Now It Can Be Told...

May 19th, 2011 I received the payoff from the sale of my house. The place had been on the market since January 2007. On other words straight into the teeth of the most massive real estate downturn in U.S. history. Had I tried to sell it one year earlier odds are I would have sold it much easier and for (I estimate) double what I eventually received.

But OK, that's history. Others had it far worse. Life marches on.

But there's a heck of a story leading up to the actual sale.

We were in China. This was last February. At the Wudang Taoist Kungfu and Taiji Academy foreign students come from virtually everywhere in the world. They do so for all manner of reasons and lengths of stay. Some we became close to. Others not so much. It depended largely on how long they were around (often only a week or so) and of course personality.

Over the winter, when it was very cold, the number of students dropped to maybe six or seven students. So we all tended to bond together more so than in the spring or summer when the roles would swell to three or four dozen folks.

Around the first of the year we had been joined by a French woman whom I'll refer to as Dana, a very pleasant, jovial lady, who was always a joy to be around. She had been with us for close to two months when it came her time to leave.

On her last night in Wudang several of us gathered in her room for a bit of socializing and to bid her a safe journey. We had some snacks and a bottle of "Great Wall" wine. A very pleasant evening. In the event I was telling her my basic life story, lamenting the difficulty in unloading the house. I actually did have a buyer who was living in the house paying me on a "Bridge loan" until he could qualify for bank financing. But the contractual time limit for the financing had expired and even though I had agreed to extend the limit it was looking unlikely anytime soon. I had a constant fear of learning he had moved out with no forwarding address (It had happened before on an earlier sale attempt).

At this juncture I should mention that Dana is a self-described Shaman (Shawoman?). No, Shaman. That in itself is a very interesting yarn. But it's hers, so I'll roll on with mine.

So I'm giving her the sorry details when she asks me to hand her some cards she had laying on a nearby table. They were little, business card-sized things. Laminated and connected with a kind of ring as I recall. She also had a little pyramid-shaped charm, like you'd see on a decorative bracelet. She began waving the pyramid over the cards and having a private conversation in French, which I couldn't understand. It seemed as though she was asking some questions, making the odd comment, occasionally nodding her head as if in response to something.

After a minute she looked up and said "You have a ghost in the house. It doesn't want the house to sell. Until you get the ghost out the house won't sell."

I was stunned! But the shock was just beginning. So, who is this ghost? Turns out it was my mother-in-law! I will tell you that in my story I had mentioned how my mother-in-law had lived in the attached apartment for several years, but a few years before her death had moved in with her surviving daughter. Some might say "Aha! She picked up on that and used it to 'work' you." OK, maybe so. But in the end I don't care. I'm not one for mumbo-jumbo, metaphysical crapola. As a rule I don't buy into Aliens, Yetis or spirit world/human interaction. But read on...

"How could this be!" I asked. She didn't die in the house! Dana replied it wasn't necessary to have passed away there. She explained how the spirit of those "beyond" sometimes go back to a place where they were happy during their physical life. I knew my mom-in-law had loved her little apartment, so that made sense as far as it went.

"What about my wife? She actually DID die in the house. Was she still there?"

No, she has moved on. In the spirit world she is not Jan as you once knew. She is a different "facet" of her spirit. But she is happy and well and wishes you good things (I'm paraphrasing.)

"So what do I do?" I asked.

Dana gave me explicit instructions. I needed to write a letter to my mother-in-law, read it to her aloud, burn it and spread the ashes into the hillside. Even though I was in China the message would be delivered.

I looked at Cabrini and said "I gotta go!" Cabrini had been in other conversations and didn't know what I was up to. "What?" she asked. "What are you talking about?"

I just said I'll be back in a few minutes. Then I ran to our room, grabbed a piece of scrap paper and wrote my letter. I basically told her that, much as I loved her and appreciated her many kindnesses to me during her life, it was time for her to "go into the light." In fact I wrote "I command you to go into the light." I then set fire to the sheet and blew the ashes to the winds.

Afterwards Dana told me the house would sell by the end of March. She added the proviso that since she didn't speak English well and all the messages she received were in French it was possible she may have mistaken certain details of the message. But we agreed to stay in touch. I would let her know what went down.

Well, March passed by and no sale. Oddly, I had been hopeful. I don't know why, nothing else had worked in four and a half years. But I'm a generally positive guy.

About halfway through April I finally emailed Dana to inform her nothing had happened. It was a couple weeks before she replied (some people apparently don't LIVE on Facebook). But toward the end of the month she wrote back. "I checked and checked again for your house... just be patient... it s ok now, just it needs little time more ;-)) that is the message from "Upstairs"...just wait..."

The very next email I checked that morning was from the guy in the house. Suddenly he had come into enough money to give him the down payment he needed to close out the sale.

To shorten a long story my accountant emailed a few days later telling me to check my bank account, it was a little heavier. Indeed it was! My long financial nightmare was over. The house was gone, Baba was in heaven (or where ever) and the cash was in the bank. Zip-a-dee-do-dah!

So how far off was Dana's original call? March...May...How similar are those in Francais?