Signs

Staunch as she was a disbeliever of God and a life hereafter, astute so she was a lawyer hedging her bets. There was enough awe in her - or should I say apprehension - of what lay beyond demise, for her to engage in speculation, keeping her options open enough to allow  the unexpected to happen. She was not afraid of death so much, knowing in her mind that 'passing on' would amount to the be all and end all. It was more the process of dying and how scary it would be. In her heart she cherished the idea of - beyond the chasm - seeing her dad again, and mine, too. She agreed to giving off a sign to us mortals who stayed behind, to tell us that she had safely arrived on yonder side. A lawyer myself, I made her promise she would not scare the wits out of me; a clap of thunder would be a tad over the top, I intimated as a point of reference. She got it.

Lara went about it in a sophisticated manner, multiple in form and diverse in location. "Doing the rounds", as my family in California phrased it. Had we expected anything less of her? Of course, to a cynic, all manifestations of the so called transcendental, would need to be submitted to Occam's razor, a law of logic which holds that the simpler explanation of any phenomenon is likely to be the true one. Being the romantic that I am - and still wildly in love with my wife, or "SWILWY" - takes me, I grant you, to the opposite end of the scale. Certainly in my present state of frayed emotions, I would be inclined to engage in connecting the dots without looking at the numbers. Anything that could possibly be interpreted as a manufactured sign from beyond the chasm, would be recorded and acknowledged as such a sign, even welcomed.

With those caveats, what have we got? (And I am talking about a family who collectively believe that when their father died - Howard - he caused a double rainbow to appear in locations as far apart as San Francisco and Hawaii.)

As for my personal experience, I think of the teardrop that appeared in Lara's eye after she had passed. Popular belief has it that the dead don't cry. Yet she did. That one little droplet is of deep consolation to me, whatever the medical odds would be in manifesting itself. I will keep it hors de competition.

The winner sofar is an incident that is incontournable, as the French say, or something that no one could possibly ignore or deny. It concerns a 14-months old baby, my granddaughter Madelief, who in the middle of having her diaper changed, focussed on something or someone behind her mother off to her right. Asked what she was looking at, the baby said "Lara" - the first time she had ever said that word. Both the baby's father and mother got the goose pimples when they realized what had just happened; and so did I being told about it over the phone.

In second place, is Leslie's beehive. I will quote her own rendition of the event:

Some strange events occurred during Lara’s passing. We have a bee hive in our roof, and have had for around 5 years. The day Lara came home from the hospital, the hive split, and the small hive left behind appeared to fail over the next couple weeks, falling silent and declared ‘fin’ on the day before Lara passed. I climbed up on the roof to check it out (see if there was honey for me to harvest) but as a dedicated chicken, I ‘forgot’ to do it. On the day Lara passed, millions of bees emitted from the hive in the roof, MILLIONS. It was like watching that stuff come out of the Dude’s mouth in that Tom Hanks movie: The Green Mile.

In third place would be Christine's turkey. Again I will let Chris tell the story herself:

David and I have a 'game' of sorts that is like "Where's Waldo?" We came  across a peacock in the middle of no where just in the road as pleased as can be with itself. Very strange and we decided, though the showy peacock is male, that it was indeed Lara in all her finery. Charlie called 3 days ago and said that a peacock landed in the back yard of his father's, strutted around and then after a bit just took off. Knowing where they live, it would be just as unusual to see one at Ed and Connie's house. We again, said "ah, there's Lara making the family rounds", wondering where she will turn up next.

In fourth place I would put my own experience during the send-off in the crematorium, where through coincidence or otherwsie, a tear drop and a drop of blood (produced by a thorn on the rose of love) landed on Lara's coffin and rode with her into eternity. It didn't occur to me in the moment (slow as I am), but only later as I rehearsed the whole episode in my mind.

In fifth place is Leslie's story about the bird. Here's what she wrote about it:

Before Lara started the chemo, a bald-headed stellar blue jay started coming by every morning.  Bald, but otherwise large and adorned is a beautiful coat of various blue feathers.  When Lara passed it stopped coming.  I have never seen it since.

And she adds:

Then, of course, there was Lara’s voice in my ear saying “ We’ll always have Paris”...which is a really sort of a funny, amusing, expression for Americans in a certain cultural vernacular, which we share. But we actually did have Paris, and you were there too.  These things. (I remember it well, for it included a dinner at Fouquet's on the corner of Champs Elysees and Georges V.) I don't know how long deceased people stay connected, but we should be prepared to receive more signs as we go along.