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Death and its Mystery: After Death – Camille Flammarion

Sent by Warrington Dawson, an American diplomat December 11th 1920

Sixteen months before her death my mother saw herself lying dead in the spot where she was to die as the result of a chance cold.

In January, 1908, we were under the necessity of finding an apartment very quickly. One morning I had found one with which I was most satisfied, in the rue de l'Universite. When I went back to luncheon with my mother, in the rue de Varenne, where we lived, I proposed that she go and see it at once, telling her that if she liked it I would find the agent, immediately and sign the lease. I obtained the owner's permission, but on condition that I find another tenant. I began to look for one immediately, and succeeded.

It was then that I left for Africa, unexpectedly, with President Roosevelt, in April, 1909.

She made preparations to move out. It was a strange thing that in one of the last letters which she wrote me, she spoke of her packing and added, “I am preparing for the great Exodus".

This letter, written from the rue de l'Universite before her illness, did not reach me until Iong after her death. But friends had telegraphed me that she had developed pneumonia, and was seriously ill. Day after day the cablegrams succeeded one another, and left me no hope. It. was with terror that I used to wait until the afternoon, when the telegrams were given me; day and night I was oppressed with a feeling of inevitable and imminent catastrophe.

One day, May 5th, I experienced, suddenly, an indescribable relief. I felt her presence near me; I was pervaded by a heavenly well-being such as I had never known. I thought at once of the telepathic bonds which had united us for long years. My only idea was: “The crisis is past ; my mother is saved, and in thinking of me she has transmitted her relief.”

 I was completely happy for the first time since I received the first telegram. At sunset I heard my name being called; a native had come with a telegram, as usual. I rushed out to him. I opened the envelope: it announced, my mother’s death!

 I was absolutely thunderstruck by this news. I thought that she was alive ! she had transmitted her thought to me; I had been in mental communication with her, and she was dead! Her loss would have been terrible for me, even if I had been prepared for it. Since I was no longer prepared, it was like a blow with a club. It took me several years to comprehend the truth.

My mother had indeed sent her thought, but from what we call the other world. She had made me feel her presence, had made me experience her relief, her celestial well-being, had expressed to me all her mother-love showing that our souls could not be separated. I had been able to hear, but not to understand.

As nearly as I could compute the time, this occurred several hours after her death in Paris; her soul had required this delay, either to accustom itself to a state of eternal life after leaving this life, or to make itself felt by me through the veils of the flesh.

WARRINGTON DAWSON.

(Letter 4852.)