When Those Who Have Passed Reach Out

It is not unusual for a friend or loved one who has died to reach out to us. This I know.

In doing a bit of research, published author and one who has had this happen many times is a researcher named Joseph Bernard.  Here is one of his experiences in which he writes about communication with his father.  There were 133 comments on this post alone authored by several bloggers interested in this subject of the deceased communicating with those still living.

This is my experience of a friend communicating with me after her death:

My friend Fran died in 2001.  She and I had talked several times about if one or the other of us died, and that we would let the one still living know that we were thinking of them and praying for the best in their continuing life.  I asked her how I would know if she were checking in with me, if she were the one of us to die first.  She said that she would use the same method of contacting me that one of her (previously deceased) friends used with her.  That signal was to have a picture move or fall off a wall where it hung.

Strangely, Fran and I went on a trip shortly after talking about this phenomenon of communication after death.  Long story, but she became ill on that trip and lived only six weeks after our "girls' weekend" away from our husbands.  She had apparently been living with pancreatic cancer, not yet diagnosed.  Little did I know then that she would be gone from this earth only two months after our trip.

Fran and I painted together on my back porch in the summer days in the late 1990's and into the early years of 2000.  She and I both liked to paint flowers, in the style of Georgia O'Keeffe, or so we liked to think.  In the year 2000, she gave me one of her paintings, framed in a simple and inexpensive document frame with thin glass, a small matted original.  I hung it in our guest bathroom and it was there until only a few years ago.

Within about two months after her death, that painting literally jumped off the wall and fell.  It fell onto the ceramic tile floor of the bathroom, yet the thin glass in the frame did not break. When I picked up the picture from the tile floor, back side up, and turned it over, I immediately saw her signature, "Fran", and knew she was thinking of me.  It did not scare me or make me feel odd, I just knew she was checking in on me, according to our pact with one another.

Then in 2013, one of my large floral pictures which had been framed and positioned on a heavy easel atop our china cabinet literally crashed from the easel to the hardwood floor in the middle of the night.  No vibration, no storm or other action precipitated this occurrence.  The glass shattered across the floor.  When I reflect on that occurrence, I just assume it was Fran again, checking in on me, and reminding me not to forget her and our good times together.  (I never replaced that picture that was atop the china cabinet.)

Maybe she and I will paint again together one day.  I hope so.  Thinking of you, Fran.