When my young son passed away without reason, I had to find answers within and beyond.
In the five years since my son died, I’ve been on a journey to heal my broken heart. I’ve tried and tested every alternative healing modality I could find that had the potential to work faster than talk therapy, penetrate deeper than prescription medications, and go beyond my human senses to soothe my soul.
At first, my efforts sparked some curiosity. Then they generated hope. Eventually, I stumbled upon new possibilities and began to inch my way forward, finding a personal balance between Eastern and Western healing remedies. But it wasn’t until recently, when science and spirituality merged, that I experienced one of my deepest healing experiences yet.
My story begins in 2018 when I took my 12-year-old son Tommy to see his pediatrician three days before he unexpectedly passed away in his sleep.
“He has chest pains,” I told the doctor when he walked into his office.
For nearly all 13 years of Tommy’s life, this pediatrician was caring, attentive, and knowledgeable. When Tommy and his younger brother were born, for example, it was this doctor who showed up at the hospital later that day to personally check them out. Similarly, when Tommy’s younger brother developed a 105-degree fever at one week old, this doctor went above and beyond by hosting me in his office for two days straight so he could monitor my son hourly as I nursed him back to health instead of rushing him to the emergency room to be pricked with IVs and needles.
So, when I considered who to call the morning Tommy complained about chest pains, this pediatrician was my first choice.
“He has growing pains,” this doctor told us after checking Tommy’s blood pressure, listening to his lungs, and further evaluating his symptoms.
“Really?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “I’ve had at least a dozen teenagers in my office this week complaining of chest pains. The majority were growing pains. It’s normal during puberty.”
With some peace of mind, Tommy and I proceeded to drive more than two hours from our home in Los Angeles to San Diego for his weekend soccer match. During that long drive, Tommy asked me out of the blue, “Is it possible to go to sleep and not wake up?”
At the time, I was shocked by this question but not alarmed. Given we were not a religious or particularly spiritual family, I thought he was just being curious.
What did startle me, however, was when he said a few minutes later, “It must be hard for a parent to lose a child.”
I took my eyes off the road, whipped my head around, and stared at him in the passenger seat next to me. “No such thing would happen to us,” I told him. I would die first. That’s what parents do. And I was so sure of it that we spent another 10 minutes agreeing on the signs I would someday send him from the other side.
“We have time,” I assured him.
We spent the rest of the car ride engaged in a spiritual conversation that didn’t make sense for a family who had never talked about God and only celebrated holidays like Christmas for the joy of family, sweets, and presents. I told him how much I loved him. I made sure he knew how proud I was of him. I even reviewed his whole life with him and marveled at the way he soaked up every minute of it.
Upon reaching San Diego, we enjoyed a steak dinner, Tommy played in his soccer match, and we spent considerable time discussing his upcoming 13th birthday.
Three days later, back in Los Angeles, Tommy went to sleep and unexpectedly never woke up.
When the paramedics confirmed he was never coming back, I felt myself dying and awakening at the very same time. My heart snapped and new senses suddenly cracked open. As pain viciously spread through every cell in my body, I began hearing, seeing, and feeling things I never had before. Unsure of what to do next, a higher voice started guiding me. This voice was much wiser than my own, and I willingly surrendered to it.
This is some sort of plan, I quickly realized when I reflected back on the conversation that Tommy and I had driving down to San Diego just a few days prior. I thought we were having one discussion, I thought to myself, but clearly, our souls were having another. This was the first time I realized I had a soul separate from my mind and body, and that it had its own agenda.
My first call that unfathomable morning was to my mother.
“Your father and I are on our way,” she responded without hesitation.
My second call was to Tommy’s doctor.
“Tommy didn’t wake up this morning,” I managed to whisper through unimaginable shock and grief.
“What?!” he cried in disbelief.
I could tell by the tone of his voice that blood had already drained from his face and shock was paralyzing his body too.
“What happened?” he asked.
I had no words. Tommy had been at soccer practice the night before. He wasn’t dizzy. He didn’t faint. Other than him telling me that his ribs hurt, which was in line with what he’d been complaining about before, he was his happy outgoing self.
“I love that boy,” the doctor whispered, with truth emanating from every word.
“I know,” I responded. “I love him, too.”
Then I hung up.
Where did we go wrong? I wondered, replaying Tommy’s entire short life in my head. What had I missed?
“There’s so little we know about the human body,” offered one of the two homicide detectives who asked my husband and me routine questions later that day. “Don’t beat yourself up over it,” she further advised. “Just the other day a teenage girl was in the emergency room up the street and had every test imaginable taken for chest pains. Twenty-four hours after she went home, she passed away.”
As comforting as these words were intended to be, I sat there spiraling in grief and blaming myself for failing my eldest son. Mothers protect their children, I chastised myself.
But the detectives’ words somehow validated what my new senses were already telling me: that Tommy’s sudden disappearance was not medical, but mystical. Suddenly, doctors and detectives looked just like the rest of us: regular human beings doing the best they could.
As weeks rolled by, science and medicine still failed to explain my son’s sudden departure. Tommy’s heart had stopped, that much was clear. But we didn’t know why.
Desperate for answers, I turned to a psychic medium. If science and medicine couldn’t verify why my son exited this world so early, maybe the so-called “spirit world” would.
The first question the medium asked was if I had lost a son. Given a friend had set up the call and assured me that the medium only knew my first name, this was an encouraging start.
The medium then proceeded to describe my son’s personality along with his private hopes and dreams. I couldn’t deny that the more she spoke, the lighter I felt.
“He’s grateful that you got to have that final conversation,” the medium said, which I understood to mean the one we had driving to San Diego.
“Even if you had rushed him to the hospital,” the medium continued, “the doctors never would have found it. There was nothing to find.”
She said it like fact, and it felt like truth.
A few weeks later, when a pediatric cardiologist called to explain what leading heart researchers in our city had concluded after studying Tommy’s heart, he said, “I’ve never seen anything like it. We are grasping for explanations.”
The psychic medium and the top doctors in our city had come to the same conclusion: There were no definitive answers.
As days rolled into months, the reality of my family’s loss set in and my grief worsened. Watching my younger son suffer without his older brother, his idol, brought me to indescribable lows and I wished I could trade places with Tommy so that he and his younger brother could live a lifetime together.
Ultimately, I got lost in what grief expert David Kessler describes as a “very normal maze of, ‘If only’…and ‘What if’ statements.” If only I had insisted on more testing that day in the doctor’s office. If only I had checked on Tommy before I went to sleep that night. If only he had told me how bad his chest pains were.
Friends and family members also searched for accountability. One or two asked what I can imagine plenty of others were thinking, “Are you going to sue your pediatrician?”
I was taken aback. Sue the doctor who got everything right for my family until one seemingly normal night when everything accidentally went wrong?
“It’s his fault,” one person stressed. “He misdiagnosed it. He should have rushed Tommy to the hospital or to a specialist.”
At that time, every possible stage of grief was attacking me from all directions and I was incapable of thinking, much less making informed decisions. Fortunately, the higher voice that started guiding me the day Tommy left stepped in again to lend some advice: “You and the doctor are in this together.”
This voice’s word was as good as any at a point in my life when firm answers were hard to come by, so I listened. Instead of blaming our sons’ doctor and allowing tragedy to divide us, my heart opened and insisted I do the opposite. I heard myself ask him to stay close and remain a part of our lives.
So he did.
For the next few years, this doctor actively searched the international medical community for answers and regularly shared with me his findings. He contributed to the foundation my family set up to honor Tommy and supported our efforts to brighten our world with his spirit of play. To this day, the doctor keeps a cap with my son’s initials on it by his front door at home and thinks of him every day on his way in and out of it.
In return, my younger son has remained his patient. My family still invites him to special events honoring Tommy, and we defer all medical matters to him with genuine trust.
It’s been over five years now, and we still don’t really know what caused Tommy’s life to be cut short. There are rumors and theories, but none of it matters anymore because the end result is sadly the same. I’ve forgiven myself for not being able to save him, per the recommendation of numerous grief books. I’ve also heeded the advice of spiritual healers, who suggested I forgive my son for leaving, even though I had never once blamed him for it. One night, I even practiced forgiving a nebulous energy in one of my dreams that identified itself as the “Universe” and asked me to forgive it for taking Tommy.
By that point, I already believed in the eternal nature of the human spirit. I had seen too many signs, and I had experienced too many vivid dreams to deny that there’s something else going on beyond this physical world. That’s where Tommy and I were communicating during that drive to San Diego, and where real healing and transformation can take place. I may never know why Tommy’s body failed him but that drive to San Diego gave me an opportunity to say everything I would have wanted to say to him had I known he was leaving. Remembering this always fills me with peace.
Recently, I called our pediatrician to get some medical records sent over for my younger son’s school. I accidentally dialed his cell phone.
“What’s up?” he answered, my number clearly programmed in his phone.
“So sorry!” I shrieked. “I meant to call the office.”
While his personality chatted away, his soul was communicating a much deeper message:
We are still in this together, it assured me.
Two human beings. One loyal to science and facts, the other exploring the ways of the human spirit. Together, doing the best we can.
Nikki Mark founded the TM23 Foundation to honor her eldest son who was 12 years old when he unexpectedly passed away in 2018. After a 20+ year career developing Los Angeles-based startups, Nikki embarked on an unconventional journey to heal her heart. Nikki’s first memoir, Tommy’s Field, will be released in 2024, and her weekly articles, alternative healing toolkit, and free gifts can be found at Nikkimark.com.
