Time Enough For Questions

Catherine,

My heart cries for you and with you. My mother died 4 1/2 years ago, and your entry from your blog:

"I’m tired. So tired. This process is so long and so hard and so taxing on the heart and soul (although, I know, I know, so necessary and in some ways so good, because this is his last gift to me, this opportunity to take one last journey with him, and to grow up, to really truly grow up, in the process) and so I am tired."

Summed up so much of the first few years so beautifully.

I wish I could answer your questions for you, but the answers are only yours. I do believe in ghosts, and in our loved ones sending us messages from where they have gone. My mother sent me little feathers and a song when I needed them most. We also talked in a dream, and she told me things that hurt but I needed to know. I also really believe she visited my infant daughter a few months after she died. I understand the desire to be haunted even while you are scared of it, and don't want that type of existence for them. She hasn't communicated with me for a while, I think it was just to ease my transition, now she is enjoying all the time she missed with the two children she lost.

My thoughts are with you and your family at this terrible, exhausting time.

My condolences. I can only imagine the pain and lose you are feeling.

The week after my aunt died my sister saw her in our living room, during one of those night time trips to the kitchen. I 100% believe her, even if she wasn't a ghost per se, I believe that people come back to you sometimes for you. They know you need the peace or closure. I know that when I really am down my uncle hugs me. I swear I can feel it.

I'm not a church going christian, but I believe very much in god. He doesn't get mad at you for hating him for awhile. Think of him as a good friend or a member of your family. Haven't you had a fight with one of them and for awhile you absolutely can't stand them, but under all the bad feelings you still love the person? God gets that, and I hope he can read my mind when I silently say a prayer when I'm in a tough situation or on a bumpy plane ride.

My Grandmother died in 1987, I was 17 and had just graduated high school. The first time I am sure she decided to make a visit, I was living in a new state, 1500 miles away from home, friends and family, I didn't have a dollar to my name and my other grandmother had just passed on in PA. It wasn't the typical seeing her in a dream or hearing her voice, it was someone who looked exactly like her standing in my check out line at my new job. I know she had a hand in it, that was the way Gram worked. The next time, I was in a new position in the store and very newly pregnant with our second son and scared out of my mind about going through the pregnancy and childbirth so far away from my family (and planning on naming him something completely different). This time was even stranger, it was a woman with the very same name as her shopping for a belly dancing costume.

My son was almost 2 when my aunt began to loose her fight to lung cancer. She had enough time to say her good byes before the disease took her will to live and her voice, but I refused to accept it being the eternal optimist that she beat it once, she could beat it again. I didn't count on the fact that she had been seeing her youngest son walking through their home for months (he had died of cancer the year we moved to Colorado. Very quickly, he was diagnosed in August and died before his 40th birthday in October) nor did I count on the fact that she wanted to hold the infant son she lost way before Joe was even thought of. She told her brothers and sisters that she was going to a party where they weren't invited. She said her husband was there, their parents and told them how badly her arms ached to hold Larry (the infant). A 6 am on the day she died, I woke up to a hand brushing the hair out of my face. My husband was working midnights, my oldest son was fast asleep in his bed, and the baby was in a play yard sleeping peacefully right beside me. A minute later the phone rang and my Mom told me she had died. Of course the night that she was so very sick and so close to death that we feared she would go, I heard my Grandfather tell someone "There goes the neighborhood". My parents family knew each other very well before my parents married, and my Pap loved to harass my aunt, anytime he saw her. I just knew that night he was waiting to greet her and give her a hassle (good naturedly) for eternity. It really gave me a sense of peace to know that my aunt was going to be with loved ones.

After we moved home, something happened that tore not only my family apart, but my heart out. Not a death, but a deception that I won't go into here. And I came to a conclusion of something my aunt told me when my Grandfather died was actually true when at the time it was said, I took offense and stopped talking to her for 6 months. I lost 6 months with her over it and still feel a bit of guilt, but when I came to the conclusion that she was telling the truth and the same person who was responsible for the first lie was also responsible for the second deception, I felt my aunt behind me (don't ask, I just KNOW it was her) a even felt her hand on my back for hours afterwards. I feel she was letting me know that I was right, and that it was ok.

I'm not your average Christian. While I believe in Jesus and in God and in a Heaven, I don't believe that a Jesus who would die for humanity would also allow a man like Guandi to go to Hell for the simple crime of not believing the same religion as himself, while all a rapist/murderer needs to do is ask for forgiveness to go to Heaven. I struggle with that part of the Christian belief system. I'm also thankful that for the most part, I don't see or feel my grandparents or my aunt around me, because to me that means they are finally getting that peace they so rightfully deserve and that I don't absolutely need them to be with me.

Yes I believe in ghosts, I have more stories of different things that have happened in my life (and in my children's, my son seemed to be an endless source of amusement for my Grandfather to let us know he was still around)

I also believe in my heart of hearts that our loved ones are around us when we need them. We might not always see the signs, we might not always believe our eyes or ears when it happens, but they are there. Love is an even stronger emotion than anger, the energy that it surrounds us in, never dies. Just like any energy, it just converts to a new level. If you look back through the past five years, I'm willing to bet that you will find at least one thing that happened in your life that was just so your dad. Thats your sign.