it before. “Leave.” He said to me out loud. It was an impossibility before that night.  For my dead friend to speak to me with a human voice and for my human ears to hear it.  This beautiful man that I’ve been “speaking” with for years, but has never actually spoken to me before.  I heard his voice. And it matched the one in my head.  I knew it was him. 

My David. 

“Is he a guide?” one of the other group members asked.  I said he was more like a friend.  That I trust him with my life.  And I do.

I was not prepared for what happened today.

I was sitting down with my coffee when David’s usually quiet spirit asks me VERY LOUDLY to put on his favorite Elvis song.  (What can I say, the man has good taste.)  I agree, a little taken aback by his force.  As it plays, I see David buttoning up his uniform again, putting on his hat, and marching.  I suddenly knew something big was happening.  I could feel it.  He’s leaving me.  Wait, what?  I thought we were just listening to some music.  Tears start flowing.  I start to panic.  “I’ll be back, I promise,” David says.  I quickly download that he’s going on a retreat, the same as I am tomorrow.  I already knew he wasn’t coming with me on my retreat, but that’s only for a few days. I expected to see him when I got back, or maybe on the car ride home. David tries to tell me he’ll only be gone for the length of my retreat and I call him out on a lie.  Our first lie.  Maybe closer to a month, he says.  I’m ugly sobbing by now and Elvis is still playing.  A month is more accurate but it still feels longer to me and I know he’s going to be different when he gets back.  Why is this happening now?  Why is everything changing, I ask him?  He said he faced some issues with his uncle that need to be cleared up.  He has soul work to do.  I helped him see that. 

David is leaving me.  He’s been right next to me on demand for years.  He holds my hand.  He helps me relate my psychic thoughts to other humans because I have trouble communicating them.  He makes the radio play his Elvis song when he’s mad at me.  David?

He told me to print out the information I found about him online.  Frame it with the iron flower he gave me.  Put them on a certain wall and make a door to my house that’s “just for him.”

“But I just heard your voice,” I cried.  “I HEARD your voice.”  I hadn’t even had time to process that fact properly and now he was leaving me.  I wasn’t coached for this moment.  No one told me it was going to happen.  I felt like I was drowning.

(For a fly on the wall, there’s a crazy lady having a silent emotional breakdown in her living room holding a rusty iron flower and listening to Elvis.) 

And he’s gone.

I can feel him watching me from far away.  Very far away.  And I think that will change tomorrow when I go on my retreat. I think he’s going to disappear for awhile.  I understand what he’s doing.  Other spirits in my life have done the same thing. Often, right after people die, they take that alone time to process their life.  Our souls are never perfect until they are.  They are in a constant state of evolution.  When perfection happens, we merge back with Source.  Until then, it takes work.  It takes work to be your best self and stay that way.  And if David has to be away from me for awhile to evolve some more, who am I to stop him?  I can’t be selfish.  He deserves to get help if he needs it.  Lord knows he’s helped me.  And I like to think I’ve helped him too.  I feel his absence like a black hole today.  I don’t think I knew how dependent I’d become on him.  He just became a part of my life.  My friends know who he is.  I talk about him often. I will be eternally grateful to my friend with the Spirit Box.  He provided me with a moment in time where David and I existed on the same level.  David wasn’t only real to me, he was audibly tangible to everyone in that room.  David was given a voice and I shared that moment with him.  David’s soul is now infinitely tangled with mine.  I’m so proud of my brave soldier boy.

“Wherever you go
My heart will follow
I love you so
I'll be true to you
Take my love with you
To any port or foreign shore
Darling, you must feel for sure
I'll be true to you”

-Soldier Boy, The Shirelles