Theresa Caputo 'brings peace' to grieving Iowans

Theresa Caputo, decked out in her signature sky-high hair, talon-like nails and bejeweled high heels, clutched her stomach and winced.

“I want to talk to the woman whose nephew was kidnapped and murdered,” said Caputo, a medium who claims to talk with the dead.

Mari Coppola, 60, of Des Moines, signaled, “That’s me.”

Sitting next to Coppola were psychics Ula Yule, 37, and Vianne Higgins, 57, who knew about the murder and came to support their friend. During dinner before the show, the trio prayed over a picture of her nephew, hoping to coax his spirit out during Caputo’s show.

“He just took me through the departure,” Caputo said, still rubbing her stomach from the “awful negativity” of his death.

“He wants you to know that his life ended quickly, and he keeps saying that was God’s blessing, that it ended quickly,” she said.

“Your soul is not at peace, he says, because justice hasn’t been served,” she continued, “but he wants you to know that he is at peace. I died that day, he says, nothing else matters, so I need you to live and work on this side, so I can have peace on the other.”

Related:How psychics taught me to believe in myself

For more than two hours, Caputo, star of TLC’s “Long Island Medium,” wandered the aisles calling out for the “parents of the infant who died unexpectedly” or the “person who lost their mother” or the “woman whose son has passed.” And for more than two hours, an emotional steam engine ran through the crowd, sparing no one from forceful, unexpected punches to the gut.

Caputo calls what she does a part of "healing" and said her readings "bring people peace," and on Monday night many who she read echoed those sentiments. After Caputo delivered her messages, audience members would often take big breaths and say in a breathy voice, "Thank you."



Each time Caputo approached a given audience member, she would ask and sometimes insist on identifying details such as the color red or the numbers 1 and 7. “No,” she’d cut people off as they rambled. “How do you connect with the color red?”

Halfway through the show, she found a woman on an aisle and asked: “How do you connect with a tree and a swing?”

The woman collapsed into heaving sobs, “Someone drew me a picture of a tree and a swing the day after my son committed suicide, and we just moved to a house that has the exact same tree and swing.”

Caputo threw out more details — his socks, his hats, his love of singing, his love for his sister. Each one a gut punch, each one eliciting a new reaction from the mother.

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“He had socks with all different patterns. He was flamboyantly gay and loved it.” The mother paused to breath. “I still have those socks.”

Caputo bent down and looked straight at her: “He wants you to know that he knows you had to move from the house where he departed. It’s OK.”

Tears ran through the Wells Fargo Arena like heartbeats during Caputo’s set. And they were certainly sad tears, but they were also the embodiment of cathartic release. With the tears came long, sustained breaths.

Before the show, hope sprang eternal throughout audience. Many people were fans of the show there for Theresa. (Indeed, her casual swearing and self-deprecating throw away comments made her quite relatable, and the emotion of each reading made for a very entertaining show.)

But many also hoped to reach someone on the other side.

“I would love to get in touch with my grandfather,” said Bryce Charleton, 26, of Des Moines. “He had COPD and it was a struggle at the end. It wasn’t an easy death and he left the family hurting, so I would want to know if he was OK.”

Becky Gross, 38, hoped to connect her infant nephew: “I want to know if he is OK to start working toward closure. I have goosebumps right now and the possibility that she could get through to him is almost too powerful for me, but I still hope it happens.”

It’s easy to pick apart every single thing that Caputo did or said. I attended the show with a hard-core skeptic, and after listing off some encounters he thought were totally fake, even he had to admit he wasn’t convinced it was all a show.

But this parsing out of each bit of information and determining if that nugget is true or that nugget is true is beside the point.

The people Caputo spoke with came in pain, with a hole the size of a loved one in their hearts. And from what they all said Monday, Caputo brought them just a bit more peace.

Related:How psychics taught me to believe in myself

When we lose someone that loss is felt deeply, and for some left behind a funeral is far from the end of grief. Some grieve by setting up a charitable foundation, some grieve by pushing people away, some grieve by finding religion, some grieve by crafting and some grieve by buying a ticket (all less than $100) to see medium Theresa Caputo on the off chance she'll speak with their passed loved one. On the off-chance they'll be told their loved one is OK.

In the end, we all grieve, and it’s often ugly and painful and heavy. But it was clear that Caputo was helping those she spoke to, alleviating some of their burdens.

And if Caputo's words and readings can help someone find some modicum of peace (as they did over and over Monday), who am I — who are any of us — to judge?