Was it a hallucination or a message?
Many years ago, my father told me this sad story.
It was a story of a man who had enjoyed walking with his wife along a cliff path. This path took them past a pretty cottage. In the summer, the window shutters were open, and there were always roses in full bloom around the windows and doors. They both agreed they would like to live in that cottage one day.
However, on this particular day, the man was walking the path without his wife. But he was not alone. He was pushing a pram, carrying a seven-month-old baby. Two children walked alongside the pram, a girl of thirteen and a boy of eleven. The man was in despair. His wife, the mother of the three children, had died suddenly, four days earlier.
As the sad group walked along the path past the cottage he and his wife had dreamed of living in, he saw it in all its glory. Window shutters open and roses in all of their summer bloom. He had only walked on a few yards when he suddenly stopped. It wasn’t a warm summer’s day; it was a miserable cold December day. He turned and looked back at the cottage. It was closed up. No open shutters and no roses in bloom.
The man who told me that story was my father. He was the man pushing the pram. The two children at his side were my brother and sister. I was the baby in the pram.
My father always believed it was his imagination playing tricks with.
I would like to think it was my mum reminding him of happier times.
What do think?
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