Tag spirits

My Mom’s Mother’s Day Visit

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This past Mother’s Day was punctuated by two strange and special incidents, the first of which occurred about an hour after a floral arrangement I had ordered was delivered to my mother’s gravesite in Hawaii. I was in the midst of cleaning my home and getting ready for a trip to Hawaii in order to put my mom’s sister Alice to rest in the same grave with my mother’s cremains. While I was cleaning, I heard something fall to the floor, so I looked in the direction of the noise to find out what had fallen. A high school English composition book which has sat propped up decoratively on one of my bookshelves was on the floor, but the manner in which it had fallen, as well as the trajectory in which it fell off the shelf, was very odd.

I was nowhere near the bookcase from which the book had fallen, so the disruption lacked logical explanation. The book had been my mother’s, a textbook she had used while in high school. She had given it to me when I was a child, thinking that I would enjoy having it, and told me that she thought it was ridiculous that the book had been published 16 years prior to when she used it as a textbook (primarily due to budget constraints from the Great Depression and World War 2). Since the textbook was published the year my mom was born (1932), I always felt that the book was a representation of her, since it was as old as her.

When the book fell, it somehow flew in an arc over a nearby etagere, a movement which defied the laws of physics. In addition, it fell face up, which made no sense from the position it was in when it was on the shelf. I picked up the book, and instantly felt my mom’s presence around me. I thought to myself, wow, my mom is finally here to visit. It was a very special moment, but since I had more cleaning to do, I put the book back on the shelf and continued to clean.

About an hour after the book incident, I went up to my bedroom to clean it. When I walked into the room, I saw that the ihai or spirit tablet from my mom’s funeral was turned sharply to the left so that the front of the tablet was facing the window. None of my cats had been in my room the entire time I was cleaning, so I absolutely knew that my mom was once again communicating with me. I was stunned, since my mother’s spirit hadn’t paid me a visit since her death in June of 2023.

I’d love to hear the stories of others who might have experienced similar visits from departed family members!

The White Dove

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My mother’s family believes very strongly that departed spirits return to the physical world in winged form. This belief was handed down to me, and is so deeply ingrained that I am always keenly aware of the presence of birds and insects I encounter when a loved one has recently passed away.

When my favorite aunt passed away last December, I didn’t feel her energy around me at all. This was in stark contrast to when my dear friend Rob Willhite passed away in April of 2014. Right after Rob died, he hovered around my meditation table and my bed, and left coins on my bed, bathroom counter, desk chair, and car seat. His energy was heavy, palpable.

I began to accept the possibility that I wasn’t as spiritually connected with my aunt as I had always thought. I traveled to Oahu the third week of January and spent the days leading up to my aunty’s funeral getting reacquainted with the island. I still felt no connection with my aunt’s spirit.

The day of the funeral arrived with a vengeance, spewing rain and strong winds which were the exact opposite of the balmy, sunny days which led up to it. The funeral service was odd, and seeing my aunt’s embalmed corpse was alarming to me. It was definitely an empty vessel.

For the first time ever, I served as a pallbearer. As we carried the casket out to the hearse, the rain began to fall again. By the time the funeral procession had arrived at the cemetery, the rain was steady, and the winds were so fierce that it threw a few of the folding chairs at the site into the air.

During the burial ceremony, the priest stood in front of the casket, with his back to the interment site which awaited my aunt’s body. While he spoke, the winds whipped furiously, pushing the rain into us and rendering the protection of the tent we were sitting under completely useless. One particularly assertive gust of wind hit, and I looked up despite risking getting a face full of rain. As soon as I glanced up, a single white dove flew up from the exact position where my aunt’s final resting place would be, made a sweeping arc behind the priest, and flew up into the sky. That was the sign I was looking for. Aunty was there.

The next evening I returned to Los Angeles, and because I was battling a wicked case of bronchitis, I chose to sleep on the sofa downstairs so that I wouldn’t wake anyone upstairs. By some miracle I actually got a decent night’s sleep that night. When I woke up the next morning, I put my left foot down onto the floor, and noticed a single white feather right next to my foot. Another sign.

That feather is now in a pouch with a mala my friend Rob gave me.