A Galactic Praise Song: My Dad’s Signs from the Other Side
By Amy Marotz, M.Ed.
In my last post, I wrote about the first time I experienced spirit contact—the diesel fuel smell that told me my grandfather had arrived, safe, on the other side. That was early in my spiritual journey, when I was still learning to trust what I sensed.
This is a different story. Six years further along. And a very different man.
My dad, Steve, was an engineer and a lawyer. No-nonsense. Logical. A man who led with his mind and kept his inner world largely to himself. He owned a TI-99/4A home computer in 1981—which tells you something about the kind of person he was. He didn’t dabble in spirituality, at least not outwardly. He certainly didn’t talk about it.
Which is exactly why what happened after he transitioned made me smile ear to ear.
There Was No Warning
Steve passed suddenly and unexpectedly in December 2024. He and my stepmom were on their way to their winter destination when he choked on water. No prior illness. No goodbye. One moment he was here; the next he wasn’t.
That kind of loss doesn’t give you time to prepare. There’s no fence to sit on, no slow approach to the threshold. He was simply—gone.
And then, almost immediately, he wasn’t.
What Six Years Taught Me to Do
Dad slipped into a coma. He had a DNR. His children all had time to say goodbye by phone before he transitioned—which, in the shock of a sudden loss, was its own kind of grace.
I knew what to do. Not because I’d rehearsed it. Because six years of Ancient Wisdom Studies had given me a framework for exactly this moment.
First, I reached out to my prayer warriors—the Good Knights, my community—and asked them to send energy and support to my dad, for him to use in whatever way served him best. Not to hold him here. Not to direct the outcome. Just to surround him with love.
When it was my turn to speak to him, I thanked him. For the positive influence he’d been in my life and in my children’s lives. I told him I loved him. And then I did something that—I’ll be honest—was the first time my family had heard from ‘this’ side of me.
I told him that when he was ready, there was a Grotto in the town where he was. I told him to go there, and that Archangel Michael would meet him. That Michael would guide him to the heart-shaped labyrinth at the Good Knight Castle—and that at the center of that labyrinth was a direct portal to Heaven.
You can imagine how that could have landed. My family, gathered in grief, hearing their daughter—their sister—calmly describe a portal to Heaven via a labyrinth in Maryland.
They listened. Because that’s the kind of people they are.
And later my stepmother—preparing to say her own goodbye to the man she loved—told me it gave her peace. When we talked about that last conversation, she asked me about how I knew he made it to Heaven. I heard myself say: while Dad may not have been outwardly religious, he recognized Truth when he saw it. That’s science.
What I felt in that moment went beyond the shock of sudden loss. Deeper than grief, deeper than fear. A profound stillness. A knowing. I can’t give you a better word than that—knowing. Knowing that he was held. That he was guided. That the crossing was not something to be afraid of, for him or for us.
This is what the Wisdom Studies actually prepare you for. Not the lessons about crystals or breath work or auric reading—though those matter too. They prepare you for the moments when the ground disappears beneath your feet, and you discover you’re still standing. Because the foundation goes deeper than the ground.
The Song He Had No Business Playing
Later that day he transitioned, I was at my computer. I’d had a YouTube window open earlier—I’d been pulling together some clips for my students to practice their annual Nativity play. I was thinking about Christmas- I wasn’t really thinking about worship. I had never, not once, searched for praise songs online.
The window started playing on its own.
The song was “So Will I (100 Billion X)” by Hillsong Worship. The imagery in the video was galactic—stars, planets, the vast sweep of Creation. And the lyrics:
“God of creation, there at the start, before the beginning of time…
And as You speak a hundred billion galaxies are born
In the vapor of Your breath the planets form …
If the stars were made to worship so will I“
I sat with that for a long moment.
My dad would never have identified as religious. Not even—outwardly—as spiritual. And yet here was this song, playing without any prompt from me, full of a complex understanding of Creation- galaxies and wonder. As if to say: I can see it all now. I understand what I couldn’t see from where I was.
That’s the thing about the other side. It has a way of expanding what a person knew.
Then He Tried Morse Code
For the week following his transition, our dining room light began to flash like morse code. It wasn’t just a flicker, it felt deliberate. My son and I joked that Gramps was sending a message.
For fun, I downloaded a light sensitive morse code translator on my phone. I stationed myself in that room, waiting. I was never there at the right moment to capture it.
An engineer. An amateur electrician. Of course he’d choose electricity. Of course he’d find the most technically precise channel available to him and use it to communicate. It was so completely, utterly him that I had to laugh.
I never did decode the message. But here’s what I know: I already knew what it said. The same thing the song said. The same thing Grandpa Ed’s diesel smell said. “I made it. I’m okay. I can see so much from here.”
What Six Years of Wisdom Studies Gave Me
When Grandpa Ed visited, I was startled. Still carrying a thread of fear. Still not sure if I was “just imagining things.”
When my dad transitioned eight years later, I was prepared. Not numb—I felt everything. The shock, the grief, the particular ache of a sudden loss. I didn’t skip any of that. But underneath the grief was something steady. A knowing that didn’t waver.
I hadn’t lost him. I knew where he was. All around me—in the stars, in the light, in whatever vernacular you use for the place consciousness goes when it leaves the body. Heaven. The Monad. Source. The name doesn’t matter. The knowing does.
That’s what six years of Ancient Wisdom Studies gave me. Not a belief system. Not a script for grief. A foundation—steady enough to stand on when the ground shifts without warning.
The teachings don’t promise you that loss won’t hurt. They promise you something better: that you’ll know, even through the hurt, that the people you love don’t simply disappear. They change form. They find new ways to reach you. Sometimes through the smell of diesel fuel. Sometimes through a praise song on a screen you didn’t turn on. Sometimes through a dining room light blinking in the dark.
You just have to learn to speak the language.
Dad—I hear you. Thank you. You’re welcome here, but don’t accidentally startle anyone.
—
About the Author
Amy Marotz, M.Ed., is Vice President of the Good Knight Network 501(3)c and a guide and teacher with the School of Noetic Alchemy as well as Awakening Wisdom School in Stillwater, Minnesota. She has been studying the Ancient Wisdom lessons under Sophia West since 2018 and is a Reiki Master. Learn more at goodknight.org.
