Contact From Beyond

I had to attend a memorial service yesterday – when you get older, of course, the ratio of these to weddings is much higher. Following the event, there was an interesting discussion.

A son of the deceased mentioned that an unusual number of “coincidences” had occurred as the family was planning the service. One of them seemed innocuous enough. He mentioned the time when he was trying to write the obituary for his father, using pen and paper. At various places in the writing process, when the words didn’t flow well in his mind, well, neither did the ink in the pen; but when they came, the pen worked fine. He wondered: Was his father trying to help him write the piece, acting as editor from beyond the grave?

A cousin of the son who overheard this discussion allowed as how her late mother used to “visit” her on various occasions. At one point, the departed lady visited her daughter at the time when the daughter had just broken up with a fiancé. According to the daughter, her mother told her that whether or not she ever married, “everything was going to be OK,” which calmed the daughter down considerably (at this writing, she is still single). The mother then told the girl that it was the last time she would be appearing, suggesting that her work was done.

The daughter is a professional woman of some stature in her field. One day, she reluctantly told her aunt – a sister of the deceased woman – about these visits, perhaps expecting to see eyes roll and hear laughter. But the aunt said, “No big deal, she used to appear to me all the time.”

Now, these are not people who, to the best of my knowledge, use controlled substances, and at this reception, I didn’t see them with alcoholic drinks in their hands. All I can tell you is, this kind of thing has NEVER happened to me. I do not have a spiritual or transcendental bone in my body, as much as I’d like to.

Even so, I’m not ready to say the above folks are given to hallucinating, so I’m not going to pass judgment. If anyone wants to talk to me from the great beyond, I’m all ears.