Loved ones also find themselves at a loss in regards to how they should provide comfort and support for a dying family member. Many friends and relatives use the excuse that they would just be getting in the way of the doctors or nurses. This is their best attempt to avoid the dying. Sometimes flowers and cards are as close as anyone can get to making a physical effort of support.

The medical community seems to be infected with a determination to keep us alive longer and longer. They constantly push themselves to expand the human lifespan and engineer two more seconds of life for our hearts, livers, and lungs. They seem to forget about the whole of the picture as they stay focused on certain specifics. No matter the level of expertise or how much more life can be artificially given to us, we deserve to be found by those around us as deserving of attention and love on a very personal level.

I see so many people who after a life lived full of determination and will, amount to a pile of needles and tubing, sanitizing foam and handfuls of pills. Not only is this picture a sad one, I also find it to be missing the point entirely. The cycle seems to be one where the families are left wandering from place to place throughout and after the dying process. First to the doctor then to the chaplain then to the funeral director and finally to an empty home where they are left alone with more questions than answers. The families are left with all the “what ifs” and the loved one who died was most likely never given a chance to find or feel a sense of purpose and completion. Dying is not simple, but it is irreversible and permanent so preparation is the key.

I want you to think what it would mean for you to acquire the knowledge that you are not going to live. What would it mean to know that you are going to die? At first, gone is the desire for possessions and future planning. There are no goals to achieve, no power to be had and no use for touting authority. Suddenly there is a complete and total internalization of what life is or better yet, what life was. The sense of inevitable detachment is overwhelming and you begin to fade into and out the not so clear picture of what is yet to come. Regrets are more real and close to your heart than ever before. There is also a huge question mark developing in regards to every thing you do, say, touch and think about. Suddenly the future is no more tangible than a ride to mars.

The family members of the dying also go through many of the same realizations except for one significant difference, they run the risk of living with regrets. So many of the people I speak with bring to me their guilt and regret about the choices made during the last days of their loved ones life. They say, now they know they should have done things differently. Most of the guilt and worry comes from the thought of having done more for their loved one, things would have turned out better. I believe it to be very important to point out that EVERYTHING happens for a reason. Every realization, every thought, every action, every disease, every birth and every death all happen just as they are supposed to.

The best way we learn to die well is by learning to live well. It is difficult but not impossible to learn even on a death bed. I help people learn to live while they are dying and that is what gives me joy as a psychic doing Gods work. When you only have a year, six months or less to live and you meet me, the first common goal we establish is to get you living life. I want you to live through your own death. I want to prove to you that there is no such thing as ceasing to exist. I have an advantage over a therapist or a doctor because I can feel thoughts and see feelings. I am also able to answer the big questions about God and the Other Side, but me answering questions about where you go after you die is such a small part of what I do. The bigger reason for me being with a dying individual is about their ability to find the life that exists in death.

Keep following this conversation by subscribing to this feed and watching for part 2 of Death & Dying The Psychic Way.

It’s an industry that I have heard very little about but have had similar topics come up in readings with clients. You might ask what a psychic has to do with the exploitation of seniors? Well, in order to answer that you must first understand what exactly I do as a psychic. If you are familiar with my work then you already know I am consumed with the issues of death and dying. I work directly with those individuals who are nearing the end of their lives to help them prepare for their journey from this side to the next. It is of-course natural that I would also come across individuals who are dealing with every aspect of the aging and dying process, including the care of seniors. The people I speak with and read for are the parents of dying children, the wives of dying husbands, the children of dying parents and so on and so forth.

Everyone wants to know that their loved one is being given the best care around regardless of available financial resources. It is then one of the most nightmarish moments in any one’s life to find out that your loved one was abused by the same people you are entrusting their care to. Abuse is disgusting and the sale of vulnerable, frail seniors as though they are a commodity is absolutely mortifying. The story that made front page news went on to read that “The Times uncovered accounts of elderly victims who were imprisoned in their rooms, roped into their beds at night, strapped to chairs during the day so they wouldn’t wander off, drugged into submission or left without proper medical treatment for weeks.” In one home there was a worker who handed a lit cigarette to a resident who was connected to an oxygen tank, setting off a fiery explosion!

As a psychic, a human, and a person who even on their worst day has half a heart, I am disgusted beyond belief but the abuse is only part of the problem. You see, the homes where these seniors live are actually private residences which go from buyer to buyer. They are sold, seniors and all to the highest bidder. There are even placement services that work for kickbacks, thousands of dollars at a time for each senior they place into one of these private residences. Now, I cannot escape the fact that at some point in my life, God forbid, one of those seniors might be me. Why cant we all take just a minute to mentally and emotionally place ourselves in someone else’s shoes? If we stopped for just one second to genuinely and sincerely think about how we would feel, the whole world would be a different place.

As a psychic, my place in this whole mess is as a guide for the living in response to and prevention of, the guilt and regret that exists after these events take place. I am not without tears of my own when a client brings such repulsive stories to a reading. As I always tell those clients who are so concerned with the end result of their choices, feeling as though they were the cause of someones condition; you must look at the intent and not the end result when judging your own efforts. Intention is a matter of the heart. It is only with true and totally positive intent that we can know for sure we were free from blame in the first place. 99% of us do not make decisions out of spite, we do not do things with the real intention of hurting someone else. Therefore when the end result is less than desirable, we must remember that we did mean well in the first place and all events, good and bad are in our lives for nothing less than the opportunity to gain knowledge. After all, knowledge and wisdom are one of the few things that go with you when you die, which makes them some of the most valuable.

If you know of a senior who is suffering from abuse or neglect regardless of the circumstance please contact the National Center On Elder Abuse.