Hi pandies
I was saddened for you and your children to hear of your husband's passing. I understand that need for immediate contact; when I have had friends pass over I certainly have thought they would have the decency to make my phone ring or whatever! I'm not so good at this taking my conciousness into other dimensions and having an experience comparable to what we experience here so I understand the frustration that that brings on. I find the problem with looking for signs is that the looking seems to make them not happen and things that happen do so when I am looking another way and not expecting anything. I think there is a component of how conciousness works at play here and that all I can do is try to be patient. When we are in pain, that is not so easy.
We had one friend who passed over several years ago (48-49yrs, pancreatic cancer). We were in a different house at the time. After that, one of the smoke detectors would beep. I wasn't sure that the battery wasn't too low but I think it happened even after I changed it. I would jokingly ask out loud if that was our friend. Then a couple of years later we moved to a new house (with new batteries in the smoke detector). One night while I was drifting off to sleep (ie not focused on waking conciousness) and had been thinking of our friend, the smoke detector beeped as though resetting itself. It rather woke me up fully. Of course I atrributed it to our friend. It has not beeped since either.
Sort of a trivial example but clearly you can't go looking for that sort of thing.
There's lots of stuff to read nowadays of folks describing things that happen at the moment of death. I have heard other stories of extremely lucid behavior from previously partially comatose individuals in the moments right before death. I'm sure if you look around you will find other stories of this kind. (one I recall was in a Readers' Digest but I don't remember when; I think the young girl who was dying had been quite weak but sat up and spoke lucidly right before death).
When this friend dies, my son was quite upset so we ended up going to a bereavement group run through a local visitng nurses association and aimed at kids. The people were wonderful and I think it helped him to understand that other kids suffered loss too. The adults met separately. I did sense a reluctance to talk about any communications people had received (and the focus of the group was on coping now) but at the end a couple of stories of unusual things that happened after did come out. (The facilitator didn't seem familiar with afterlife stuff so at the end I gave her a copy of George Anderson's book). The teenagers had the most problems and the younger kids coped better. My son was 11 when this happened and responded like a teen.
Does Judy Guggenheim still have her chat room? Maybe you would be interested in that?
Meli-
I am sorry to hear about your loss. I am wondering what sort of stories will come out of this war.
Often when people say the are communicationg with those on the other side, one message is that those there know we are thinking of them and are with us. The problem seems to be to learn how to be aware of that communication, which is what Bruce and others can do and teaches. I'm not so good at it so I am sympathietic to the ones who are trying but not yet succeeding. I wonder if those on the other side also have to learn new effective ways to communicate with us.
I wish you both well.
You might be interested in this website. I believe this is also the site that hosts Bruce's chats?
http://www.after-death.com/