Visitors
I never truly look forward to this time of year, as the thought of the cold and messy weather doesn’t make me thrill with excitement. But once we’re in it, I usually appreciate it. Something happens this time of year, I think it’s a time when the spirits find it easier to reveal themselves, and I can feel their presence more readily.
An old friend from way back posted a picture on my facebook home page about a week ago, that really took me back. It was circa 1978 or 1979 — I think the latter — and it was taken from outside an opened window looking in. The shot was of me, when my hair was kind of long, grown out when I got out of the navy (because I could!), and another person whose face I couldn’t quite make out, partially obscured by the window frame.
The caption read, “Pete and Reed when they visited David and Lauren in Texas”. Holy cow, it was me and Reed, my friend who died later that year. He’s been on my mind a lot since then, and for the first time in years and years, I’ve had the sense of his presence around ever since.
Kathy thought she saw someone with long brown hair sitting in one of our platform rockers in the living room one morning last weekend. She was thinking it was a girl, because of the hair, but I actually wondered if it wasn’t Reed, who once had really long hair, halfway down his back. I since have dispelled that notion, since I don’t see why Kathy would see someone she never even knew, except for my descriptions of him.
We had friends over for dinner last night, before a meeting, and they came back after the meeting to continue the lively discussion we were having. The topic turned to spirits, people who were once a part of our lives, and how they often seem to return, and are available when we reach out to their spirits. It was a great, affirming talk, since I have often felt the presence of loved ones who have moved on.
When Dad was dying, he said, several times, that all we had to do was call, and he would be there, even after he’d gone over. He has always been good for his word, in the nearly 22 years that he’s been gone, now. The morning after my tumor disappeared, he showed up in a dream, as clear as if he was right here, standing in my back yard, just casually talking to me, with one question — “Is there anything else I can do for you?”
Stupid me, in the dream, started prattling on about work projects I had going in my basement, this and that, completely missing the point of his question. The damn tumor didn’t just go away on its own, dummy! It had a little help, from beyond.
The day before, after I’d learned that it was no longer there, as I drove up the George Washington Parkway on my way home, I thought of my aunt, Sister Jeannie, Dad’s little sister who died from a brain tumor, at my current age. I’d spent that summer visiting her memorial garden at Georgetown University, just outside the Lombardi Cancer Center, on Friday nights when things were slow at the clubhouse, which they often were that summer.
So, as the thought of her entered my mind, driving up the parkway, I just burst out in tears, bawling like a baby all the way up the parkway, where I could see the Georgetown campus perched on the hill across the Potomac. I immediately got it, then. She’d had a hand in my healing. She and her big brother Jim, my Dad, were complicit in its disappearance. Some may call that crazy thinking — I just call it gratitude.
It’s comforting to know the spirits of those we’ve loved are still around. I don’t even begin to know or understand anything else about the “beyond” — I just believe that, on occasion, they manage to take time out from whatever occupies their energies and time “over there”, to make their presence known, here.
This time of year seems to be a time that they show up more readily, perhaps because, it’s a time that they are needed most. The darkness and cold of winter makes it a harder time to get through, for many, myself included, although there is much about winter that I do love, once I’m in it. I don’t love the idea of it — but, when I’m here, I remember what I do love about it. Visits from favorite spirits is certainly a big part of it.
