Is there anybody there?
“voices" from the other side.
Day 6
My Mother was terminally ill.
She told me that when she got to 'The other side", that if there was any way for her to let me know that she was alright, she would find it.
My husband and I had converted our large dining room into a bedsit for her. All her favourite things, photographs, knickknacks etc., were there. Her wardrobe and dressing table set took pride of place.
Around the room, as you walked in, she had photographs of us on our wedding day, she and I in her favourite Mother/Daughter photo. On a windowsill, a portrait photograph of her eldest Granddaughter.
Her dressing table held a photograph of my Dad and another of her and Dad at my elder brothers RAF commissioned officer graduation ball.
Her room was filled with her precious memories, her people, her loves. When she died, her children were with her, in that room.
As a family, we put together her funeral service. We read things to the assembled family and friends that we, as her children and Grandchildren had written about her and for her. We celebrated her life, all of it.
We raffled off her 4ft stuffed toy white tiger that had guarded not only her bed for 15 years, but her last journey. The £476 raised for this £30 stuffed toy supported our local hospice, and it was overall a joyous affair.
Mums life and memories caused both tears and laughter. She would have loved it!
Two weeks later, it was time to start dismantling her room; time to turn it back into our dining room. I noticed that the photographs had moved slightly, the way things on walls and in frames randomly do. I went around the room, straightening them up.
The room started to slowly empty. There was no rush.
It was hard.
It was heartbreaking.
My brother came back to the UK to stay with us for Christmas, and to help with the last clearing of our Mothers things. His youngest daughter came with him.
"Oh look" she cried as she entered the room, "Jane's photograph has slipped in its frame! I will put it right."
"STOP!"
I shrieked the word at my poor niece, and she turned with surprise and alarm.
She is practically shouting at us; probably because I have been so slow to hear what she had been trying to tell me for a month…
It had suddenly hit me and I started to cry. " I am so sorry Mum, I wasn't listening"
My brother was standing just behind me, and later admitted that he was confused, as he knew that Jane’s photograph had been perfectly centered in its frame that morning, when he and I were in the room moving the automatic bed and he, himself, had straightened the photograph of his eldest daughter, Jane.
"Mum said she would find a way to let us know that she was alright, remember?"
They both nodded, my brother paling a little as I spoke. "From left to right, look around the room at her photographs." Every one of them had moved to the right, in the two hours since we had removed the bed and left the room. Jane had moved in her frame to the right, as had the framed photos on the dressing table. The photos on the walls were all leaning to the right.
"Don't you see? She has told us that she is 'alright'. Everything, from left to right in the room has moved to the right...they are “All Right "
She is practically shouting it at us; probably because I have been so slow to hear what she had been trying to tell me for a month!
My brother, a non believer in all things 'hocus pocus' said that the hair on the back of his neck rose, and the three of us stood there in silence for a moment. Simultaneously, without prompting, we all said "Thanks Mamah" which was her matriarchal name within our family.
We put the photos straight, they never moved again, and a week later they were taken down for the last time and boxed, as our Dining room was reclaimed in time for Christmas.
Thanks Mum, for letting me know. For keeping your last promise, and for making your eldest Son, the eternal engineer with a scientific explanation for everything, into at least a partial “believer”.
