The Irrepressible Spirit of Carly Hughes

I know what grief feels like.  When my step daughter was struck by lightning at age 27 and killed along with her unborn child, the pain was nearly unbearable.  That’s why, when I received an email from Irene Vouvalides, a grieving mother who expressed a desperate desire to connect with her recently deceased daughter through a medium, I moved her to the top of my waiting list. 

We conducted the session by phone.  I had no idea what Irene or her daughter looked like.  The only thing Irene had told me in advance was that Carly had died of esophageal cancer.  This lack of details in advance is my preference.  It meant that anything I sensed would be directly from the spirit of Irene’s daughter.

A good signal across the veil is never guaranteed, but the connection with Carly turned out to be the kind I pray for:  “five bars,” like the cell phone signal that connected her mom and me during that hour-long reunion, complete with imagery, physical symptoms in my body, and a sense of presence that left no doubt that Carly was on the line.

Afterwards, I went straight to my computer, opened a browser, and typed in “CarlysKidsFoundation.com” as directed by Irene.  When the homepage opened, I sucked in a breath.  The banner showed an image exactly like the one that had flashed through my mind’s eye early in the reading. 

“I’m seeing little black boys,” I had said to describe the fleeting image of a young blond woman with her arms around two smiling African-American children.  By this time I had already heard the word “teacher” from Carly, and Irene had confirmed that her daughter’s degree was in education.  I correctly sensed that Carly held some kind of administrative job, and asked, “Did she work in a system that was racially inclusive?  There’s something about race."

“Absolutely,” Irene exclaimed, her excitement palpable through the phone.  “She did service trips to the oldest African American Catholic school in the Mississippi Valley, and that’s what the focus of our foundation has been.

“She got to hug some of those kids, and it was her greatest joy,” I reported.

“Oh yes,” Irene confirmed.  “I have pictures of her hugging them.”

Staring at Carly’s Kids website now, I shook my head.  Anyone who didn’t know the value I place on integrity might have suspected I had Googled Irene and her daughter before the reading.  To do so is unthinkable.  I know firsthand the immense healing and comfort that come from hearing verifiable details known only to the family from a loved one we think is gone forever.  It was just such an experience with a medium that led me to uncover my own ability to communicate with those who have passed.  The opportunity to pay that gift forward is one I hold sacred above all else.

Happily, Carly provided many details in the session with her mother that could not be found on the Internet.

“She shows me you holding a teddy bear against your chest, like snuggling with this … getting comfort from a stuffed animal.”

“She had a bear that she got when she was born,” said Irene.  "She slept with it every night, and now I hold it to my chest and smell her in it.”

“She puts a ring on your hand … on the right hand.”

“I do wear one of her rings on my right hand.”

"It feels like she was cremated, and there are hands in the ashes like you are sifting through them.  It’s very specific.”

“Yes, she was cremated, and my husband and her boyfriend separated them into small containers"

“I’m seeing a big mountain with a K … K sound to the mountain.”

“Her boyfriend was in Africa climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro when she passed.

“He shouldn’t feel guilty about not being there.  There’s a feeling that she’d like to be more adventurous, but she was not quite matching him.  I feel like I just want to curl up on a couch with a nice, soft blanket and be snuggled in."That’s what she did.”

“I have shooting pains in my head.  I’m light-headed and dizzy.  Arterial blockage.  Clotting of some sort.  It’s like I bled out.”

“Carly fainted in my arms.  She suffered from blood clots and ultimately did bleed out.”

 This was the kind of evidence I pray to receive during a reading.   I could feel Irene’s joy.  It was several days after our session that I discovered that one set of details stood out among the many Carly got through.  

 “I just got a picture of the Bible,” I had reported, “but then it turned into another book that’s signed inside the cover.  Is there a Bible?” I asked even as I heard Irene gasp.

Her answer carried a mixture of laughter and sniffles.  “No.  I’m sitting with it now.  ‘My bible,’ I call it.  It’s George Anderson’s ‘Walking in the Garden of Souls,’ and he signed it for me.”

“Most people sign on the right, but this is on the left side.” I said.

“Yes, on the left side he wrote a message about Carly, and on the right side is a prayer in Latin.”

As an author, I have signed thousands of autographs, and I have quite a few autographed books from other authors in my personal library.  The signature is always on the right-hand page.  That Carly would be so specific—and so accurate—about this “bible” being signed on the left side just inside the cover delighted me.  This tiny detail gave her mother all the evidence she needed to confirm her daughter’s presence. 

“I set my intention that if Carly could come through, you would mention that book,” Irene stated in a follow-up email.  “I call it ‘my bible’ and carry it with me always.  George signed the book for me.  He signed the inside left cover as well as the inside right.  I knew then without any doubt that Carly was present." 

“Sleep comes to me now,” Irene wrote after describing the nagging insomnia that had plagued her since Carly’s death.  “I was right there in the room with her.  You connected us with a purity that words cannot describe.  I felt for the first time since she passed how I felt whenever Carly and I were together.”

In my work as a medium, I have come to know beyond a doubt that what love has joined together, the death of the physical body cannot separate.  This truth was evidenced in the beautiful spirit I felt with me during that reading.

“There’s a purity about her that’s unusual … an acceptance of others … an all-inclusiveness.  There’s a feeling of my arms going out and just embracing the world.  She loved kids.  She loved people.  She loved you.  There’s a feeling that at times she couldn’t hold it all in.”

“Everybody called her a love bug,” Irene confirmed.

 “There’s this desire to sing because she had this joy inside her that just wanted to come out, but she really couldn’t sing.” 

“Not at all,” Irene laughed through her tears, “We would joke about it all the time.”

And now she says, ‘Everybody would call this—her death—a tragedy, but don’t see it that way.  I left my mark.  You’re carrying it on.”

Indeed, as I delved deeper into the Carly’s Kids website, I learned that with the efforts of Carly’s family, her boyfriend Mike, and the generous donations of many loving souls, the foundation has accomplished much in the short time since Carly passed.  Ongoing support to the foundation will continue to keep Carly’s memory alive, but thanks to a five-bar phone call from Heaven, Carly’s irrepressible spirit is more than just a memory.  

I know from reuniting thousands of souls that this life is not all there is.  Our loved ones who pass are still very much with us, and we will see them again when we, too, pass through the veil.  Until then, they will go to great effort, as Carly did so well, to show us that love does indeed last forever.