A visitation

Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not there!

This event took place years ago, when my mother lived with me and my husband and son in a two-story house near Seattle. It was a Saturday, which I remember because I wasn’t teaching (I taught voice and other subjects at Cornish College) or singing someplace or other, which I so often was. I was home, and so was my mom, but no one else was there.

I had been having odd impressions of someone being with me when there was no one else in the room, but as you do, I dismissed them without much thought. But this particular morning, was in at the sink in the kitchen downstairs, and I felt my mother come into the room behind me. I spoke to her without turning around. When she didn’t answer, I turned to see why not, and realized she didn’t answer because she wasn’t there. But I knew she had been there—or someone had.

I went upstairs to her bedroom—where she actually was, and had been all along—and told her about this odd experience, and about the other ones I had been having. I should explain that my mother was a skeptic of longstanding, not interested in the paranormal as I had been since childhood, a rationalist of the first order. She was also one of the smartest people I’ve ever known. She said she had been having the same experience I had just had, and it had been going on for several days.

Of course I wanted to know why she hadn’t mentioned it, and she said only that she hadn’t wanted to frighten me. She reminded me that this day, this spring Saturday, was my father’s birthday. I had forgotten. My dad had been gone for several years by then, and now I knew instinctively—as my mother clearly did—that he was visiting us. I believed then, and still do, that he had come to apologize.

He did have things to apologize for, but by that time, any hurt feelings or resentment were long gone and dealt with. I found a quiet spot, sat with a burning candle, and did my best to tell him that, to say I loved him, and that all was well. Neither Mom nor I ever had that particular experience again.

I have to say, it wasn’t in the least scary. None of my ghost/paranormal experiences have been scary, except when one of my dogs stares at a blank spot in a corner and growls! That one can be unnerving. The lesson in this visitation, for me, has been to listen to my intuition. To be aware, and not to dismiss things simply because they’re unfamiliar. Even Shakespeare had something to say about things in heaven and earth that are beyond our understanding.