My Mom passed into spirit on March 11, 1997. In July I was going out with friends and a friend was picking me up at 5:15, I had just gotten home and was upstairs rushing to change clothes. While I stood at the foot of my bed, out of the corner of my eye I noticed that the little rubber pokey had fallen off of the book shelf. I many simultaneous thoughts, 1) how did that happen, nothing else had fallen or moved on the shelf 2) no one could have been in the house the alarm was set 3) if it had been a mouse or vibrations from a large truck on the street, something else surely would have moved and 4) how interesting that it fell and landed in a standing position. No more time for thoughts, my friend was honking in my driveway. We went out and I got home around 10:30. I was again at the foot of my bed taking off my clothes and getting ready for bed and again I noticed that the little rubber pony was still on the floor, but now its hind legs were bent and it was in a sitting position and I immediately knew it was my Mom. I knew that was her way of just connecting. When I had left home to attend college, I would visit throughout the year and upon getting back to my new home when I was unpacking, I would always find a toy from my childhood that Mom had snuck into my suitcase. it was her way of "connecting" Also, this pattern was long established from my childhood. As a child, Mom would come into my room while I was sleeping and sometimes rearrange my toys always leaving a couple of them in different places. She would tell me that while I was sleeping the toys came to life and played amongst themselves and sometimes forgot where they were originally. I selected not to share with my siblings what had happened because they might think that I wasn't adjusting well and having Magical thinking. So I was surprised when my oldest brother called for our weekly chat and asked if anything unusual had happened over the weekend. I could hear the anticipation in his voice and said yes, but I suspected something had happened to him and I wanted him to tell me first. So he did. On the same night that my pokey pony had taken a trip, he and his wife were fast asleep when a framed picture that his daughter had sketched greater than 25 years earlier had fallen off the wall and crashed to the floor waking both of them up. He examined the sketch and the frame and glass were in tact, so was the wire on the back and the nail which was hammered at an angle which would have required that the picture be lifted up in order to remove it from the wall. He, too, immediately knew that it was Mom.

During the last year of my Mom's life on earth, she often spoke about not believing there was anything beyond this existence and I would tell her that I didn't believe her, that I "just knew" there was more. She would say that her Mom had told her that she would "get in touch" with her after she passed, but she didn't so there must not be anything. I guess my Mom was looking for something more vivid as a sign. The pokey pony and my brother's experience were sufficient for me, but to make sure that the T's were crossed, Mom made another connection the next month.

I had gone to an opening of a restaurant in town and upon getting home I checked the caller ID which was part of the kitchen phone. It showed four new calls, two from Montgomery Ward, one from a friend named Barbara and one from a friend named Marie. I then went to my study, where the actual answering machine was, I listened to the messages. There were five messages, but only four caller ID's. The first two were from Montgomery Ward informing me that the ice machine was available and ready to be installed. The third was from my friend Marie, the next was my Mom's voice calling my name, and the last message was from my friend Barbara. There was Mom's voice inserted between the third and fifth message, but only four phone numbers on the caller ID. The clinchers is that the answering machine was digital so it wasn't an old cassette tape that might have had a residual message on it and the answering machine had not been set up prior to my Mom's passing. I played the message for several people who all recognized my Mom's voice.

And finally, later that year, I went visit an individual who does the whole John Edwards thing and is MaBell to the other side. That morning, I opened the refrigerator to get something to eat and was lost my appetite when I saw the pecan pie someone had given me the day before. I thought to my self that I had to give it away to someone who would eat it, feed it to the gulls or freeze it because it was just too sweet and too many calories. This was my first meeting with this woman so she was orienting me and explaining what to expect, when she said, "this is highly unusual, but I think your mother is here, she says don't worry about the calories, eat the pie, enjoy yourself". That's Mom, always worried about me not eating enough.

Got to love her.
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The ADC that I have with my Father didn't occur when I was awake so I don't know if it is as valid, or just wish fulfillment. My dad had a stroke on a Friday afternoon and my mom did not call me because I lived 800 miles away and she didn't want to worry me. The next day at the hospital, he was better and the doctors said that he would spend the weekend for observation, be discharged on Monday and see a neurologist the following Tuesday. I was due to come home in two weeks to attend a friend's wedding so she thought that would be soon enough and by then they would know what they were dealing with. Sunday night, I dreamed that I was home for the wedding and my dad was sitting in his chair by the window in my their bedroom and I was sitting against the foot of the bed talking with him. He was telling me that he understood why I was in the work that I did (drug rehab) and how proud he was of me. He was very supportive. My dad and I never had conversations like that. I woke up totally resolved that instead of coming home and hanging out with my friends, I would spend time with my parents at home. Keep in mind, I still didn't know that my dad had been ill that weekend. Monday morning, my dad had an aortic aneurysm and never woke up. I believe he did stop by to see me in my sleep.

I have two other dream visits that I can validate. One was a friend during our senior year of college. In the dream it's around 4:00am and someone is knocking on the door. I get up and it is a friend, Chris. He comes in and says he is hungry. Not an uncommon event. I opened the refrigerator and it was so bright and white and empty except for a bowl of hard boiled eggs. I told him to eat what he wanted and lock up when he left and I went back to bed. In the morning, around 7:30, his room mate, Charley, really did knock on the door. He had come by to tell me that Chris had committed suicide during the night.

Another time, I dreamed that I was taking care of an older man, well older for me at the time because I was in my early thirties and the man in the dream had to be in his seventy's. In the dream, the man was in bed and I crawled into bed with him and snuggled up with him. I draped his arm around my shoulders and went to sleep. I woke up realizing that it was Jackie Gleason and was flabbergasted that I would dream of Jackie Gleason at all let alone one in which I got into bed with him. I often told my dreams to my boss who was always very amused by them. As I was leaving her office, one of our volunteers was sitting at a desk looking really glum and I commented on how down he looked. He said that his favorite actor had died in the night. I asked who it was and he said Jackie Gleason. There is no way I heard it on the news or read it in the paper. It was a total shocker. I got to say, when I dream of people now, I call the next day to see that they are okay.