Memorial weekend and visit with the dead

"Remember" by Connie
Starting off Memorial weekend I had a visit with two spirits who have gone to the other side. One was Homer, my first cousin who is the brother of Howard, my cousin that I found out had passed also, not too long after Homer did.
Memorial weekend seems like a prime time for any kind of medium to connect to those who have gone on as we think of them as alive and active not really 'dead dead'.
I had a good visit talking to Homer who is also a former Mormon Bishop about Mormons expectation of a Mormon heaven where some will be more exalted than others. I have always thought that this idea was too elitist and played out in real life with Mormons only associating with the best Mormons and letting all the problem people in the family just go hang.
I went down to visit the alcoholic today as it is my contention that alcoholics need to be visited just like other people if you expect them to make any progress toward sobriety. It is my experience that sometimes there has to be years of building them up before you can realistically expect change, so you have to learn to be patient with how long it takes to affect them. Now in Mormonism good Mormons tend to give the alcoholics in the family short shrift but this really does not have a good result because an alcoholic relative's death can pull the whole family down and gives that family a black eye for not being able to prevent the death or suicide or accidental death just by not making any effort.
I was absolutely determined I was going to prevent my dad's death as long as possible, especially after his older brother was found dead in circumstances that strongly suggested suicide. I knew the threat was very real when it came to my dad, too. Since Doc is very intelligent I know that a lot of these visits and talks we have are having their effect even if no change is registering. The one thing that is not going to bring about change is no effort.
I do think that a family is kind of a loose plan for some individuals to come down and try to care about each other from birth, but of course many times this plan goes awry as one or another family member tries the rest of the family to the max. It is easy to give up on a member when they do that. But I think it is always best to have a conference and see if other ideas can be tried with more effectiveness.
I know without even having to talk to them that Doc's parents are very grateful for any intervention on his behalf.
I think that any religion should be developed with the whole family in mind, and if it results in cutting off members that religion should be strongly questioned and reined in for not living up to the family plan! However it is very tempting for family members to develop religion to accommodate their own inclinations. In other words religion is shaped to fit the easy way rather than the hard way, so for this reason I think heaven will come as a jolt to many who are imagining heaven will be elitist, too, and the more difficult family members will be shut out there too.
If that were the case all rich and prosperous people would go to heaven and only associate with each other. As they so often do here.
It is for a good reason rich family members don't like to associate with poor members as that is always a reminder that some are not as fortunate as others and then questions must be asked as to how this came about.
In America, the land of opportunity, doing well financially has been regarded as a reward for industry, but sometimes it is just good luck, while someone else's luck might be equally bad with developing a disability or something of that nature. That is going to limit their chances of success not matter what effort they make. Much of their energy might be used just in surviving their disability.
Like the victim who lives in here of the serial killer in Phoenix who went from being a young man in his thirties with health and prospects suddenly cut down and paralyzed from the bullets of an assassin. Just like the policeman was killed yesterday in his late twenties by another assassin.
Today I noticed the most moving memorial tributes were for him, a policeman living his life on the front lines just as a soldier does, risking being maimed or killed outright every single day he goes on shift.
Since the battlefields where a policeman dies are right here and I have lived in one of the worst war zones in the city I have a special feeling about policemen who are sometimes the only ones standing between you and the assassins' bullets. They are there to take the bullet for you.
I am going to pay a visit this coming visit to Paul, the victim of the serial killer. His mother, Mary, invited me to come up and talk to him, even though he is still having seizures of the waking sort, but has been warned they may get worse as he gets older. I am looking forward to talking to Paul and maybe having a discussion with him about crime in the city.
I am always looking for people who are willing and able to talk about the problems here on earth in a lucid and controlled way. So many lose their tempers when they are dealing with a problem person here, and then the problem person feels assaulted and has to go file a report on them, and then management has to have a talk with them to try to encourage them to hold on to their own tempers when dealing with violence so they don't become as violent as the person they are complaining about. I was talking to a woman who said if a person in here made her mad she would just as soon kill them as look at them! So what happens is we have a whole lot of people losing their tempers before you can say boo. You just can't talk long to anybody who has lost their temper even if they are started off being the victim. It gets to be quite a circus in here I must say.
So as I told Doc this is why I often have to turn to the spirits now days just to get a more controlled conversation. Most of the time here if you talk to someone about their religion, almost anything, they will immediately lose their tempers and the conversation is over, period.
So it was a real treat to me to be able to talk to Homer after he had gone to the other side and had some counseling. It would not have been possible for him to talk to me on this side without him losing his temper very shortly. Homer, you please explain how this came about as you were a Mormon Bishop and could be expected to keep your temper if anyone could.
HOMER: I have to admit that I got to losing my temper more and more, Gerry, and would not have been able to talk to you very long while still there without losing it. I would have been after you to get active and get your temple work done. I was really big on getting everyone's temple work done, even if they were somewhat reluctant, so it has come as a big adjustment to come here and find out temple work is not as highly regarded. I was shocked. I felt I had been told that temple work was very important and I had made a lot of effort to convince everyone to get it done. I just could not believe that someone was now telling me well, they have sort of changed their idea here and are not emphasizing that any more. I was furious and said I want to talk to people in higher authority. I just will not accept this. If temple work does not mean anything then I am in the wrong place! I felt I was getting the run around and people were trying to keep me out of the degree of heaven I had earned. As you know Mormons preach there are three degrees of heaven and I was aiming for the highest one.
GERRY: Hmm, well I hardly dare say anything for fear of running afoul of Mormon authority. However I do think that this was a case of the Mormon religion getting overloaded with ideas that were really contrary to what heaven should be about in my opinion. It should not be an elitist thing that you can achieve just by going through a ceremony in a temple. It should be through good deeds. So I thought ceremony had come to mean more than good deeds, to me, always a bad sign in religion. Which is why I gave up the Mormon religion. I felt that it would not get me to heaven, only good deeds would. But I knew you cousins who had risen to higher levels in the Mormon church would not agree with me. So our talks never even got off the ground because I knew you would not agree with say how I thought that the troubled members of the family addicted to alcohol should be regarded and treated.
HOMER: I know you think the more controlled members who weren't addicted to alcohol should continue to make efforts to reach and talk to the troubled member.
GERRY: The Kings had so many alcoholics among them I thought that the non afflicted members should make a special effort to learn about how to struggle with alcohol addiction. Instead of just abandoning the family member completely which inevitably meant abandoning their children also. I left Aunt Neta's for example because I was unable to talk to her or any other church members about how alcohol affected my dad, her brother, and what I was worried about and what had already happened. I did attempt on other occasions to get better acquainted with you and Howard, her sons, but she seemed to feel that the less you had to do with such members the better off you would be, so I am sure she counseled abandonment more or less of her family which she also abandoned. I was never able to talk to her in the two years I lived with her about any of my problems which is one reason I left. She expected me to just live there without talking about them. I could not do that, so I left to see if I could perhaps get more help down to Salt Lake from some of Mother's side of the family. They weren't too helpful either since they had had little experience with alcoholics. Our cousin Richard, of course, I eventually found out had become a bad alcoholic in the service.
HOMER: Yes, Richard and Howard and I were raised like brothers, but I did not even visit him even though he was like a brother to me because he had rejected the church. Married outside the church. Then I thought inevitably took to drink. I thought abandonment was best, but now I can see that he felt resentful of me because I did not make time even for him. Who was like a brother to me. I hardly even made time for Howard, but I thought that we would progress as we should if we stayed active in the church and administered to our brothers and sisters in the church. Yes, I took brother and sisters to be who I was supposed to care about now because they had not rejected the true gospel. Well, Richard argued that this was not necessarily the true gospel, and so did his wife. I admit I did not know what to do about a cousin raised like my brother when he left the church. I worked and worked and finally got him to do his temple work before he died and now he tells me it was not fair to his young wife and he should not have left her feeling she is obligated to stay single even though he has died and she is apt to live years longer. And his old wife who had died before he did which is how he came to marry this young woman told me that the temple work was a bunch of crap and I just delighted in helping Richard to marry in the temple to spite her. I didn't do it to spite her, but now he is here and so she, and Richard is still associating with her and his young wife is on that side sealed to him in the temple! It is kind of a mistake as I see it now. As even Richard acts like he is sorry he did it and is now looking at me as though I should not have tried to talk him into doing it when he was old and worried about his soul and his life of sin and resisting church doctrine.
GERRY: Quite a dilemma. I am sure you will get it sorted out eventually. I just hope the young wife left here doesn't decide just to sneak someone in so as to keep the temple marriage intact. So all the financial arrangements Richard made for her that would favor her not marrying again would not be rendered null and void.
HOMER. I hope Richard and I don't come to blows over it. I hope to get my temper under better control than that. I never expected church doctrine to be even harder to explain and justify on this side than on that side. So that is what I am thinking about. But hope to visit you again and will bring Howard when he gets better. I did not believe in mediums either, but can't resist coming and having a conversation with a relative who does not lose her temper every five minutes either.