An unusual thing happened

This morning I had an unusual thing happen, something with plenty of rational explanations, all equally plausible. But it’s the implausible, impossible to prove or refute that gripped me: It felt like I got a visitation from Nigel.

It was about an hour or so before my target time to get up, I was lightly asleep, deep enough to not be aware of my surroundings or to have conscious awareness of dreams, and also not awake enough to have any sort of self-directed dream. In fact, at the time, it didn’t seem like I was dreaming at all.

So, I was in that thick fog that lies on either side of the border between sleep and wakefulness, and I heard Nigel’s voice saying clearly and distinctly, “Are you there?” There were no visuals of any kind, just the sound, and it startled me awake. I felt kind of frightened, to be honest, for no rational reason, except, maybe, that it sounded so real, and that’s physically impossible.

When I dream, the people in them don’t sound much like they do/did in real life—they sound kind of muffled, mumbling, often kind of vague (all of that’s also actually true for “characters”, people who don’t seem to be anyone I actually know). What I heard was nothing like that: It was totally clear, distinct, and left no doubt about who was saying it.

Here’s the thing. People often assume that I don’t believe in anything supernatural (including any of the thousands of gods and goddesses that humans have believed in over the millennia), and some even assume I reject all of that. The truth is more complicated, as it always is: My core belief is that, based on the evidence, there’s probably nothing beyond the physical world. The important words there are “probably” and “evidence”: I won’t take someone else’s beliefs or feelings or hunches as a reason to believe something, but verifiable, reproduceable evidence that doesn’t require metaphysical interpretation would convince me, and although that’s never happened, I’m happy to have my mind changed.

I know plenty of people who have had dreams they believe were visitations from Nigel—in fact, I think there were probably many I was never told about because people know about my scepticism. However: I don’t for one second doubt that those people feel they had a visitation; the issue for me is that I wasn’t the recipient, so how can I have a personal feeling about the experiences of others? I take what they tell me at face value and accept it as a possibility that I simply have no way to prove or disprove on my own.

The difficulty for me is that I’ve never had anything I’d interpret as a visitation from anyone who’s died—never. Or, have I? Certainly no one has ever appeared to me in a dream and delivered a message, but there was a time at least seven years ago when there was one particular weird thing that happened, a tale I haven’t talked about before.

This was at our house on Auckland’s North Shore, and I think it was before my stent. Whatever was going on that particular night, I wasn’t asleep yet, but not far from it. My eyes were closed, but through my closed eyes I “saw” my mother walk up along the side of the bed, reach over, and then I felt her stroke my hair. She didn’t say a word, and when I opened my eyes, she wasn’t there. Of course. But it definitely felt real, both physically and in that sort of ethereal way we feel when we’re physically close to someone with whom we have a strong connection.

Rational me can list all the ways this can be explained, such as, random brain cells firing, that it was possibly a replaying a real scene from my childhood, that it was my mind trying to make sense of/cope with some worry. Or, maybe it was exactly what it seemed like—after all, I can neither prove nor disprove that.

Which brings me back to Nigel. He and I had very similar beliefs about such things, and I would have told him about my experience. His attitude would have been similar to my own: It was whatever it was.

When Nigel was in his last week, we were talking about death, and I said to him that if there was anything after this corporeal life, he had to find a way to let me know. I also told him it had to be clear, unequivocal, and not need any interpretation. I’ve never had any sort of sign or whatsoever, though after he died I thought of something that only he and I knew about that he could tell someone in a dream, and if they then told me, I’d know it was the evidence. But no one has ever told me that thing, or anything else that only he and I knew about.

A simple clear message directly to me would be nice, but even if it’s possible, that doesn’t mean it’d be likely. The closest I ever felt to a visitation from Nigel was one night in this house, and again through my closed eyes, where I “saw” a dark, cloud-like shadow near the ceiling above the bed. That ethereal feeling was kind of like Nigel, but it was weak, so I didn’t think it was a visit from him, and, of course, when I opened my eyes, there was nothing there but the ceiling.

There’s another bit of background to what happened. Yesterday I read a post on one of the LGBT+ widows groups I’m on from someone who said (I think—there were a lot of typos) that they were an empath and had a message for someone in the group that their partner had been trying to reach them and couldn’t. It’s fair to say that I’m especially sceptical of such things: They remind me of horoscopes, where there are enough partial, kinda, sorta relevant details that someone can convince themselves, without any rational reason, that the message is really about them.

That post, though, reminded me that I’ve never had a visitation or message or whatever from Nigel, and there have been times I thought to myself that maybe he just hadn’t been able to get through. That post could well be the actual reason for what I “heard” this morning, and it wouldn’t be the first time that something a I read online or saw on TV popped up in a dream.

And yet, it definitely didn’t feel like a dream, and it “sounded” just like real life, which doesn’t happen with my dreams. On the other, other hand, the specific words are what someone might say when trying to establish communication, like in that post. On the third hand, it’s also something Nigel would’ve actually said to me.

There are cultures around the world, and have been throughout time, who believe the dividing line between the corporeal world and the non-corporeal world (“spirits”, if you prefer) is at night, and connection between the two is easiest through dreams. There’s absolutely no possible way to prove either one, and, obviously they can’t be disproven, either. I often wonder, what if they’re right? However unlikely it may seem to rational me, that same rational me also knows it’s not necessarily impossible, either.

So maybe it really was Nigel, maybe it was inspired by something I read online, maybe it was some combination, or even none of that. I don’t have any way to be certain, so, as with everything else that some people consider metaphysical, supernatural, spiritual, or whatever they call it, I remain sceptical, but with an open mind.

And yet: “Hearing” Nigel speak, without me having to play an old recording, made me happy. Even if it was nothing more than random brain cells firing, it meant something to me. Seeing/hearing doesn’t always mean believing, but it also doesn’t have to. Rational me knows that, too.

This morning, an unusual thing happened. I don’t care what anyone else thinks about it, because I don’t know what I think about it. But I’m open to finding out. And so is rational me.