My Daughter Predicted Her Own Death — And Never Stopped Talking to Me | Louise Crist | EP 477

What if your daughter spent years telling you exactly how she was going to die — and then kept communicating after she did?

That's the extraordinary story Louise Crist lives every day. In this episode, Louise shares the most remarkable account of a child predicting their own death and continued after-death communication I've ever featured on this podcast. From premonitions that began at age four, to the moment Jilly's voice came through minutes after the accident saying "I jumped — I didn't feel a thing," to signs so undeniable they've moved total strangers — this conversation will change the way you think about death, love, and what comes after.

If you've lost a child and wondered whether they're still with you, Louise's answer — backed by story after story — is yes.

About Louise Crist: Louise is a registered nurse with decades of bedside experience, a certified grief educator, a shining light parent, and the author of Always Remember to Kiss Me Goodnight. All proceeds from the book fund scholarships for future healthcare professionals in Jilly's honor — over 115 scholarships awarded to date. Louise is also an affiliate leader with Helping Parents Heal.

📖 Always Remember to Kiss Me Goodnight — available on Amazon 🌐 Helping Parents Heal: helpingparentsheal.org

In this episode we cover:

• Jilly's premonitions from age 4 and how they all came true
• What "I jumped" means and why it matters for every grieving parent
• The ring that appeared under a funeral home table
• The quarter buried a foot underground — and why Jilly sends quarters
• How forgiveness unlocked a profound connection from the other side
• Louise's emerging mediumship gifts and what she's learned to see
• How to stop missing the signs your loved ones are sending

What resonated with you most in this episode? Did Louise's stories of Jilly's signs spark something for you? Drop a comment and share — your story might be exactly what another grieving parent needs to hear today.

You've been listening. You're doing the work. But there's still this feeling that you're circling the same place.

Maybe you've thought about working with me one-on-one. Maybe something's held you back. 

I get that. And I want you to know there's still a place for you.

All of it, pay what you want. You decide what it's worth. Nobody gets turned away because of money.

https://grief2g

Want to go deeper? My Substack is where I share solo essays on grief, consciousness, and continuing bonds — thoughts that don't always make it into the podcast. It's also home to a community of listeners who get it, because they're living it too. Free to subscribe. Find it at substack.com/grief2growth.

I've been studying Near Death Experiences for many years now. I am 100% convinced they are real. In this short, free ebook, I not only explain why I believe NDEs are real, I share some of the universal secrets brought back by people who have had them.

https://www.grief2growth.com/ndelessons

Transcript

1:15

Close your eyes and imagine. What if the things in life that caused us the greatest pain, the things that bring us grief, are challenges. Challenges designed to help us grow to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we've been buried, but what if, like a seed, we've been planted? And having been planted, we grow to become a mighty tree. Now, open your eyes. Open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is Grief to Growth and I am your host, Brian Smith. Hi there, I'm Brian Smith and welcome to Grief to Growth. Whether this is your first time here, or you've been walking this path with me for a while, I'm truly glad you're here. This show is about making sense of life, especially when life doesn't make sense. We talk about grief, loss, and the questions that keep us up at night. Who are we and where do we go when we die? And is it possible that people who we consider to be lost are actually closer than we think? I bring guests on to help illuminate this path, no matter how dark it feels. And my guest today is Louise Christ. Louise is a registered nurse with decades of experience at the bedside. She's a certified grief educator. She's an author and she's a shining light parent like me, someone whose daughter is in spirit. Louise had her daughter Jillian or Jilly passing the spirit several years ago. And what's unfolded since then has been one of the most remarkable stories of continued connection that I've ever heard. Jilly began protecting her death at the age of four. She drew the scene of her fatal accident in detail two years before she passed. And she didn't stop communicating when she passed. As a matter of fact, if anything, she got louder. In this episode, we're going to explore what it looks like when love refuses to be interrupted by what we call death. We'll talk about the moments when Jilly made herself unmistakable be known to Louise, to her dad, to mediums, and even to strangers. And what that evidence means for all of us who are wondering about where our own children, our loved ones are, or whether they're still out there. We'll look at what all those decades of nursing taught Louise about the other side, long before she needed that knowledge for herself. And we'll talk about what it means to keep living and keep loving when the person you're loving is on the other side of the veil. This episode is for you. If you've lost a child and you wondered if it's still here, but it's also for anyone who's found a penny or found a wet feather or heard a song in just the right moment and thought, was that you? Louise's answer backed by story after story is yes, it's absolutely Jilly. After the episode, I invite you to continue the conversation over at my substat grief to growth.substack.com. That's grief, the numeral two growth.substack.com. Will there be an article about this? And you can talk with me and other listeners about the episode. So with that, let's get started. Let's welcome Louise. Thank you for having me. Yeah, it's great to have you here. A fellow shining light parent. So for people that don't know what that is, we are parents whose children are no longer here physically, but our children are still with us here in spirit. So I'm really excited to get to know about you and about Jilly. So first of all, tell me about Jilly. Jilly was born an old soul. She could, we had a mind meld thing even when I was pregnant with her. Sometimes you just do that. And she was always ahead of her time. Very, very smart, very intuitive. Didn't take much seriously, but very, very intuitive from a very young age. So she died when she was 19. She was 19 when she passed. So I know that you said she was intuitive and she started saying things as early as age of four. Yeah, we were playing dolls one day and she said something about her future babies. And she looked at me and said, I won't have babies. I won't live that long. Wow. And did this continue then? Because I know up until a couple of years before she passed, she was still saying things like that. Is that right? Yes. I took her to counseling and they said she doesn't seem to be upset by it. So just roll with it and say, aha, a lot. But it got deeper and deeper as she got older. And then she told me exactly how her car accident was going to happen about a month before it did. And it did. It happened exactly that way. So what did she tell you? We were driving down the road. I was driving and she was my passenger. And I did a U-turn and she grabbed my arm and said, Mom, this is how it's going to happen. And I said, what? She goes, the car accident I'm going to die in. It's going to happen on a turn. I'm going to get hit in the side. I hope my face isn't messed up. Will you take me to the Tanner when I'm dead? Take her to where? The Tanner. The Tanner. Okay. Yeah. So she could have a tan in the casket. Oh, wow. Okay. How do you respond to that? Yeah. So when she said this, it sounds like it was pretty matter of fact. Yeah. She wasn't upset about it or all during this time. Yep. Okay. And I hate to ask you this, but tell me about her passing. It sounds like it happened pretty similar to what she said. She was, uh, she had spent the night at a friend's house. And her and her, her, one of her best friends were driving Julie's car because the best friend didn't, her car wasn't working right at that point. So the best friend was driving. They didn't get enough sleep. They had had three rum and cokes the night before, but quit drinking at midnight. Got up at six or five 45 got on the road and she was dead five minutes later. They, they missed a stop sign that the road dog legs and they didn't know that in the dark and they hit a tree. They had a gas main and then a tree and she was hitting the side just like she said, broken neck and injury right here to her chin. Her face wasn't messed up. And the tanning place did call the funeral home wanting to know if they should bring the spray tanner because she had talked to them too. She had talked to them. Yeah. Previously before she died. And she told them. Bring the spray tanner to the funeral home. I want a good tan. Oh wow. Okay. How do you respond to that? Right. So what were your thoughts during this, this time, you know, all these years when she was saying these things? Well, she just, I guess it was a heads up. Yeah. At the time, did you, did you believe her? Did you? Okay. I mean, after, you know, you start saying, Oh, don't talk like that. Don't do that. My father-in-law passed nine weeks before she did and she picked out her casket. So that's the one I want. These are the songs I want. Very matter of fact. Okay. While they were there at the funeral home with him. And what were your, what were your beliefs about the afterlife? Did you guys talk about that? Or I mean, all the time. Okay. You did. Yeah. Okay. Because she was, she was able, like after my father-in-law died, we, things started happening around the house that we couldn't explain. And she said, Oh, that's just Papa talking from the other side. It's okay. What kind of things are happening? Oh, like her CD would randomly change in the middle of a song and she'd say, Papa, put that back. And it would go back to where it was. And just, you know, things falling off tables and shelves. And she just knew his entire urn fell off of just jumped off of her dresser onto the floor and didn't break. Wow. Okay. So, so I've just kind of flabbergasted by this because I can't, you know, my daughter Shaina made a couple of comments when she was around the age of 10. I think she started thinking things like she wasn't afraid to die. And she talked about, she said she didn't want to grow up. And she was, she was 15 when she passed. And even just a couple of weeks before she passed, she was playing with her cousins and my daughter, Kayla, and said something like, when I passed, I want to be, I want to be cremated and buried under a tree. And she was, she was 15 at the time. And they were like, Shaina, what are you talking? It was, and it was a random thing. It was like not part of the conversation. And we didn't know till after she passed and we were talking to Kayla about, know what we should do with her body. And she said, this is what Shaina said she wanted. So we had those indications, but nothing that's, that's specific. Did it upset you at all? Or you just, how did you take it? After years, you just kind of go, okay. Yeah. And then two nights before she died, she left both me and her dad notes on her dresser, thanking us for being good parents, teaching her about spirit and afterlife and praying and giving her a good house and all that. And she was the passenger in the car, not the driver. So yeah. And she, she wrote a note about a month before she died. We read it at her funeral. It was basically her eulogy. Okay. So what you are, are you a religious family or just spiritual or? Very spiritual. I took my kids to every major religion growing up and kind of exposed them to all of it so that they could make a better choice as an adult as far as what resonated with them. They all chose Catholicism, which surprised me. Interesting. But we went and now it's much more, it's bigger than that. I think it's much more spiritual than that. So after she passed and you, you had this understanding or this, this knowing, I guess that she was going to pass. How did that play into your group grieving process? Oh, thank God. I had a heads up. My grieving process as she, I got a call from the driver's mom that morning and the girls aren't home. They should have been home. Where are they? So I got in my car and started looking and I called her friends that she was with and they said, no, they left at five 45. It's now seven 30. It's a 25 minute trip. So they started looking from their end. I started looking from my end. And right after I got the call confirming about the accident and that she had died, I heard her as clear as day right here driving down the road saying, it's okay, mom, I jumped. I didn't feel a thing. It was like watching one of those weird shows on TV where they just do really crazy stupid things. And you go, wow, that's going to hurt, but it didn't. I said, okay. She came to her dad in a tree stand. He doesn't. He's not quite as open spiritually as I am. And his hands started blowing. He didn't know she was dead yet. He's like, what the heck is going on? Why is my body doing this? And just almost like he said, it was a very warm hug. It never happened before. Yeah. And I've heard of something similar to that happening. And it sounds like she, I was going to say was, she is a very powerful spirit that was able to do these things, you know, immediately. Oh, within seconds. Yeah. So we picked out her. I had my daughter, my youngest daughter, Sierra pick out her outfit because I would have put her in something princessy and that's not who she was. And so Sierra picked out her outfit. We had the necklace with a ring that somebody with Alzheimer's that was very precious to her, a given to her. And it was just a costume piece of jewelry and a little term that said faith in her baptism cross had the necklace laid out with the clothes. Went to go pack it all up to go to the funeral home. And the ring was missing off the necklace. It was like, that's really weird. We looked everywhere for it. Couldn't find it. This was two days after, three days after she died. Went to the funeral home, had the bag still sitting on the table. And my husband sat down across the room and had a grief plate. And he goes, what is that over there under the table? Not where we were. It was the ring. Oh, wow. We hadn't been there yet. Okay. Wow. I don't have an explanation for that. Yeah. Well, that's, I don't have an explanation for it, but I know it's called an airport when something physically moves from one location and our dimension to another location and dimension, which with no means of transport. Right. And she does that a lot. She does. She still, she still does that. Oh yeah. All the time. Okay. Not just me, friends, family, sometimes multiple people in the same day or at the same time. Wow. Well, I just, I just, I'm really blown away by this. But other thing I want to ask you about, because you mentioned, she said she just jumped and for parents whose children have passed and almost every parent I've talked to has this, this almost nightmare about their last moments. Were they scared? Were they alone? Were they in pain? Explain to me what she meant by when she said, I just jumped. She said her last memory. Well, right before impact, she knew that she wasn't going to survive that. And she said, our bodies are designed when death is inevitable to just snap out of them. The body continues to have that experience, but the soul doesn't have to experience the pain. Yeah. Yeah, I actually interviewed someone who mentioned something similar to that. She was young when she was in an accident also. And she said she found herself, I think it was before the impact out of her body, above the car, looking down and she could choose whether she wanted to be in the body when it happened or to stay out. And she chose to stay out. Yep. And her friend jumped as well. Oh, wow. Came back and Julie said, no, you, I have to go. You have to stay and I'll help you. Oh, wow. Okay. So they, they met and, and out of body in between times, I'm just saying. That's what Julie said. Yes. Okay. Okay. The driver doesn't remember the accident. She had a traumatic brain injury and some other things. So she doesn't remember it. Thank goodness. Okay. But there's never been any, there's only been love for her. Yeah, because she didn't get up that morning and intending to have an accident that killed her best friend. Right. But she carries that grief. Yeah, of course. And that guilt. So remind me again, when did this happen? November 19th of 2011. Okay. All right. Just to get a timeframe, timeframe on that. And another thing that, that parents are, we, a lot of us really struggle with is anger, you know, anger at, at the person, you know, she, you said your, your daughter was not the driver that was someone else. How would you, how did you feel this? Now, this is one of her really good friends too. So I would imagine that kind of complicates things. Did you have any anger at her? I didn't, but other family members did because the day before this happened, Jilli and I were driving down to a doctor's appointment and we were behind a truck on the highway and something told me to just get over one lane. And as soon as I did, something came flying off the truck that would have hit us and killed us. And Jilli grabbed her and said, mom, we could have died just then. She was dead less than 18 hours later. Anyway, I could have been that driver. So I have to ask you this thing. We talk about soul planning and people wonder sometimes about like, do we have a time to go? What are your thoughts on that? Absolutely. Absolutely. She came, she comes to me in dreams sometimes. And she, she told me that if it hadn't been that day, it would have been a day very close to that. There might have been more people involved, but it was her time to go. She had, she had thrown the pebble in the pond that needed to be there. And now the ripples were going to go out and she could help more on the other side than she could on this side. Okay, wow. Yeah, I know, um, Elizabeth was on the founder of helping parents here. I think Morgan, her son came to her or came through a meeting one time and said something similar, like he died at Mount Everest. And he's like, if it hadn't been there, it would have been, it doesn't matter. It didn't matter where I was. It was going to be around that time. And that reframes grief. Yeah, I think that completely reframes grief because we've talked about, you know, again, some of the most difficult emotions to deal with, with grief are anger, um, guilt, uh, you know, the, the why, why did this have to happen? And it sounds like, I mean, from, from, from your experience, at least a lot of those questions have been answered. Well, chapter two in my book is the why she gave me my answer. Okay, tell me about that. Um, she, she showed me, and I've never forgotten any detail of this. She put me into a forest out in Oregon and showed me a beam of light coming down. And it was, it was Jesus sitting in a rocking chair, holding this little girl. And I walked up and I realized it was her, but I could not move. I had to just observe. And she basically said, Hey, you know, heaven is fun, but I want to learn about forgiveness and I want to learn about love and I want to learn about patience. And God basically said, well, you have all those things already in heaven. So should I want to go to earth and learning? So he said, all right. And they had this whole conversation about what she was going to learn and the lessons she was going to have and how each time she learned something, she was helping somebody else learn something and how it was bigger than just her. Yeah, yeah. And what my role in that would be. Okay, wow. You know, you know, again, it's, I'm having this conversation with you. I think about all the issues that we go through again, the wise, the unfairness of it all, you know, a life, as we say, cut short at 19. Um, so there are no pat answers and it's people still going to have questions. Sure. But, um, I think these answers can be very helpful to people to at least soften the edges. And if you look at the driver specifically, are you aware of any support groups for people who accidentally caused someone's death? I'm not. No. Yeah. So they carry that grief and that shame and that weight. And to even have that thought or have that understanding as, as the mother of the daughter who passed shows, you know, a level that a lot of us really aspire to reach because a lot of us struggle to, to forgive that person. And whether it's the driver or if our child's overdose, it might be the drug deal. It might be the doctor that my daughter had a cardiologist and, you know, I was like, why, why didn't he catch this? Why didn't he run this test? You know, you know, all those, all those types of things that we, we look for these, these answers because we're looking at it from a perspective where we don't really understand. Right. Right. But it's, it's, it's patterns. I mean, I, my experience with all the kids that have gone home before us and all the parents, those kids just, they have a special quality and I can't put my finger on it, but it's just different. I've noticed that too. I've talked to a lot of parents whose children, you know, have left before, before they do 25, let's say, you know, just picking, picking a number. And they do seem to live life at a faster pace. They seem to be more connected, you know, to people around them. And there is this, yeah, I've noticed that with, with almost every parent I've talked to, whose child has left early. So that's, it's like, I don't know, it may be, it may be more sense of urgency. Yeah. Like they knew they didn't have long. They better pack every minute of life into what they had. Yeah. And that's what we should all be doing. Yeah, we should, we should all be doing that. But, you know, we live in denial of, of what's inevitable for all of us. And we think we're all going to grow old and, you know, and have our health. And we, we tend to take those things for granted. But you, as you and I know, that's, you know, that's not guaranteed to anyone. Yeah. Child loss puts that in perspective in a hurry. Life is not guaranteed. Yeah, absolutely. And based on what I've learned, you know, on just my patients that we've resuscitated, that we've gotten back. The other side, I have never ever had a patient that we resuscitated sit up and say, thank you. Thank you for bringing the back of me. Most of them are like, why did you do that? Do you know where I was? Don't ever do that again. So during your, I mean, we, we haven't even gotten to that. You had a lot, you had a long career as, as a nurse. And I think nurses, from my understanding anyway, correct me if I'm wrong, see death a lot more often than the doctors do. So, and I, my understanding also is the doctors tend to, they'll deny the afterlife for much, much longer. But nurses seem to really know and really get it. Is that true? Yes, we have an intuition about us. You know, we know something's not right, but we have the ability to call the doctor and say, Hey, get in here. I don't know what it is, but it's something get in here. And they usually listen. So what kind of, what kind of, you mentioned a little bit, but what kind of things did you hear from people that you brought back? Well, my favorite story was an Amish gentleman that we got in in cardiac arrest and I was on the code team, which is everybody that responds to that. And I was, I was kind of a support person in the background, but I looked up and I've always had the ability to see people when they leave their bodies. It looks like the vapors off of the gas grill a few moments after death. And I saw that on him and I happened to look up in the corner and kind of saw what I recognized was him. And he was nodding and said, yes, which means keep going, keep going. I'll come back. Okay. So we got him back. He went to ICU. Next time I worked, he happened to be in the unit that I was working. And I stopped and said, Hey, I'm glad you're doing good. I was on the team the other night. He said, Oh, I remember you. You were down in the corner doing blah, blah, blah. And I go, Oh, what else do you remember? And he goes, well, I went to heaven and I said, you want to tell me about that? And I said, sure. So he said, I, I heard what sounded like a gunshot going off over here. And then I was sucked out of my body like a straw. And all of a sudden I was going down in this long tunnel. At the end of this tunnel was a bright light and Jesus was standing there and I ran up to him and I, he gives the best hugs and he gave me a hug. And, and then he held me out at arms length and said, you have to go back. And this gentleman said, why I followed all the rules. I've been a good ombudsman my whole life. What did I do wrong? And he said, I want you to go back and tell your people it's not about rules. It's about love. Well, well, for that to come out of an ombudsman is just not even on my radar. You know, but every time that I saw him after that, and he lived probably another six or seven years, same story. And he would just ball telling me that story. He goes, heaven is not anything like you can imagine. And if that ever happens again, thanks, but no, thanks. Don't bring me back. Interesting. Yeah. So obviously you're very intuitive yourself and connected to this. And you mentioned seeing people as like vapors coming out for gas grill. So like a shimmering kind of in the air. Yes. Okay. But I've taught other people to see that too. Okay. Really? Wow. Yeah. Other nurses. You just have to be paying attention and we don't because it's so busy. It's so chaotic. And if you just kind of let your eyes relax and look at the chest about three to five minutes after they die, it just kind of looks like Wow. Okay. So I think I, it seems to me like some of this is like, I don't know if it's genetic or it's kind of passed along this intuition is this ability. Is that been your experience or have there been other people in your family as well? Yes. Both my daughter, all three of my daughters are in fact, my oldest daughter speaks animals quite well. She's an animal whisperer. Oh, wow. Okay. And she's got some crazy amazing stories because she hears the people on the other side and they tell the animals. The animal tells her and then she tells the family member. Oh, wow. Okay. So you have, you said how many daughters? Three. And so do you have any sons? Nope. Okay. Because it's really interesting because it does seem to be more prominent in women to me. Yeah. And I wanted, I was curious cause I don't know if you're my Mark Anthony because both of his parents were natural born mediums also. So it does kind of go through family sometimes. Yes. And I think my grandmother probably was, but it wasn't talked about back then. Right. Yeah, exactly. But you did also mentioned that you've, you've taught other people nurses, I assume to see the same thing. Yes. And I don't know how much of that is just nursing. We rely so much on our intuition and nonverbal and cues and how much of that is a gift. Yeah. Yeah. And the type of people that go into nursing, you know, they're going to be, they're going to be caring people and empathetic people and stuff like that. So it's probably some of some of that as well. Yes. So, and you mentioned your husband is not quite as, as connected as you are, but he did have that experience. Has he had other experiences since then? He was one of the ones that had so much anger for the driver that I had to, I had to physically hide her for the funeral because I was afraid other people would tear her apart because Jelly was very popular. But he was one of those that had anger and he just wanted that last hug. He wanted one last hug and dog gone. He was so ripped off. He didn't get that last hug. So about three months after she died, we were home and it was just, he and I were both sleeping. I had this dream that she was going into a gymnasium and she looked over her shoulder and gave me her, her very particular cackle that let me know that she was up to something good. That was the end of my dream. At the same time, my husband who worked night shift and come home was meditating. I didn't even know he knew how to meditate and he was asking Jelly for that last hug. Okay. And he closed his eyes and somebody came in and sat down on the bed next to him. And then laid down next to him. And his story has never changed, never. He said his left half of his body changed like a half a degree. He felt the hug and then he felt her go. But that only happened the night before that we had had a gymnastic meet and they had honored Jelly and the driver had come. And Mark is the announcer. So during a lull, which never happens in meets, he went over and he put his arm around the driver and said, I forgive you. Oh, wow. And Jelly came the next morning. Oh, wow. Wow. That's powerful because I think I, I not think I know forgiveness can, can hold us back from our, our not holding on to that anger can hold us back from, from being able to make that connection. That is so powerful that, you know, that happened, you know, after he was able to do that. Yes. And that changed his trajectory. Yeah. So Jelly, obviously a force, you know, obviously, you know, someone who is here, was here to do great things. But you also mentioned earlier, like something about like, she felt like she could do more from the other side and she could do it here. Explain that. She's the one that got me into the helping parents heal. I had gone to a conference from Neil Donald Walsh who wrote Conversations with God. And the conference was Home with God in a Life that Never Ends. And he encouraged me to write the book and he encouraged me to go to my first helping parents heal conference, which I didn't know anything about. And at that conference, I went with my sister and I'd had a reading from one of the mediums that I didn't know her name was Nina. And during the reading, as a nurse, I also do Reiki and other things. This medium start having a headache. And I went around to work on her headache. And I kept hearing the name Jared. Jared. And it sounded like somebody was right outside of her hotel room door yelling Jared. I'm like, Do you know, do you know any Jared's, you know, I should answer the door. And she's like, What are you talking about? So you don't hear that? Nope, I don't hear that. Three different times. No, Jared. And I'm like, Okay, whatever. Went down to lunch that day, our first conference. I'm standing in line. This blonde chick is behind me that I don't know from Adam. And I turn around and I hear Jared. And I'm like, Hmm. And she starts glowing. There's no reason she should be glowing. There's no skylights. And I'm like, All right, I'll bite. Hey, do you by chance have no anybody named Jared? And she went, That's my son in spirit. How did you know that? Hmm. No, wow. And it turns out that Jillian Jared had so much in common that it led to healing for both of us. And that's what she does. She finds people who have a lot of things in common with us. You couldn't even try to have these things in common. And then somehow they crossed my path. Yeah, yeah. So I know we talked about the sign of finding the ring at the funeral home. You've had other amazing signs from her. Oh, a whole book full of signs. Yeah. Well, give me another one of your favorites. Oh, my favorites. A clean, clean or PG. Either one. This is a podcast. You can say whatever you like. Well, let's see. I'll give you a clean one. My husband to deal with his grief decided he's a gardener. I can't garden. I can kill a plant just looking at it. So he went out and dug this very large area in a part of the yard that we had never done anything with. No animals buried there. No, nothing. Just under a walnut tree in the corner. So he goes out and he digs. He was about a foot deep. He gets to this gigantic walnut tree root and he can't get it out. So he gets out the saws off, cuts off this route, digging underneath, getting all the rocks and pebbles comes up with what he thinks might be a button because this house is an 1860 house. Comes in, rinses it off. And it's a 2009 Virgin Island quarter. Wow. Which is significant 2009. I mean, how would that get a foot under a tree root? Right. The Virgin Island quarter had a palm tree, a beach, a seagull, and you could tell it was a beach scene. Julie wore Hollister clothing all the time. Seagulls were her thing. Her favorite, favorite thing to do as soon as the weather in Michigan hit 30 degrees was put on her bathing suit, go out on the roof and sun tan. Wow. Now the Virgin Island, of course, that for people that may not remember, we had those quarters back in the day that we had quarters for each standard and then realize there was one for the Virgin Islands. But I stayed at their own quarter. I didn't either. Yeah. That was a very appropriate one for her. Yeah. That is wild. That is really wild. So, yeah, I don't even know where to begin to explain that. And it's really interesting because, again, we talked about earlier the app ports and that is a, I know there are physical mediums that do stuff like that. But, you know, I find dimes, you know, for me, it's dimes. And like the other day I came in the kitchen and there was a dime laying on our kitchen counter, which is, you know, that's not really a miracle. But my wife and I, I hardly ever use change. I hardly ever use cash. And I asked her and she said, no, I didn't have any, it's like, but it's laying there. And, you know, we find stuff like that, but fine. This is like, okay, I'm not just going to put it on the counter. I'm going to put it underground. Yeah. You know, I'm going to put something in a place where we haven't even been before. Right. And the seagull, I mean, we played Freebird at her funeral. That's her theme song is Freebird. Oh, really? So it was very appropriate. And at her funeral, people kept walking up and handing me quarters. Did you drop this? Did you drop this? And I'm like, I'm wearing a dress. I don't have pockets. Yeah. Yeah. Probably five to seven dollars worth of quarters in her casket with her. Oh, wow. Wow. Okay. I'm like, watch them over there. I don't know. I couldn't figure out the whole quarter thing. Why quarters? Why not dimes or nickels or whatever? And then she told me in a dream one night, she goes, remember when I was little, you made me memorize our address and our phone number. And you put a quarter in my pocket whenever I went somewhere. So I could call home. Oh, man. Okay. She's calling home. That is wild. You know, it's funny because after Shayna passed, I was like, you know, people say finding or finding coins is a sign. And so I was like, I said to Shayna, I said, I wanted to be dimes because, you know, pennies you find all over the place. So I just, I just chose dimes. And I mean, not that I don't find other coins, but when I find a coin, it's almost always a dime. Yes. So I can't explain. It's one of those no other explanations, but they're always in really weird places. Like my brother vacuumed his entire room came back and there's one in the middle of the floor. Yeah, yeah. Another friend found one in a pair of boys underwear in the fly wrapped around a drain tube under the sink. Oh, okay. Is that where you store quarters? I'm not a guy, but I'm, yeah, you know. Yeah, that is that is great. That's crazy. So in the times, you know, since she's passed, you know, she's she's gotten you in helping parents. And if I remember correctly, you recently retired from nursing. I did. Yeah, I did. Which was very trippy. Yeah. I'm getting used to that. That might be another book. Yeah. Yeah. So do you have plans for what you want to do in this next phase? I think another book is going to happen. I'm already starting to I've got a lot of information for another book. I mean, Jillies didn't stop after book one. There's two, three, four, five, six. I mean, I could just keep writing. Yeah. But part of it is a new ministry may not be the right word, but I can't think of a better word. Is to just volunteer this year. Spend my time, talent, giving, giving back and seeing what happens. And I know she'll guide me. Yeah, I think ministry is an appropriate word from the original meaning of ministry, because to minister to someone is to serve. So we think of it in a religious term, but I believe it is a ministry to do that. And she's given you so much to work with. And as I said, you and I spoke a little bit earlier, I said I have to have you on the podcast, because every question that parents ask me after they've lost a child, you can answer. And again, it doesn't take all these things away, but it can add some meaning to it, it can add some context to it, it can add some relief, because again, I've talked to so many parents, like, you know, did they suffer? Did they experience pain? And I've talked to people who've had near-death experiences and people have been through this where I'm like, no, even when you see someone suffering in their body suffering in the hospital, for example, They don't remember it. They're gone, they're not there. And my mother-in-law had dementia, and so did my father-in-law. And I'm convinced that their spirits were, I mean, I'm not saying they were gone, but they were back and forth. It was like, sometimes they were here, sometimes they were there. My mom was that way. I woke up one night and my mom was standing next to my bed and I went, what are you doing here? I called the nursing home. Hey, can you go? Oh, no, she's fine. She's sound asleep. Oh, wow. Okay. So she was there in spirit next to your dad. Yeah, yeah. And unfortunately, when my father-in-law went through it, it was before I knew all this stuff. So he would say things like, I saw, you know, so-and-so the other night, or I saw this person and we knew he hadn't. And it wasn't until years later I put together every person he said he saw was dead. Yes. He never said he saw someone who was alive. No, they were all coming again. Yeah. And I wish as nurses for, if you're a healthcare professional, it's kind of beaten into you that death is failure. Death is not failure. Absolutely. We're all going to die. Just like we were all born. I want to do that a little more gracefully. Yeah. And I think that is a really good point, and I understand it in the medical profession. I mean, that's your job. Your job is to keep people in their bodies. But on the other hand, we do have a time to go. And I've talked to enough people, and I'm to the point now where I don't view it as a tragedy because a person happens to go when they're young, because that was their time. Yes. And whatever happened to your daughter, was it building blocks so it doesn't happen to anyone else? Yeah. Or what if they learned something that they didn't know out of that? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because it was interesting because she did have, we knew she had a diagnosed heart condition, which was very mild and they weren't even, she wasn't even on medication or anything. They were just like, come back every couple of years, we'll take a look at it. And then after she passed, the coroner calls and said, well, she had a structural defect that was congenital. Yeah. And she said, I think that's what caused her passing. And the cardiologists disagreed. So people ask me and I'm like, I don't know. But they did want to take her heart and study it, you know, at Children's Hospital. I don't know whatever happened with that. But again, I don't view it as a tragedy anyway. You know, we all have a time to come in, we all have a time to go out. And I think from the other side, people aren't going home. I only got to be there 19 years, I only got to be there 15 years. I don't think that's a regret. No. No, she just packed a lot into it. Yeah, we can waste any time with fluff because there was no time for fluff. Yeah. And that's the thing I thought about it after she in the past, you know, and I was talking to some about this the other day, it's I could say what I only had 15 years with her. But I could also say we had a great 15 years, you know, we homeschool my daughter, we got to spend a lot of time together. I was working for mom. So we packed more than those 15 years and a lot of people packing into a lifetime. So it's not the quantity of life, it's the quality of your life. And looking back, I'm so glad we homeschooled. Oh, did you? All that extra time I didn't get to have or I wouldn't have had. Wow, you did. Okay, that's why. Yeah. So, you know, and that's the other thing is, you know, I can just tell from talking to you your connection with her was and is a very special connection. Yeah. And a lot of people, they don't, they don't have that, they don't have that real soul connection that you use that you have. I have one of my roles in being an affiliate leader is reaching out to newbies, whether their death happened last week or 15 years ago, and just kind of checking in on them and sharing ways to maybe hear from your child. So what I recommended to one who had put her child's picture in the drawer 15 years, 14 years ago and never took it out because she didn't know anybody that lost a child. And that's what you're supposed to do, right? Because you just put it away and you don't talk about it. And I said, Farrah Gibson came up with this and I passed it on to her. Just, you know, close your eyes, pretend like you're taking or you're unzipping your ursuit, put it over there in a pile, go to the edge of the, in my mind, it was the Grand Canyon and you go, Hey, Jillie, I love you. And then, what do you hear back? And she tried it the first time, nothing happened. The second time she tried it, she goes, I heard his voice for the first time in 14 years. And from there, it just took off. His picture is back out. She's talking to it all the time, but Jillie and her son have so many similarities. Again, she found me another person that, Oh, yeah, I mean, right down to our grandparents names are the same. Her husband and my stepdad had the same business. I mean, it's just her initials are the same as my mom's. Just stuff like that. Yeah. Well, we, you know, helping parents heal, we believe a lot of times our children are the ones that bring us together. So we'll go to the conferences and we'll meet people. And we do seem to meet people that we have things in common with. You know, the synchronicities and the things that line up that when we listen. And that's the thing is learning how to listen. I talk to so many people who say, Well, I talk to them, but they don't talk back to me. And I'm like, you have to learn how to hear. It's like learning a different language. Yes, and it's a quiet language. Yeah, explain that because I don't think people are going to understand what that means. You can't hear it when your head is full of noise. Yeah, like I get my best communication from her in the shower. Nice and quiet. That's literally kind of downloads. Yeah, that I get from her when I'm sleeping. But if I'm full of noise and stress and all that, it's harder to hear. Yeah, I think we're explaining that because I think we are our heads are so full of thoughts all the time and worries, etc. That we can't get quiet and it is it is more of a whisper than it is a shout. Yes, and you've got you've got to learn to get quiet and you have to learn to trust it. That's the other thing that I've come to learn. It's like it'll come across as maybe your imagination and it's really easy to rationalize away until a car pulls out in front of you with a license plate that says Jake Christ on it in another state. Yeah, it's quiet. But if you're not looking, you're not seeing it. Yeah, well, that's the thing also. You have to you have to be lucky. And it reminds me one of my stories with Shana it was it was five years after she had passed to the day and I was taking her mother to therapy. She had knee surgery I was taking her to therapy and you know, it was a five year angel versus so I was like, you know, not in a great mood or anything and I've kind of zoned out my wife goes look at that and I looked up in front of us. There was the car truck in front of us had stencils on the back. I'm right here. Yes. Yeah, but I would have I would have completely missed if my wife hadn't pointed it out. Yep, or that billboard or the next song on the radio or I was just thinking that and Freebird came on or Yeah, yeah. Well, that reminds me another one I was Freebird because my friend's son's song is Sweet Home Alabama and we were in Sedona at the helping we were at the Helping Parents Hill Conference. We got up to Sedona and we're standing in the store Sedona and she mentioned her son's name and Sweet Home Alabama starts playing on like the music and I'm like, that's not a song you hear a lot of times in a spiritual shop in Sedona, Arizona. Well, mine is Jilly wrote a college paper on the song If I Die Young by I think it's the band Perry maybe or something. I wrote a whole college paper about that. I go into Menards and I'm looking at the decorations going which one should I put on her grave and I'll be darned that song doesn't come on. Wow, yeah. It's from twenty two thousand nine ten five you know. Yeah, yeah. And why would why would you play that song at Menards? Yeah, yeah. And power tools shouldn't go together. Yeah, exactly. And it's I love sharing these stories because again, it's so easy to overlook these things if you're not looking. So when people tell me I don't get signs or not communicated with me. But I just imagine our loved ones on the outside going, look, I sent you this. I sent you this. You're not paying attention. I'm drawing so hard. I went to when I first started some of my holistic work. I was doing cranial sacral therapy and somato emotional release. And after my dad died, I looked for 15 years. Never thought I got a sign. Never thought I got a sign because I wanted a specific sign. I wanted him to send me an E or okay. I went to John Edward. John Edward comes out and he goes Christopher Robin Tigger who I never took that as a sign. Oh, wow. There are the people around me. Okay. I finally I got on the table once and went into this very relaxed state and my dad came in and I said, where have you been? And he goes, you've been so busy looking for that damn E or you haven't seen the thousands of signs that I have sent you. Oh, wow. Wow. Oh, okay. Yeah. So Louise, I'm curious. I mean, you obviously have this connection, this intuition. Do you do? Do you do mediumship? I've been told I have that capability, but I'm right now I am understudying with somebody. Okay. Just exploring it. I don't know what's medium and what's just nurses intuition. Yeah. Yeah, but I have a tendency when I put my hands on people through all the other work that I've done to see images that I guess other people don't see. I just thought other nurses did. That's what we do. Okay, but I found out that that's not really the case. Yeah, I was interested. I know a lot of people go from massage therapy to becoming mediums because that touching people and that kind of a setting things start, you know, things start coming through. They do. They do. And Julie did that too. I mean, she would just put her hands on, you know, it wasn't necessarily a healing, but that warmth of your hand feels good. And if you're putting that energy behind it and that love behind it, it works for little kids. It goes away. Yeah. Well, you know, and it's interesting because I again, I have a lot of friends who are mediums and they will differentiate between psychic ability and mediumship ability. And they'll have big debates about whether someone's working psychically or through mediumship as a lay person. I frankly don't care. It's like, I don't care. Yeah, it's you're reading energy, you're reading spirit, you know, whatever. And I know not everybody's meant to be, you know, medium as far as working for other people, but clearly you have that that connection, which is, but it also has enabled you to be able to share these fantastic stories and to work with people and helping parents heal. And, you know, as a affiliate leader for people who don't know what that is, there's a group of people that they come in in the organization and you kind of help, you know, help them get acclimated. Peer to peer. And I'm going in, I knew before Jelly even died, I knew probably 40 families that had lost kids. And I thought, well, that's kind of a disproportionate number. It must be because I'm a nurse. Yeah, yeah. No, it wasn't. Yeah, you're right. And the thing is, we can, as we start to open up this and look at it, we can start to see the patterns in our life, you know, you know, we look at things and it might feel very random. And again, we ask those questions. Why, you know, why? And we scream those questions, you know, at the universe, which is fine. But I love that exercise, you know, you talk about like going out and standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon. So go ask that question. But then listen, but listen for the answer. Yeah, yeah. And it might take two or three times and it's such a quiet little whisper. But when you hear it, it's your child's voice. Yeah, yeah. I don't know how else to describe that. So I know we talked, we touched on a little bit about your book, but tell people more about your book. My book is, I wrote it over the seven year period and it was kind of my journey into grief. The first chapter is that day because every story has to start somewhere. I tell people who've lost kids, avoid that if you don't want to read it. Second chapter was my why. The third chapter was the ring showing up at the funeral home and the things that really started happening within 72 hours of her death. And the rest of it is just kind of a back and forth between I can't get out of bed today too. I am so joyous and so full because I got this or I figured out that love is grief is love with nowhere to go. So today is Jillian's birthday. She would be 34. I can't give her a present. So instead, because she wanted to be a neonatal nurse, what I do is make little baby gift baskets and take them down to our local NICU and her birthday 20s get to have a random present from a stranger. Yeah, well, that makes me feel good. Yeah, thanks for mentioning that because today we are recording this on her birthday. So happy birthday to Jillian. Thank you. Thank you for doing this today. And you know, the thing is when we say things like I can't give her a birthday present, not a physical present, but we can do something that's actually more important. That's actually more heartfelt and having that connection. I see you guys giving each other presents back and forth and I know she's right here and I know she's very proud of what you're doing and how you're taking this and you're paying it forward. You're helping other people go through this thing which none of us would choose intentionally or consciously. I'm really intrigued by the name of your book, Always Remember to Kiss Me Good Night. Where did that come from? That sign right there. Your background is blurred. Oh, sorry. It's blurred out. Gee, I have a sign above my bed that says Always Kiss Me Good Night. Oh, okay. And that was her first sign. So when I started the book, I didn't know what to call it and I kept looking up at that and she kept saying, that's it, that's it. Well, I just added Always Remember to Kiss Me Good Night and then when we came time for the cover of the book, my editor wanted a tree at sunset. I don't know why she wanted that but she did. So I sent her gazillions for pictures of trees at sunset because I'm a photographer. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. One day at work, I'm walking down the hospital corridor and they had a student artwork up and there's a picture of a tree at sunset and I went, Julie drew one of those. It's in my living room framed and I took a picture of it and sent it to the author and she goes, this is the exact picture I want. Oh, wow. But Julie literally drew the cover of the book. Wow, wow. Yeah, I love all the connections and I love the fact that you're open to it. You know, it's funny because the reason I asked you about that is the night that Shayna passed away, she, we were watching TV in the family room and we were just like saying it's time to go to bed, which she never wanted to but it was time to go to bed. So she went upstairs and she was in the bathroom when I was going to bed and I did not kiss her good night that night. I just said to the door, you know, I love you and I didn't kiss her good night that night but it was really interesting because I felt, you know, a little bit of guilt about that after a while but I remember when I would say to Shayna because I told her I loved her a lot and her mother did too and she'd say, you don't have to tell me you love me all the time. I already know it. But I need to say it. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, it's, you know, again, people sometimes have guilt around those last, you know, those last moments or again thinking about the last moments of our daughter or our children and I know that they want us to remember the totality of their lives and also to keep in mind that that's not the totality of their lives. That's just the part when they were here. That's one minute of their entire life. Yeah. You want to define them in that one minute? Yeah. Julie was way more than that. Way more than death. Yeah, exactly. And still is. And like I said, you know, still is because it took me a long time to come to this realization because again, I could think of Shane as like she only was here for 15 years. She was only here for 15 years but she's still active and just as Julie is still active. Yeah, yeah. And you know, what did I do with that situation? Okay, let's put it into use. Let's get that gas main taken out so it's not 56 inches off the road. You know, let's get rumble strips on a road that doesn't clearly dogleg in the dark. You can't see it. Let's get a light up above so they can see that intersection. Those are things that I've done. Yeah, yeah. You know, I can't buy my grandchildren from her any presents because there aren't any. Right. Why can't I buy him for a stranger? That's good. That gift is going to find exactly the right person. I did it one year, took it out to an Amish birthing center and this family came in and they were just sure it was a girl. So all they had was dresses. It was a boy. And you know, here comes this basket with exactly everything they need for the first month. Yeah, and that's and that's finding, you know, something to do with the with the grief to do with the line. Yeah, with the love and you know, I hear and I think you said earlier grief is love with no place to go. But the more I do this work and the more I get into this like there is some place where the love to go. Right. So that that is when we have that deep intense grief is when we don't think we have anywhere to put our love when we don't realize that we can still have this continuing relationship. It's not over. Yes, and everything I do in Julie's honor honors Julie. Yeah, and honors our connection and our love and feels as physically to me like a hug as I can get from the other side. Yeah, yeah. I'll take it. Yes. Yeah, I completely agree with that. And yeah, we still miss. I still miss, you know, my daughter here physically that's that's not going to change. And I understand the people that still I mean, we still want that we are biological beings. But we can also we can have a different type of thing. Like you said, a different way of learning a different relationship. And I thank you, Louise, for helping people to understand about how we can how we can make that shift and how we can and we can learn, you know, like you said, you've taught nurses how to how to see energy. I'm going to call it, you know, see the spirit leaving the body. And, you know, we can we can learn this this language is new way of speaking or actually gets should say an old way of speaking. I think we come in knowing this. Yeah, you know, your daughter at four having that premonition. A lot of times kid, they lose that. So they'll say things like that when we're young and then they'll stop because the parents will shut it down. Don't think like that. Don't talk like that. That's that's just silly. It's fantasy. And we eventually we internalize that and we lose the connection. And when you're you know this that that desperation right after they die and that oh my gosh, I'm never going to see them again. I'm never going to be able to touch them or feel them or anything and that just panic. Yes, it can't be over. I'm not ready. Yes, yes, that that is. That I love that. Thank you. That's such an important point because I breaks my heart when I hear someone say I'm never going to see them again. And like that's not that's not true. Yeah, and you will see them again. Maybe not with your physical eyes. Not about these eyes but you will see them again. And not only that even more so you can still communicate with them now. Absolutely. Yeah, and they will answer you. It's a it's kind of a one-sided conversation because they answer quietly. But it's there. Yeah, yeah, it is. And so yeah, so thank you for doing what you do. Thank you. Remind people of the name of the book and where they can get it. It's on Amazon. And again, always remember to kiss me goodnight and all the proceeds from all the profits from the book funded the scholarships that we give out to future health care professionals in Julie's honor. And to date, we've given out 115 scholarships. Our very first one has taken care she became a nurse and is taking care of three members of our family. So it was a good investment. Oh, wow. And we we repeat them. So even college seniors can get one because you don't really get funding as a college senior. But if they pick something and you know, we'll fund them every year as long as they as long as they give me another application. But one of my favorite parts with that that's different is they have to write a personal statement that tells me who they think they are. And then I my request is they have to write me a one page essay on who is your hero and why. And that tells me what they value. And then unbeknownst to the kids, spoiler alert here, we take the hero alert or we take the hero letter and mail it to the hero. Oh, wow. Because if you're someone's hero, you should know that because you might not have think you've ever done anything important in your life and look how you affected this kid. Well, I love the way that you're affecting the world. Thanks. And and the light you're putting in the world, the Jilly's putting in the world through you. I think I said we are God's hands and feet. We are loved ones hands and feet. We can we can carry their support. They can't do physically things in this world anymore, but we can do them for them. I want to say happy birthday to Jilly. And I'm really honored to have you here today. Thank you so much for having me. This was so much fun. Yeah, it's great to see you. Have a good afternoon. Thanks.