Mom’s Post Death Visitations

After Mom’s funeral, we picked up the pieces of our lives and returned to our regular routines. Dad went to Florida to visit my brother’s family. Sis and Pete returned to San Antonio. I traveled from Indianapolis to Des Moines, Iowa on a business trip.

I rented a car and drove the entire distance from Indianapolis to Des Moines, because a blizzard that started in the middle of Mom’s funeral had blanketed the entire region with wind-driven snow. All of the flights throughout the Midwest had been canceled. I knew that Mom wanted the day of her funeral to be memorable, but this was ridiculous. It was the first and only major snowstorm that Indianapolis had that year.

One morning a week later, in mid-January, I was getting ready for work and suddenly felt ill. I felt like I had the flu. I was nauseous and felt feverish. I looked in the mirror, but didn’t notice anything unusual about my face. I looked fine. I didn’t appear flushed or really any different than normal.

Just as suddenly and as though the nausea had never occurred, I felt a strong sense of blissful serenity that I’d never experienced before and have never experienced since. It took me a moment to comprehend what was happening. The feeling of serenity was so profound. Every ache and pain in my body disappeared. I knew it could only be one thing. I looked in the mirror and said “Mom, you’re here with me now, aren’t you?” After a while, my normal aches and pains returned and I went to work.

I was reluctant to speak with anyone about what I experienced, but felt comfortable talking to Sis about it. After all that we’d experienced together during Mom’s final six months, I knew she’d understand that I wasn’t hallucinating. She said that it didn’t sound strange at all.

Sis told me Jana had called her the night before and was in tears. She said that “Grandma was with me for three days”, during a very prolonged job interview process. She told me that Jana’s experience sounded very similar to my experience.

Jana was trying to find work in the fashion industry in New York City. She’d moved there from San Antonio to be in the US fashion headquarters. But she wasn’t having much luck. She’d been at it for over 6 months and was living on the money she made from temporary jobs. She was frustrated and demoralized. She was beginning to believe she might have to move back home with Sis and Pete. She couldn’t live in NYC on temporary job pay forever.

Shortly after Mom’s death, Jana’s fortunes reversed. She was called back to interview a second time for a job, with one of the leading fashion companies, that she’d previously been turned down for. She was put through a grueling three day interview process. At the end of the interview process, she told Sis “I felt invincible because Grandma was there with me”. She got the job a week later.

My reaction to Sis’ story about Jana was, “amazing”. After I hung up with Sis, I decided to give Jana a call and ask her about her experience. I wanted to see how similar it was to what I’d experienced. What we shared floored us both.

Jana and I both described our experience – the feeling of sudden nausea followed by the feeling of extreme serenity – exactly the same way. I also asked Jana when she had experienced her visitation. She said it was for the three days prior to my visitation from Mom.

Ironically, Jana and I are probably the two immediate family members most likely to say, “yeah, right” if we were to hear someone tell a story about that kind of experience. We’re both cynical. Neither of us believe tall tales and we look for logical reasons to explain things before jumping to other conclusions. But like my uncle and his dream about Mom and Grandmom sitting at the player piano in Heaven, we were probably given this gift to strengthen our faith and understanding about the Other Side.