Death

It might not be the cheeriest place to start but in a lot of ways, death is where the Spirit world begins. For a lot of people death is what first makes them interested in working with and hearing from Spirit and, to put it bluntly, a lot of being a medium is all about talking to dead people.

The death of a family member, friend, or pet often makes people think more about their own lives and what will happen to them when they die. And the more we think about that, the more we begin to wonder whether those people we have lost are still around, and are still with us.

There are a lot of different ideas about what happens when someone dies, and where they go after that. If you look at things in a very black and white way then all we can say for certain is that death means one day someone is living and breathing as normal, and then suddenly they're not. When someone dies, part of them disappears and all that is left behind is their physical body, no longer breathing or moving. Some people believe that's where life ends, but I know that's not the case. And if you're reading this book the chances are that you have a sneaking suspicion about that too.

Someone I worked with when I first started to develop as a medium used to talk about death as being a change and not an end, and I've always thought that was a good way to describe it.

For those of us who believe in the Spirit world, death is the thing that takes us out of this world and into the next. Our physical bodies are amazing things, but they aren't built to last forever, and for that reason we can only live here for a certain amount of time.

But that doesn't mean that once our physical bodies die everything about us dies. Our physical bodies can walk about every day, eat breakfast, talk out loud, and do hundreds of thousands of other amazing things. But it's not just whether you have brown eyes, perfect teeth or one leg shorter than the other that makes you who you are; it is a different part inside of you – your soul or Spirit.

Your Spirit is made of energy so doesn't live in just one part of your body but throughout your whole self. It is responsible for a lot of what makes you you, and since that Spirit isn't physical it doesn't 'die' like your body but continues to exist, just in a way that those of us still living can't always see or hear quite so easily.

Think of your body like a balloon: if that balloon went down you wouldn't be able to throw it around or see it anymore, but the air that had been inside wouldn't disappear; it would just exist in a different way to how you had been used to seeing it.

What happens when we die?

We all know what happens to our bodies when we die, but what happens to the rest of ourselves is a bit of a mystery. And although I've experienced and been told some of that, I don't suppose I'll know exactly what happens until I head off to the Spirit world myself.

When we die, our Spirit moves out of its physical body like a ball of pure energy which can move much more quickly and easily than it could have before. A lot of people who have witnessed someone dying say they've heard a whooshing sound, seen a light or mist, or have had a very strong feeling that the person was standing next to them; more than likely what they've experienced is the person's soul leaving their physical body and heading out to the Spirit world.

There's a TV movie about the medium James van Praagh that I've always thought describes death really well. It shows a man lying in a hospital bed surrounded by his family; a few seconds in, the monitors around his bed start to beep and the people in the room begin to cry and hug one another. But as they do that a dog runs down the corridor and jumps up onto the bed, where the man sits up within his body and says hello, fussing him and stroking the dog. Then he stands up, looks at the family around his bed and leaves his body behind to follow the dog out into the corridor. Outside is a big crowd of people in all sorts of old-fashioned clothes who are all excited to see him, hugging him and shaking his hand. He starts to talk to them and then walks away down the corridor with them (including the dog!) towards a big bright light.

And the people who greet us from Spirit aren't necessarily people we've known here; often older relatives who passed away long before we were born are among the people coming to meet us, and remind us that they love us and have been watching over us from the Other Side.

I don't suppose we'll ever know exactly what happens when we die until our own time comes, but everything I've ever seen or heard of makes me think it's a lot like that movie scene. And I hope so ... because as sad as I'll be to leave people behind, I do love the idea of all of the friends, family members and pets that I've lost waiting for me when my time comes.

Losing someone close to you

Losing a friend or family member is one of the worst things in life. It can feel as though there's a huge hole left behind and, at least to start with, can seem as though that hole will never get any smaller, and you will never feel any better.

When someone we're close to passes away, it can be hard to remember the happy times without feeling sad or angry that the person is no longer around, and it's often difficult to see how life can ever be the same without such an important person.

I wish I could say that working with the Spirit world makes that sadness go away, and stops us grieving when we lose someone, but unfortunately that's not true. I work with Spiritevery day but it still hurts to know that I won't be able to hug some of the people I care about, or that I won't be able to see them or hear them in the same way I used to.

Sometimes I do get little signs to show that my loved ones in the Spirit world are around and looking after me, and sometimes I even get full messages from them helping me out or trying to make me feel better if I'm going through a tough time. But although signs and messages like that always brighten my day, it's not the same as having a cuddle from my nanna, or talking to my granddad about all of the things I always meant to ask him.

Even the best medium in the world will tell you that our loved ones in the Spirit world don't talk to us 24/7, maybe because they know that we have lots of other things to do with our time – and because they do too – but also because they understand that grieving, and learning to live with loss, is one of the biggest lessons we will ever learn.

Unfortunately, there are no rules on how long it takes our loved ones to come back and say hello from the Other Side, and that can be very hard when often we...