Written by Susan Demeter-St.Clair

This past August my Mother passed away after a brief battle with pancreatic cancer. 


My Mother held no one specific religious belief beyond she would tell us that she believed in the stars, and the Sun, and our Earth. She was very much a Pagan in spirit if not in a self identifying label. She was a very spiritual woman in part due to a near death experience. And she was very interested in my research into exceptional human experiences.

A couple of weeks after her diagnosis of stage 4 pancreatic cancer with a very grim prognosis we had a long talk about death. She assured me she had no fear of death itself, but was scared of the process of dying. Her illness came as a shock to all of us, including herself. A few weeks before she collapsed at home, we had taken a long walk on shores of Lake Ontario for her birthday. We had ice cream cones, and joked about stuff, and nothing seemed wrong on that warm Summer day three weeks before she fell ill.

When my Mom got her diagnosis she was in shock, and grief, and she told me she had no idea how she would be able to fall asleep.

She told me that when she did go to her bedroom, and climbed into bed with her book, something odd happened. She felt as if someone unseen to the eye had sat down on the bed right beside her. She could feel their weight, and mass as if someone was right there. She said it was like a larger person was sitting there, but she could not see them despite the lights being on.

She was not frightened, in fact she said she felt a great calm come over her, and felt protected. She knew everything would be ok, that is what she told me. And soon afterwards she fell asleep.

Surely, she said to me, "this must have been my guardian angel come to comfort me? Everybody has a guardian angel isn't that right, Susan?" She told me about this strange experience a couple of weeks afterwards and as she began processing the knowledge that her life was coming to a close.

The day after the horrific diagnosis my Mom asked me to break the news to my younger sister. She couldn't bear to do it herself knowing it would break her heart. I waited until my sister got off of work, and I told her our Mother was dying, and had very little time left. This was one of the hardest moment's of my life.

Before the end of the evening and as the news began sinking in for both of us, my sister told me she had to tell me something, and it couldn't wait. She said she did not want to forget to tell me, knowing I'm "into weird stuff" and that I'd find it interesting.

Three days prior to the diagnosis of our Mom with terminal cancer my sister, and her partner were in the small town of Sauble that coincidentally was the same place our parents had met during the 1950s. My Sis and her partner had stayed in Sauble later than they had planned, and they decided to rent a motel room for the night.

After watching a movie, my sister and her partner fell asleep. At some point during the night she was woken up by what she initially thought was her partner sitting down on the bed beside her. She felt it was a bigger person, and she turned around only to realize her partner was snoring, fast asleep on the other side of the bed!

She said she was a little startled by this because she could feel the indentation where this "bigger body" felt as if sitting right beside her, however she told me she was not scared.

The light was very dim, and she could not see this "person" only felt that sensation of someone being right beside you.

She then said it felt like a hand began stroking her head, and she felt comforted, as if the intention of this "unseen hand" was to soothe her, and she turned over and went to sleep.

She said she had no idea what the experience had been all about. In fact she said she probably just dreamed it all, but since she knew I collected "weird stories" she wanted to tell me and give me the name of the motel so I could post an anonymous report about it to my ParaResearchers of Ontario website. Just in case someone else experienced something similar there.

Bear in mind that at this point I did not know about my Mom's strange experience, and I had not been able to connect the two encounters yet.

So a couple of weeks later when my Mom began telling me of her "guardian angel" I was bursting, and almost leaping off my chair. And I believe the first thing I said to her was did you talk to Diana?!!!!

My mother and sister had not shared these experiences with each other yet. And both were amazed by this synchronicity.

I did not have a similar encounter, but I did have several synchronicities leading up to my Mom's diagnosis that I was only able to decipher later on.

There have been thousands of similar experiences reported over the centuries, and probably occurring since the beginning of human history. I hope that somehow in the telling of our family's encounter this will help someone in some way.



Sue