Signs from beyond

In a different thread I asked MGB to send us butterflies in winter if something tragic happened. Do any of you believe in signs and signals from loved ones? Any experiences? I've had two, the second being the oddest, but most hard to explain.

The first is straight forward. My mother was very close to my eldest son. Mom and Dad were in poor health and lived in Vegas. We built a house here in the mid-west large enough to accommodate my family and it had in-laws quarters for them. Mom liked to garden and helped me do some of the landscaping on one of her visits. Six months after the home was completed and before they moved in permanently, my mother died unexpectedly during a routine surgery.

Fast forward a few years to my eldest leaving for college. I was bereft. My youngest son is handicapped and I had leaned a lot on my eldest and it made us close and tight. The day we were packing his car I was standing in the front yard crying and I looked down at part of the garden. I realized that one of my day lilies that my Mom had planted was in complete bloom...in August. It is a spring bloomer. I got my son and we stood in front of the flower and talked to Grandmother. It comforted me greatly.

The second has to do with Dad. Hubby and my youngest son, Robert, were Christmas shopping. Hubby ran a stop sign and they got t-boned, right in the passenger door side where Robert sitting. Robert did not even cry, wasn't hurt, was just mad cause he had to wait a little for his dinner. Due to the damage to the truck we were surprised and very thankful Robert wasn't injured.

The next day I got a bill at my address in the Midwest. The bill was addressed to my father but at my address. My Dad had been dead for 3years.

The bill was from Protection One Security Systems. I have never had any type of security system for my home. The bill covered the current month of security services, the address listed for location of service was for the home they owned in Las Vegas. The one we sold three years before! So I called the company with a chip on my shoulder. It was right before Christams and I was having to fight about a bill for my dead Dad. I called the number on the bill and gave them the account number. No such account number. Then I give them the invoice number...they can't find it. No such invoice. They can find no record of the bill I'm holding in my hand. Now I'm being put on hold and VERY upset.

And then it dawned on me. Pop was a man of grand gestures. He was the one that no matter how many people were at the table at the restaurant, he would loudly and gregariously insist on paying the bill, AND leaving a healthy tip. He was generous to charities, but never anonymously...he liked having the plaque with his name on it. He liked recognition.

You may think I'm silly, sacra religious or even crazy, but what I LIKE to think happened soothes and comforts me. I think my Dad was protecting Robert the day of the accident and kept him from getting hurt, to the extent that Robert didn't even cry, even though with his autism he hates loud noises and being startled. Dad protected his grandson but Dad wasn't finished. He needed me to know he did it.

I had the letter framed and put it out every Christams. Then we moved and I don't know what happened to it. I keep hoping it will show up in a random box that never got unpacked. I loved explaining to people why I have a framed copy of an unpaid bill. It represents the day Roberts Guardian Angel saved him from injury.

Has anyone else had something like that happen? I tell hubby I will send him signals. I've always told him to remarry if I pass first. I don't want him to be lonely. If I like her I'll send rainbows...if he picks a bar room bimbo who is mean to my boys it will be chains rattling
at night

_________________
Charlotte


Energizer Bunny arrested, charged with battery.

Hi Charlotte
Thanks for sharing those stories. Sometimes we talk about these things and people think we are weird or blowing them out of proportion because they are stranger than fiction. But it is real life.

I have little things whereby I smell cigarette smoke in my car and it’s a dark rainy night and the window is rolled up. My deceased younger brother used to smoke. I snapped to attention and immediately after this pedestrian, dressed all in black, steps out. Had I not been hyper alert, I’m sure I would have hit him, or been surprised and swerved into something.

We were close, Darren and I, and he died at age 25 (I was 27). I’ve always gained comfort in talking to him. I knew something terrible happened on the night he died. As he lay dying in the hospital and they were trying to find next of kin, I woke up 800km away at 4am and started crying and didn’t know why as such sadness was overwhelming me. Days later when my other brothers packed his belongings, on the top of the boxes was this framed picture that I told him 6 months earlier ‘don’t ever get rid of this picture, I love it and I want it’ and there it was. None of the packers remember putting it there and it was the only possession I took of his.

The biggest incident that I will never forget was when my son was 4 years old (4 years after Darren’s passing). He knew about Uncle Darren and there was a picture of him way high on the bookshelf. We never spoke of Darren as time had passed away and my son wouldn’t understand. My son and I were outside on the ground and were picking seeds out of his sweater. My son said all of a sudden. “Oh, hi Darren.” I sat in silence and said “what?” My son said, “Darren’s here” and continued to pick seeds out of his sweater.

When my eldest was just a tot...not old enough to talk, he was sitting in his high chair in the dining room. Hubby and I were in the Living Room watching him. He was looking into the dark kitchen and would start laughing and giggling. Then he would stop and keep looking in anticipation, and sure enough he'd start laughing and giggling again. It went on for several minutes.

Hubbys father had died when I was six months pregnant with our eldest. Hubby is convinced his dad was in the kitchen playing peek-a-boo with his grandson.

Another incident that occurred that makes me believe in an afterlife. My grandmother died of pancreatic cancer in 1965. My mother was an RN so we moved in with Grandma so that she could die at home (this was long before the days of hospice). Grandma had been in a coma for several days and the family knew the end was near so they had gathered in her room. Grandma opened her eyes and calmly said "Harold". She closed her eyes and died.

Harold was the name of my grandfather who had died when my mother was 7, in 1939.

Because of that story I have never feared death. My Dad had been clinically dead once for several minutes with respiratory heart failure. After they brought him back and he was concious and coherent I asked him if there were bright lights and tunnels. He said no, but it was the most peaceful relaxing feeling he had ever had and he was disappointed when they "woke' him.

I have many stories of this type.
One above all.
In 2004 I lost my best friend. She had been ill for 3 years. A gut cancer killed her at the age of 42.
The last day I saw her was Xmas Eve. She was "fine". She could stand, eat, go shopping. On Jan 5th she had a kidney crisis and she was urgently taken to the ER. I didn't know she was in the ER.
On Jan 6th, at 2 pm, I got a terrible belly ache. 5 minutes of horrible cramps without any other symptom. At 2.20 pm her husband called me in tears to announce me: "20 minutes ago Barbara died". She died exactly while I had that unmotivated stubbing pain.


Another curious thing that I recently found out concerns my husband.
Before I finally met him in 2007, at the age of 38, I had several negative and painful stories and was sure that Mr. Right would never show up.

My husband was born in October 1974. In that same month/year my brother should have been born. Unfortunately he never saw the light because my mother had a miscarriage (due to a gyno mistake.....) when she was 5 month pregnant (she could clearly see that it was a boy).
This was enough to make think that my husband was sent by a Guardian Angel. I have always considered my never-born brother as my Guardian Angel.
Well, last year my MIL told me that she had a miscarriage too due to a blood problem. It happened when she was 4 1/2 month pregnant and - like my mom - she could see that it was a girl. This was enough to surprize me but when I asked when the girl had to be born I really felt sick: her birth should have taken place in June 1969. I WAS BORN ON JUNE 10th 1969

My brother died at 26. We had finished the funeral and two days or so later we held another ceremony at a family farm where us kids spent many summers and weekends exploring. We had gathered to spread a large portion of his ashes.

We had a beautiful gathering of mostly family and a few close friends. We determined we wanted to spread his ashes beside the lake.

We did our thing, had a beautiful native hymn sung by some young cousins accompanied by a lone acoustic guitar. It was all eerie and magical.

My sister had her best friend there with her, and she had her very young son there with her. He was at the age where he could only make simple phrases, and didn't really talk much sense.

Part way through, he was tugging at his mom saying "he's over there mom, ______ is over there" as he pointed in to the middle of the lake. Then he said "he's dead" a term he did not yet know. Shortly after he then said "he's gone now mom".

Pretty cool. He didn't know my brother and he certainly would have no reason to be able to name him as he was at an age where he could not have understood why we were there.