I met a man and to say it was a very strange encounter is all I will say.

He introduced me to a book..."Life After Life" by Raymond Moody

My sister's daughter was killed being hit by a car, and my mother and I went to the funeral in FL (we lived in VA)

My sister was inconsolable...the only thing I had to offer was the book he had given me...

I left FL to go back to work, while my mother stayed a few more days...in the meantime my sister was about to have a birthday...

I stopped at a grocery store I NEVER used because it was difficult to get to, but I wet there this day...

I shopped for the usual, and came across a big greeting card display...I picked up my sisters card, put it back, picked up another, put it back...at one time I started to walk away, came back and made my final choice.

I mailed my sisters card, and my mother returned...our birthdays were only a couple weeks apart, and my mother had a card for me from my sister....

IT WAS THE EXACT SAME CARD I FINALLY CHOSE FOR MY SISTER!!!!

I discussed this with my sister, and she wondered why she had no compunction about which card to choose, and I said...you know Jennifer and you listened...I was not familiar with her voice so it took me time to finally listen.

I do not believe in a guy in the sky.

I'm sure there will be those who will attempt to explain all of this away in sterile scientific ways, and maybe they're correct. All I can say is...I don't know. I've seen and experienced some really strange stuff during my medical career. Here's one such story:

As a fourth year trauma chief resident, one summer evening we got a call about a freshwater drowning coming in via helicopter. The teenager was unresponsive and in arrest on arrival. We performed our standard trauma resuscitation and got him up to our trauma ICU. I had no expectation for this young man to survive, in fact, I left my shift that morning fully expecting him to have passed away by the time I came on for my next shift in 48hrs. When I came back on, I made my way through the ICU's, just to see what issues we might have that night and try to stay ahead of any problems, you see the units were run by junior residents at night who reported to me. As I walked through the trauma ICU, I hear "Hey Doctor Reed". I turned and saw the young man from the drowning. Initially, I was shocked he was still alive, but then I thought "How the hell does this kid know my name?" He then proceeds to tell me and the entire trauma team EXACTLY what had happened in that trauma bay and even could quote to us the conversations we had had that night around him. I was freaking stunned. When asked how he knew all of this, he responded "I watched it all from above all of you, looking down on myself". Now...I don't know what to make of that, I can't explain it, and I don't know that I ever will be able to explain it. However, I truly believe there is something within us that passes beyond this mortal coil. I'm sure some will laugh and pooh pooh the story but it's definitely true and one of many I've personally experienced.

had that experience in a hospital - he was the one above the scene. He watched the doctors working on him and his lady friend was there too.
There is much we do not know yet - maybe some time we will.

As a physician, I tend to by an eternal cynic...but I've experienced a ton of stuff in my career that I just can't write off or explain. Like you said, there's so much we don't know

it doesn't seem to be *that* uncommon; there are a lot of books on it.

there was a tv series about nde on lifetime or biography
i found some segments on youtube if you're interested

just like yours. All too often they get dismissed. Too bad. That's also why people who have those experiences become reluctant to share them, because they get tired of being told they could not possibly have experienced what they know actually happened.

Imagine that one of your loved ones just disappears. Maybe they're alive, maybe they're not. There's no way to know.

Then you have these ambiguous experiences: you think you might have seen them far away or in a car speeding by but you're not sure. There are odd phone calls that might be some attempt to communicate. Maybe you even think you hear a voice that might be theirs.

Now imagine this: your loved one is actually alive and their captors allow you these brief, tantalizing glimpses that leave you wondering but always in doubt. They never allow you to be reunited with your loved one or even to know for sure they're alive. Wouldn't those captors be a bunch of sick sadistic evil sons of bitches?

Much better to accept that people are totally gone when they die and to honor them by remembering their actual lives, don't you think?

no, i absolutely don't think that it is "much better to accept that people are totally gone when they die"

it would go against what i have experienced throughout my life.

but i understand your viewpoint--i tried convincing myself of the "when you're dead, you're dead" line of thinking when i was in my twenties. it was easier, more dismissive, more logical and rational. but it didn't hold up when i took into consideration various experiences i had had. still, i went with it for a number of years.

and when people talk about their stories of "woo woo" (as i affectionately refer to after-death communications) in various forms my initial response is to be skeptical and look for the logical/rational explanation for the experience. many times there *are* logical explanations (including simple coincidences). other times not so much.

in my experience.

Experience until my dad passed in 2000.
There are more things in heaven and Earth Horatio.....

I lost a loved one also from a tragic death, and because he died suddenly, the family had wished there was some way we could see him again - to ease our pain, to answer our questions - but we never saw him. He didn't come to us in a dream or in an apparition.

There are many things that we can't explain but as for me and my family, we hold on to the belief that he is in a better, happier place, until we meet again.

but, i have found that talking out loud and asking for a sign usually gets me a reply.

i just needed to pay attention to things around me in order to pick up on it.

My uncle and I had a close bond. We'd call each other on Monday nights after dinner and talk politics for about an hour. Well, maybe more than politics. He introduced me to the internet and soon we were e-mailing back and forth.

When he died, I was devastated. It was the Tuesday be Thanksgiving. I couldn't stop crying and had to stop as I was in a public library. So I figured I would send one last e-mail to Uncle Jerry.

The e-mail told him that I loved him, that I missed him, that I would never forget him. Stuff like that. And I mailed it.

30 minutes later, I check my e-mail and there's a response from his account. Now, I knew he was quite dead. And I had watched enough episodes of The Twilight Zone to automatically open that e-mail. You never know . . . . . I wasn't sure I was ready to correspond beyond the here and now.

But I did open it and the first sentence was to allay my anticipated fears. It was his son, my cousin, who explained that when his father died, the computer was still on and his e-mail account open. And my cousin proceeded to tell me how much he appreciated all the love and caring I offered his father and he knew that his father already knew what I professed.

I still have that e-mail.