Barbara McLeod can’t wait for the cheerful and creative Christmas greetings from her only child, Keith.
He might leave a book or colorful picture of himself. Possibly he’ll tell a joke, punctuated with his devious chuckle. And of course he wouldn’t depart without a warm hug.
“Sometimes I feel him touch me right here,” Keith’s mom said, gently brushing the pronounced cheekbones beneath her short, blond-highlighted hair.
There’s one wrinkle in those holiday plans.
Keith Brendan McLeod – high school wrestler, musician, pet lover and aspiring police officer – has been dead for almost two years. The car in which he was a passenger skidded off a road in Wales, rolled over and struck a large tree on the night of Jan. 16, 2003, killing Keith instantly. He was 16.
Barbara and one of her best friends, a psychic named Susan St. Jean, believe they feel Keith’s presence every day.
With Keith’s help
Sometimes the communication comes in short phrases Susan says she can hear in her spirit. Both women say they have seen Keith manifest his smiling face in photographs taken after his passing.
Beginning in March, the two intend to live in a 35-foot recreational vehicle and travel across the United States serving others, she as a strong shoulder for grieving moms, Susan as a spiritualist counselor.
Maybe your reaction mirrors that of their devoutly Catholic families.
“I’m sure people will read this,” said Susan, “and think we’re some sort of quacks.”
Please understand that grief is an intensely personal emotion. There is no timetable and no instruction manual, although Barbara admits she’s read dozens of books.
What builds comfort and faith in your time of greatest despair might offend someone else, even push them over that invisible edge. And today Barbara has a certain glow about her, which is incredible progress.
Barbara remembers the first time she left her home after Keith’s funeral. She tucked herself low in the passenger’s seat, pulled the hood of her parka over her brow and stared intently at the dashboard.
“If Keith couldn’t see all this beauty, I didn’t deserve to see it,” she said.
Overcome daily by the desire to escape such intense pain, Barbara soon had locked herself in a bathroom. Dressed in the boxer shorts Keith wore the night of his accident and clutching pictures and rosary beads, Barbara says she downed more than 100 capsules of the anti-anxiety medication Ativan with a bottle of hard liquor.
Barbara believes Keith helped friends find her still alive.
“There was no damage to any of my organs,” Barbara said, “The next day, I was so healthy I could’ve run a mile. That’s when I realized there had to be a reason.”
Completing his mission
She’d already begun attending a spiritualist church in Canton, albeit reluctantly. Barbara held hands with a friend the first Sunday she walked in, afraid to open her eyes.
Instead, Barbara says she found assurance that her son, a sophomore at Monmouth Academy at the time of his accident, was merely “transitioning” into the next stage of eternal life. She also met Susan, who’d given up a successful sales career and experienced her own spiritual awakening after battling two life-threatening illnesses.
Barbara has read that more than 80 percent of marriages that experience the loss of a child end in divorce, as hers did. Barbara and Larry McLeod have gone their separate ways after 27 years. She says they remain close.
Now roommates in a peaceful, picturesque home in Poland, Barbara and Susan believe that God, spirit and Keith have commissioned them to counsel people and write books.
They’re hoping that friends and neighbors might help with donations or that an attorney will volunteer services to help them start a foundation in Keith’s name.
In March, after picking up the RV that’s reserved in Texas, they plan to visit the Grand Canyon.
“It’s such a spiritual place, and Keith always wanted to go there,” said his mom.
From there?
“God will bring people to us,” Barbara said. “Keith wants us to complete his mission. He wants people to know when they’re in the lowest valley that there’s a way up.”
Kalle Oakes is the Sun Journal’s columnist. His e-mail is koakes@sunjournal.com.
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