Marilou Trask-Curtin - Dreaming of the Dead: Personal Stories of Comfort and Hope

Daniel P. Curtin

About the Author

Marilou Trask-Curtin is an author, playwright, and screenwriter. She and her husband still live in her childhood home in Upstate New York, where many of her spirit encounters occurredand still do to this day. Her previous book is In My Grandfathers House: A Catskill Journal .

Please visit her website, at www.mariloutrask-curtin.com.

Llewellyn Publications

Woodbury, Minnesota

Copyright Information

Dreaming of the Dead: Personal Stories of Comfort and Hope 2012 by Marilou Trask-Curtin.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Llewellyn Publications, except in the form of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

As the purchaser of this e-book, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. The text may not be otherwise reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, or recorded on any other storage device in any form or by any means.

Any unauthorized usage of the text without express written permission of the publisher is a violation of the authors copyright and is illegal and punishable by law.

First e-book edition 2012

E-book ISBN: 9780738733166

Book design by Donna Burch

Cover art Wooden sign: iStockphoto.com/Marcus Lindstrm
Oval picture frame: iStockphoto.com/Rouzes
Vintage pictures with black corners: iStockphoto.com/subjug
Floral background: iStockphoto.com/Peter Zelei

Cover design by Adrienne Zimiga

Interior photos provided by the author. Photo in oval picture frame is of author and her grandmother at a cemetery in 1955.

Llewellyn Publications is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

Llewellyn Publications does not participate in, endorse, or have any authority or responsibility concerning private business arrangements between our authors and the public.

Any Internet references contained in this work are current at publication time, but the publisher cannot guarantee that a specific reference will continue or be maintained. Please refer to the publishers website for links to current author websites.

Llewellyn Publications

Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

2143 Wooddale Drive

Woodbury, MN 55125

www.llewellyn.com

Manufactured in the United States of America

Dedication

As always, everything I write is dedicated to my beloved and much-missed grandparents, Edward and Myrtle McNally, who nurtured my dreams and my soul from infancy and beyond. Without my grandfathers acceptance of all things ghostly, my mind might have been closed forever to such wonderful vistas. Thank you both for your love that transcends death and time.

To my wonderful husband, Danmy champion and best friend in the whole worldI love you so much!

To our sweet cat, Pretty, who came into our lives at just the right time. Pretty spent a lot of time lying on my lap or shoulder while I worked on this book, offering intense purrs of encouragement.

To our constantly missed and loved-forever pets who await us in Heaven: Puss-in-Boots Cat, Midnight Cat, Bootsie Cat, Muffin Cat, Brutus Cat, Quincy Cat, Thomas J. Kat, Pixie Cat, Mandy Dog, Al Dog, Romeo Dog, Savannah Dog, Shy Boy Dog, Amy Dogyour nearness to us in spirit is such a blessing, and you have all proven that death does not destroy anything but the physical presence of your sweet furry selves. See you in paradise, my loves.

To Amy Glaser at Llewellyn, who believed in this book and in my dreams.

To Marqui, who took the time to put the flowers I sent on Butchs grave, thus bridging the gap from 1969 to 2011.

To Butchwho was my first true love. From the other side of lifes door you continue to be my solace, my strength, and my protector. LUV you forever, Babe.

Contents

by Lauren Skye

: A Glimpse of Heaven

: My Journey Begins

: My Beloved Grandparents

: True Love Never Dies

: A Powerful Ghost and a Writing Project

: A Friendship That Transcends Death

: A Plethora of Spirits Dream Visit

: Beloved Pets Visit in Spirit and Dreams

Foreword

Why are we here and where are we going after we die?

The answer is both incredibly simple and unbelievably complex. In short, were here to be ourselves fully, expressing the unique gifts, talents, and wisdom we carryour contributions to the whole. And, equally important, we are here to love each other into doing the same.

I met author/screenwriter/playwright/public speaker Marilou Trask-Curtin by divine appointment. We look at the massive expanse of reality through similar eyes and from slightly different vantage points, as it should be. It takes each individual soul bringing through their own expression of reality to fulfill the totality of consciousness.

Marilou writes of maneuvering through dimensions to speak with those in non-physical form. This gifted author has breached the veil between states of being and returned with great good news of what is waiting there, and her message is delivered with lovely simplicity and heartfelt compassion.

Most spiritual orders speak of a version of Heaven, or nirvanaa place where there is peace, unconditional love, light, and no pain. Perhaps nirvana is a place. Even more, perhaps it is a conditionthe condition of knowing oneself in totality as a soul, as a being of light, a part of the all-in-one consciousness and at the same time unique. Perhaps our overarching mission is to love into being the creation of Heaven on Earth. How? By bringing this awareness through to our incarnated statebringing the beauty, the contentment of full awareness into physical form through our thoughts, emotions, words, dreams, and actions.

It is my sincere hope that this book will assist you in seeing the vastness of reality, in experiencing the magnificence of self, in building your own kingdom of awareness during your earthly life so that the next plane of existence you inhabit will be as Marilou describes: a place of joyful reunions, peace, health, light, and unconditional love.

Lauren Skye

Founder and Director

Inner Connection Institute and Church of Infinite Spirit

Denver, Colorado

Introduction

When someone we love dies, there is usually a deep yearning to reconnect with that person if even for a few moments. The reasons for wanting to reconnect are very personal but often have something to do with getting a chance to say goodbye, telling the deceased that we love them, seeking forgiveness, or just knowing that they are okay and that they have somehow arrived in that most beautiful of destinationsHeaven or paradise.

Such was the case with my beloved grandparents, Edward and Myrtle McNally, who both died when I was a teenager and within five months of one another. My grandparents raised me from infancy to age eighteen, and they were the most wonderful caretakers. They were full of timeless compassion, incredible wisdom, and a softness and kindness that put down enduring roots of love in my lonely soul. In fact, it was my grandfather who first introduced me to the realm of ghosts and that transition time known as death, and, as we shall see in a later chapter, he is the one I credit with helping my three-year-old self to embrace acceptance of ghosts, death, and dying as a natural occurrence and not something to fear.

And this was indeed a wonderful thingespecially when, after my grandparents died, they began paying me after-death visits in both form and dreams. And these visitations from my grandparents from beyond deaths door seemed to open a pathway for me so that other beloved onesand even a few historic figurescould visit me while I slept.