In 1987, Gary and I became very close. In this year we both started to discover our spirituality and questioned: What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? What was it all about? Gaz and I would talk for hours about these things.
It was also the year I discovered that Gary was very depressed. He would tell me about how unhappy he was, and the more I listened, the more I understood my brother. I became very compassionate and protective towards him; I wanted to wave my magic wand and make his pain go away. Of course all I could do was listen and offer my advice. Gary’s depression affected me greatly and made me feel unhappy, too; I couldn’t bear the thought of someone I loved being this miserable in life. After all, he was only in his 20s, and he was my brother!
Gary confided great secrets in me that I promised I would never divulge, and I became his rock to lean on. Time was never an issue for me when he needed me. I only wanted him to be happy.
Gaz and I both became aware of the Universal Laws of Attraction around this time, but not to the extent that I have since used these methods to enhance my own life. It was not until 2004 that I would start to seriously consider these laws and implement them out of sheer desperation and a need to drastically improve my own well-being. The Laws of Attraction, borne out of the science of Quantum Physics, is simply the fact that whatever you think and feel becomes your reality.
One day Gary phoned me to ask if we could meet for lunch. We both worked in North Sydney at the time, so meeting was always convenient. We met at a café, and Gary was happy and smiling, which was unusual as I didn’t see him like this often. I even thought he had smoked some pot or something, because his demeanor was so different –- he looked elated.
Our conversation at lunch went something like this:
Gary said, “I have a secret to tell you. Everything you think of becomes your reality. When you use affirmations like “I am a millionaire,” everything you think and say turns into your reality. The Universe -– it’s alive, it pulsates, it moves, and your thoughts become real!”
He gave me a copy of Louise Hay’s book You Can Heal Your Life, which had a huge impact on me. Once I started to use these affirmations like “I am happy,” “I am successful,” “I make people happy,” I noticed that people would always stop and talk to me or smile at me when I walked passed. I also noticed that when I wasn’t using the affirmations and let stress take over for whatever reason, people were either rude to me or ignored me completely.
Unfortunately, Gary never did master the Universal Laws, and it took me nearly 20 years to finally “Get It.”
Gary never celebrated birthdays and hated Christmas with a vengeance. He wasn’t into family get-togethers and couldn’t keep a relationship. Nevertheless, I loved him very much and wanted to help him deal with whatever demons that were making him so unhappy.
So, I was deeply touched when, in October 1987, Gary gave me a birthday present. This was the first and last birthday present he ever gave me. He gave me a soft cuddly bear, which he named Pookie. To this day Pookie is still with me -- as loved and cherished as the day we first bonded. Pookie still resides on my bed, a bit worse for wear, but holding up quite nicely despite his age.
Over the next 10 years we stayed close like this and talked about subjects such as God or whatever created the Universe; life after death; why he was so unhappy and so on. We would contemplate the meaning of life and try to figure out what it was all about; why some people were really well off and happy and others suffered so badly.
In 1989, my then-fiancée, Andrew, and I built a house in the Blue Mountains. We moved from the city and stayed with my parents for a few months. I was traveling every day from Linden to North Sydney to my job as an Executive Assistant. I would get up at 4.30 a.m., arrive in North Sydney at 8.30 a.m., having changed trains once and walked 10 minutes. I worked hard all day, and when I finished my duties, it meant I had to race like a maniac to North Sydney station, change at Central, and get home at 8 p.m. It was hard, and I was exhausted and unhappy. This was not a life for a 26-year-old.
On 14th January 1989, Andrew and I married in my parents’ garden. This was my second marriage, so it was very low-key, but it is still a day that I fondly remember. Rain poured down in buckets all day until the ceremony began, and then the clouds parted to glorious sunshine as I arrived at the house, and we were able to proceed with our celebration. I thought that the sunshine was a good omen, meaning that our marriage would last forever.
We had moved into our new home that my father and Eamonn had finished building three weeks before our wedding day. It was a beautiful home crafted out of limestone, shipped from South Australia.
Our home was paradise; it had a veranda out back, which was equivalent to being two stories from the ground. The view was vast and overlooked beautiful valleys. The Blue Mountains is truly one of the most beautiful places on earth.
I would often sit out on this veranda and feed the Kookaburras. As a lover of nature, nothing gave me more pleasure that to sit out on our veranda with a glass of wine at sunset looking over the valleys and hearing the songs of the Kookaburra or Currawongs. I loved my house, and Andrew proved to be a great handyman who made everything perfect. He also became a keen gardener, and his skill with landscaping and plants was quite keen.
On the 5th January, whilst I was at work and just over a week before our wedding, I received a phone call from Kevin. One of his, and Gary’s, best friend, Tony, a 25-year-old Italian, had been killed in a forklift accident at work. He was driving a forklift at the fruit markets when a huge semi-trailer entered in to the complex. Tragically, the driver never saw Tony and crashed into the forklift. Tony had obviously seen the oncoming collision and tried to jump out of the cage, but he never made it.
This news devastated me, as I had never experienced the death of someone close to me or near my age ever before in my life. And what made it worse was that Tony had been so handsome and young.
As it turned out, Tony’s death was the catalyst that catapulted me into my journey to find out why we are here and the meaning of life; his death awakened my sense of deep spirituality.
My thirst for this knowledge was very intense. I spent a lot of time pondering these questions and reading whatever I could get my hands on. I was like a sponge sucking in information. People thought I was morbid or strange, but to me it was a natural, pertinent question: “Why are we here, and Who am I?” Gaz and I would continue to discuss these important matters together as well, though neither of could ever conclude why people so young would die, or why others would suffer so badly.
I could not stop thinking about Tony’s death. It occupied my thoughts day and night. I cried and sobbed. How could a young man of only 25 die so young? I really grieved heavily for Tony. He was part of a huge, loving, Italian family. It was an emotionally draining period for everyone. I could not bring myself to attend the funeral. I was about to be married in just over a week, and I just couldn’t do it, but Kevin and Gary attended.
Before my wedding day, I remember sobbing on my bed, trying to make sense of life and asking myself, “Why do we die?” I was brought up a Catholic and although I was not practicing the faith, I took myself off to confession to speak to the priest. Surprisingly, I gained a lot of comfort from speaking with him.
After my talk with the priest about Tony’s death, I sat in the church alone, gathering my thoughts and regaining my sense of composure. What happened next was something truly ethereal and signaled the genesis of my spiritual journey.
When I talk about being “spiritual,” I do not mean that I am on my knees praying day in and day out. The meaning of “spirituality” really is up to the individual, to me it means believing in another life after this one; that there is a higher Being (Creator), and that we are all connected somehow as each and every one of us has the essence of God (Creator); we are like a spark (soul) that flies from the Sun (God). How we live our life on earth, i.e., love, kindness and compassion is what gives us a better home in our next life. Spirituality, to me, is knowing there is another form we take after our bodies die, that the “essence of us” moves into another dimension, and death does not exist in that place.
As I sat in the church, all of a sudden it filled with a light, and it came towards me. I literally saw this light come close to me, and I can still recall the feeling that accompanied it – I felt it lift the grief off my shoulders, just as I would have felt a warm, comforting arm around me. Then, just as suddenly as it appeared, it left, and an overwhelming sense of serenity washed over me.
I walked out of that Church elated. I was no longer grief-stricken, and I became a very happy bride-to-be. Only one thing on my wedding day made me sad; Gary did not attend the ceremony. He turned up after it was over, and then he went to his room and played his guitar. Only briefly did he pose for a photograph, which thankfully he did, as it still sits in my lounge room today, and every time I see it, I look at his handsome face and smile.
Soon after my experience in the church that day, I began my spiritual education. I started to read every book I could on Near-Death Experiences (NDEs), and as you will read later in these chapters, it was this study that has helped me cope with my own grief. I have spent nearly 20 years researching NDEs. An NDE is when a person is clinically dead but is revived and comes back to tell how their soul went to another dimension. More than 8 million people have had an NDE, according to a Gallup poll conducted in the USA. I have personally had one, and I have interviewed people who have experienced this. What convinces me that this phenomenon is real is that very small children “come back to life” after being clinically dead to tell similar stories.
In 1990 I became pregnant with Emma, and she was born in June 1991. Gary came to the hospital the night she was born, but I noticed that he didn’t pick up the baby. At the time, I didn’t really care. After a 20-hour labour with the baby being in the posterior position, getting stuck in my pelvis and being born with bruises all over her face because of the high forceps, I really didn’t care about anything much. Emma was lucky to be alive, and that was the main thing. I vowed I would never have another baby, but I did!
Three and a half years later Grace was born. I had a much easier, although no less painful time and the delivery was over in just under four hours.
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