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9 A Spiritual Digression IfyouwatchStevenSpielberg’smovieLincolnclosely,you’llseeDanielDayLewis , playing the president, lose his cool with his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, played by Sally Field. She has chastised him for allowing their son Robert to enlistintheUnion’scause — somethingthey’vebothresisted — andhetosses his hand skyward and begins to berate her for her overwhelming grief after the 1862 death of son Willie. Another son, Eddie, died at age four in 1850, and Mrs. Lincoln was prone to depression — debilitating and dark depression . In a rare show of anger, Lincoln mentions his wife talking to “ghosts” and, in that one word, sums up his wife’s reliance on people who’ve passed. Though she did not call herself a Spiritualist — she even emphatically said shewasn’tone — byseekingtocommunicatewithherdeadsons,MaryTodd, a well-educated and complicated woman, at least succeeded in reuniting the family that was so important to her.1 Just as was Isabella, Mrs. Lincoln was accused of suffering from mental illness,including,dependingonyoursource,bipolardisorderanddepression, and later in life she was institutionalized by her only surviving son, Robert. That part didn’t make the movie. Mary Todd, too, has mostly been cast aside by history as a crazy woman, though latter-day research paints a much more nuanced picture of the president’s wife, and Sally Field’s portrayal of her is one of the most nuanced ever. If you think about the losses suffered by Mrs. Lincoln — she, too, lost her mother at a young age — you can certainly see where she might find the way a bit bumpy. I have visited mediums before, mostly on a lark, and I generally leave thinking, “That was interesting,” but the visits haven’t been life-changing. And I’m not even sure they’re supposed to be. But I’m intrigued. Spiritualism, to me, is a throwback, an anachro- 142 Tempest-Tossed nism — until, that is, I examine my own theology, which allows for the possibility of a life after this one, and if I can accept that, then communicating with people who’ve passed on doesn’t seem nearly so weird. And so I dig in. A Spiritualist in Connecticut offers to have an old-fashioned séance — table and everything — but that doesn’t happen. Instead, I opt for a séance via a telephone call to Marianne Michaels, a Pennsylvania medium. Michaels’s backstory is worth a Lifetime movie. According to her A Second Chance to Say Goodbye: Building a Bridge to the Other Side, Michaels was always able to talk to spirits, even as a child. Because that ability wasn’t treated as strange by her Italian Catholic family, she continued to do so. The accidental death of her twenty-three-year-old brother changed her life, but she took a detour into being the girlfriend of a mobster. I know. Awesome, right? But that wasn’t the life for her, and she eventually came back to talking to the spirits, and now she does it for a living, $75 for an hour-long session over the phone, $78 if you want a cassette of the event to listen to later. She specializes in reconnecting family members with brothers , sisters, children who died too soon. Hence, the “second chance” in her book title. I call her and she explains that spirits are everywhere, but we lose the ability to talk to them by atrophy. Children often see them, but the adults in their lives encourage them away from the visions, and over time the children give up. The spirits keep speaking, but no one’s listening, except people like Michaels. I make an appointment that lands right in the middle of a hurricane, and both Michaels and I lose power and don’t connect until a week later. I am sitting in my living room with my laptop in my lap, preparing to take notes. I decide not to at the last minute, because I want to concentrate and I don’t want to put notes between me and the experience. Michaels makes no small talk, but almost immediately asks if my father is in spirit. Yes, and he has been since 1992. She tells me he’s proud of me and that he wishes he’d told me that more often. Through Michaels — who speaks slowly, as if she’s translating from another language — my father’s shade tells me that he still watches over my mother, which surprises me because their divorce couldn’t have been more acrimonious without the introduction...

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