Lights in the Night

My sister Toni who was very fond of Drew and misses him a lot, came with her friend Beth to visit me for five days. I put them both in downstairs bedrooms separated by a smaller room I call "The Children's Room". 

I call it that because it's the room that houses all their baby and  childhood photographs, pictures they've drawn over the years,  trophies that remind them of long forgotten triumphs on the playing fields and academic stages of their lives and a closet full of old clothes and a few toys I can't part with yet. Everything here is a reminder of the time these children were on loan to us. A time that in the scheme of things was much too short. 
Especially in Drew's case.

But he's not far away, it seems. On the first morning of my sister's stay, she arrived at the top of the stairs in her sweats looking for a cup of coffee. Her hair was askew (very) her face was pink and she was using her hands a lot as she spoke. 

"Last night, I said goodnight to Beth, walked through the Children's Room, turned off the lamp in there, went into my room and got into bed." She flung her hair back from her face. "I read for a while and was just about to turn my lamp off and go to sleep when I looked over tho the half open door of the kids room - and the light was on." 

"You made a mistake?" I asked. Although I was sure that she hadn't.

"No. I distinctly remember turning the light off because I had to hunt for the switch. I turned it off! Sister, My Sister. Off!"

"Okay." Said I.

"So I went back in and turned it off again. and went back to bed."


I waited.

"Half an hour later when I was almost asleep, I cracked my eyes open and there's Beth's standing beside my bed saying she thought I'd turned the light off in the Children's Room... I nodded and Beth said, "Well it's back on again!"  It's Drew, isn't it?" Toni said.


Of course it's Drew. "He came to play," I smiled.


It happened the following night too. But this time Toni decided to visit. "So I sat on the the bed in there and chatted, I asked how he was, told him how I was - said I liked being here - you know..."
She stopped for a moment. "And then I told him how glad I was he came."

***

 
 The same thing happens to the lights in the hotel in Colorado where Drew used to work.  And why wouldn't they? He continues to be the light in our lives he always was on earth.
 

If you're about my age, you've discovered the true value of friends.
The older I get the more valuable they get. Perhaps it's because at some point we all become each others eyes, noses and are able to borrow brains when ours crash.
My brain was headed for the cliff recently when I discovered that having found my way around simple emailing and figured out a blog site (with the help of friends) and even worked my way through a passable website, (friends again) I got on to A Shaft of Light -my blog- one morning, only to find that overnight everything had gone to hell!
Blogger was on its high horse saying it no longer 'supported' my browser. Its very hurtful to hear, "You are not my friend anymore"!!  Two days after this shocking revelation, brain spinning out of control, with no friends at "Blogger" I discovered, with the help of a friend what a "Browser " is. Good start. Step 1. Steps 2, 3, and 4 nearly sent me to a "home for the bewildered". Bewildered wasn't the word, actually! I was a sleepless, anxiety-ridden, blithering mess. Until! Trumpet fanfare - friends came to the rescue. 
They lent me their brains, gave me suggestions, interpreted the language and shone a light down the dark tunnel of computerdom.
And together we rode off into enlightenment singing campfire songs with a brand new best friend browser named Fire fox. What a fox! 
Thank you all for your help - when this brain of mine gets over this latest assault - you may borrow it. You may use it for whatever you think it's good for. It 'supports' you because you and it are friends. And what good are friends if you can't use them?
We're valuable.
 

Life Is Forever

It's Resurrection Day in the Christian tradition. It's a good tradition in my opinion, as it is a day of light, lilies and Life Everlasting. Whatever else I don't like about any organized religion, this is one tradition that has its roots in the fundamentals of a belief in the afterlife. That's something I can believe in and something I can actually attest to. And it's also the theme of my non-fiction book "By Morning's Light" which is a first-hand account of soul survival following the death of my son, Drew.

When I think about the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, when I hear that the women of Galilee took the annointing oils to the tomb on Sunday morning only to find that he wasn't there - the rock that enclosed the tomb had been set aside and it was empty -  I can believe that. And then they tell us that two men, surrounded by dazzling light, appeared saying, "Why do you look for him here? Don't you remember he told you that day in Galilee that on the third day he would rise from the grave? Don't you know - he isn't here, he is alive." Duh!

So the women rushed back to town to tell everyone but of course no one believed them. But I do. Then they tell us that he appeared alongside two men on the road to Emmaus who were talking about the terrible happenings of the week before - but they didn't recognize him - Couldn't believe thier eyes, probably - until he sat down with them, broke bread in the biblical fashion  - and they knew who he was - but then he vanished. He appeared numerous other times according to the bible, and although the townspeople and the apostles knew him to be dead, when he said to them, "Why are you afraid? Can't you see it is I, Jesus. I'm alive!" They remembered what he had told him and believed.

So do I. I too went to the hospital the day after Drew died. I knew he wasn't there - not in the bed I'd left him in. And then five days later - not three - he appeared to me in one of those visions when I was least expecting him. Vibrant, whole, living breathing Drew. And I absolutely knew it was to tell me that he lives.

I saw my mother in a dream months after she died, standing in front of me - living and breathing - and I remember gasping in that dream and saying "They told me you were dead!" And she replied, "Ginny - the dead can't speak." And she was gone.

So yes, I believe that Jesus died and came back to show his family and friends that he was alive. Whatever else they've distorted and messed with in the Holy Books of the world religions - this, I know, is true.

I hope you have a lovely spring day. Enjoy the flowers, the kids, the bunnies (if anyone was so ill-advised as to give you a matched pair watch out...) and especially the chocolate! Goes well with a good cabernet or with anything, actually. Chocolate rules.
Happy Easter.  

Update

I'm finally getting the hang of setting up the website. We're not there yet but if I can keep my wits together for another day I may have it up and running. No garrantees though because this business is full of pot holes.

Here's the deal. Just when I thought I had everything under control last week, Headings looking good, photos fine, blurb on the book okay, cover page gorgeous, also contact info and blog links etc... I sent up a cheer and a "thank you" to whoever may be listening and went to bed. Happy as a clam was I. Thrilled with my expertise! High Fiving the cat and planning to teach all my "illiterate" friends how to set up websites of their own.

That was then ...  When I woke up the next morning, I tripped lightly, all aglow, into my study and sat down to launch the site. Tap, tap, type in all my ID info and sit there still glowing expectantly, waiting for the machine to wake up. It did. And the fist message it sent back was, "Who are you?" What?

A week later  after numerous one-way conversations with the website I was working with and getting NOWHERE mainly because none of them appeared to be able to access the original info I'd set up my site with. (Name, URL, domain name etc...) and getting thoroughly P.O'd with their lack of help, illiteracy etc... it dawned on me that I might be the screw-up. Turned out I was. So after I tried every combo of my ID I could think of, I finally hit on the right one. And the machine said "Hello Ginny Brock!" How nice to see you too - you wing nut piece of ... never mind.

At the moment, an uneasy detente exists between me and my Dell. And I just need it to last for a little while longer.Then I'm Done!

In the meantime, I've been writing a couple of fore-runner articles for By Morning's Light. One of them will appear in Llewellyn's Journal shortly before publication - I believe.

The roses, by the way are still alive. One of them is beginning to turn brown nearly two months after I got them, and has lost two petals this week. The others are still pink. And that warms my heart.

See you soon.