As with most young children, when I was a young girl I wondered about death and what happens after the moment you leave your body.  My own kids have gone through this curiosity but it passed pretty quickly once we talked about it.  But for me, this “curiosity” has lingered and in some moments has become much more than a mere curiosity.  Instead, it borders on an obsession.  Obsess about something?  Who?  Me?  What a surprise . . . .

Generally speaking, I am not a very religious person.  My family didn’t go to Sunday services and never really “belonged” to a church.  Maybe, in itself, that’s not so unusual.  The more incredulous thing to me now is that my family never discussed death – or much of anything actually.  My parents never ventured into that one aspect of death that we are all so naturally “dying” to know – what happens next.  We were told, of course, that death is a certainty, but not how likely, or unlikely, it might be that some part of us sticks around.  We were left to our own imagination to ponder this.

I have been lucky and have not had to experience death in my very small immediate family until I was an adult. I had my grandparents until their 90’s and my parents until their 80’s. Even aunts and uncles have some pretty serious longevity. Lucky, I know.  But not having to face death personally and really having very little faith, has left me feeling very unsettled. And frightened. I’ve gone from one end of the “belief” spectrum to the other. Thinking that certainly there must be more than this time we have on earth. Not the traditional heaven and hell but some other dimension we might move into. On the other hand, as my step-father’s mother would say: “Nah, we’re just squashed like bugs on the ground and that’s that.”  For me, the lack of scientific evidence of an “afterlife” usually wins out. So long Mr. Ant – it’s been nice knowing you.

Still, I can’t and probably never will be able to let it go. Especially lately. These past few years after losing my parents I have spent considerable time “looking” for them. I’ve exhausted my mind by trying to find some sign that they are still here. Somewhere. Or maybe not here but somehow still around me. I’ve waited for dreams to come, voices to be heard, photos of them to show up without notice, pictures to fall off the walls unexpectedly. You name it. I’ve looked for it. But nothing ever happens. Well, that is not entirely true. Some things have occurred that I have spun into some version of my parents trying to connect with me. Mostly, though with my Dad.

There have been a few times when I have “felt” my Dad near me.  Immediately after his death, I had some things happen that connected me to him. Things that were definitely out of the ordinary. For example, my Dad always called me Rose. One morning as I turned on the car, Bruce Springsteen was on the radio singing “Rosalita”. A very best friend of mine, Sandy, will appreciate this the most. We called that song Rosalita for special ‘best friend’ reasons – it’s really “Rosalita Come out tonight”.  Whatever the real name, this song represented a very special time of life for me.  And I have always associated it with my Dad because he called me Rose.  It is NEVER on the radio anymore. NEVER. Except for that day and a few days within that same time period.  I remember almost having to pull over when it came on.  It was so unusual.  Needless to say, I haven’t heard it since and I likely won’t hear it again. At least not on the radio. . . . . . Dad.

Then the summer after my Dad’s death, my brother and I took our kids to Truro for our annual week’s vacation. The first day we were sitting on the patio in the backyard, which had a hill of grass and weeds rising above it. It was overgrown and left to be wild. But in the middle, there were 2 lonely roses.  Just two.  No others in the whole field.  Again. . . . Dad.

These are just two, probably silly, examples of me trying to connect peculiar things to my Dad. I know, I know. Big deal. Most normal people would say that this is coincidence. Bruce Springsteen will always be on the radio. And beach roses grow wild all over the New England coast. They are probably right. But still . . . .

It’s puzzling to me that it is my Dad who I think about and miss most often. I loved him very much but we really weren’t that close until later in his life. He was a “provider dad” when we were young. He worked a lot and when home usually did house things like mowing the lawn, working a vegetable garden, building model ships, watching the Green Bay Packers. He wasn’t a hands-on dad like so many are today. And he was a strict, measured man. We knew he loved us but honestly, we were mostly scared of him. Not for any threatening reason but in the way that kids are scared to cross the path of the parent who is the primary disciplinarian. So, it sometimes astounds me to see how much I think about him.  How much I look for him.

It is a different story with my Mom.  She and I were always very close. For better or for worse, she was my best friend for most of my life. Always there. Always in touch. Always ready to pick up the shattered pieces of my life when I needed her.

So, I often wonder why I don’t think about her, miss her or look for her as much as I do with my Dad.  It just doesn’t make sense.

Then, this past weekend came and I can say that I experienced some very strange things. I am no fool and can be quite the skeptic but these things threw me. I am sure most anyone can mask these things as coincidence but they have somehow started a shift in me.

My Mom had dementia, maybe Alzheimer’s maybe not – it doesn’t really matter.  Either way, it is an unforgiving, horrible disease – for her and for us. She spent the last 5 or so years of her life in an assisted living facility and finally a nursing home.  The first assisted living facility was a small new one about 20 minutes from where I live.  They were wonderful people.  Because it was just revving up they took her in – as they did with everyone – as their own.  She, of course, being my mother, hated it most of the time.  But she did love the owners – a young military man, his fiance, and their golden retriever.  I believe they loved her despite the anger that the disease sometimes brought out in her.

My Mom could find humor in anything and this worked to establish relationships even at this difficult time in her life.  She always said that if you didn’t laugh you’d be crying most of the time so why not find humor when you can.  And she was pretty good at that right up until the end.  I think it made the disease easier for her and those around her and am thankful for that.

In any event, because there were only a few residents at the start they made it a priority to get to know them and their families.  Since my children and I were really the only ones around for my Mom they took us in as well.  When the time came for her to move to a nursing home they made it an easy and somewhat seamless transition.  As normal as it can be, that is.  I have not thought about that facility or those people much since she’s been gone.  It has been easier for me to retreat to the past when she was still fully my Mom.  And then . . . .

Yesterday I was sitting at home looking out a window and, out of the blue, my Mom popped into my head.  I started missing her and wondering where she was.  Then I went down the rabbit hole and couldn’t stop thinking about her life, her death, her “momness”.  This naturally precipitated my ever-present wonder about where we go from here – if anywhere.  It just seems so impossible that this life is the end of the line.  But then again, where else would we be?  These thoughts lingered with me all day.

That evening I was in a restaurant enjoying a cocktail when a man came around to our end of the bar and asked if anyone had the seats next to us.  He was unmistakenly familiar to me.  It took me a minute and then I remembered.  He was the young military man who owned that first independent living facility.  This was shocking to me.  I have NEVER seen him locally before.  In fact, I had never seen him anywhere but at the facility.

I froze for a few minutes wondering “WTF” – what are they doing HERE?  Ultimately, I put my big girl pants on and asked him if he was who I thought he was and the answer was yes.  He remembered my Mom but hadn’t known about her death.  We talked for just a minute but it gave me a feeling that this interaction was no coincidence.  We left first and as we did he leaned over and said how sorry he was to hear about “Barb”.  Only those who really knew her called her that so I knew he had remembered her.

I wouldn’t say that this area of my world is “small”.  It’s certainly no NYC but it is a mid-sized City where you could go for days without seeing your neighbors. So it was particularly strange to suddenly see this man,  Especially, following on the heels of my atypical thoughts about my Mom earlier that day.  And then . . . .

That night I had a dream about her.  As I said before, I have never dreamed about my parents and it has always upset me. Another silly wish for confirmation that they are still here. Obviously, I imagine that they must come to us in dreams. I am just unlucky and am missing that hormone or just don’t remember them.  But this time I did.  In this dream, we were shopping. Of course we were, what else?  And I was looking at owl earrings.  My Mom was obsessed with owls – she had them everywhere in every form.  Stuffed animals, jewelry, photos, you name it.  In the dream, my Mom was across the store checking out and watching me. When I looked up she smiled and nodded.  I woke up crying and feeling like she must have been here. . . .

Now for the finale.  Every night while putting us to bed my Mom would take the string of her nightgown and tickle our noses saying that this was our medicine for a safe and good night’s sleep.  It was silly but made us laugh and I have always remembered it.  The other night someone did that to me.  What?  No one but Mom has ever done anything remotely like – or as silly as – this before.  I had to snap my head around and say “why in the world would you do that”.  The answer was “I don’t know.”  And that was that. . . . .Mom.

These things have haunted me every minute since they occurred.  I feel like my world has shifted in some very subtle way.  Maybe it’s coincidence, maybe it’s me reaching for the impossible, maybe it’s the moon in retrograde.  Or maybe it’s Mom.  Today I’m choosing Mom.