A Piece Of My Past, Chapter #4 of 4

About two days after her death.....I am trying to prepare for the funeral. How does one prepare in the face of such a tempest in one's life? I honestly don't remember.

I do remember driving to get my hair cut. I had shoulder blade length hair, and had somehow decided in my grief I wanted it gone. I was driving my little Toyota to the place where the deed was to be done.

Powerful grief can be like powerful drink, and I should not have been on the road that day. I remember driving along, and suddenly being overwhelmed by wave upon wave of utter, anguishing sorrow. My head dropped, I could not focus, and the tears came yet again.

Suddenly, a voice shouted out in the car. It said to me "Look out, dear!" I lifted my head and saw that I was on the shoulder and headed for a fence. I corrected my course, and made the journey without further incident.

The odd thing was that this voice was my own. Even odder was that I have never once in my entire life referred to myself as "dear", either before or after that moment, save that one time. I also had no clue that I was in danger of crashing.

Believe what you will, but I believe I was visited that day. Some have theorized when a departed soul visits a living loved one, it can actually cause the living person to feel fresh grief, hence my loss of ability to focus. And I believe my visitor realized what was happening and saved me the only way she could, by speaking through me.

Flash forward a few months. It is an early spring day, and it is starting to warm a little, the sun is shining and the promise of life is abundant. I am at the mausoleum though, and all I can see is death.

She is there, what little remains of her. I had walked through the door, noting it was propped open to let in the spring air, and made my way to her urn. After a little prayer I felt the now horribly familiar claws of grief take hold of me yet again. I sat on a nearby couch, collapsed really, and sobbed.

Now it's important to know that Gretchen had a love of small, cute furry animals. She wanted to be a veterinarian at some point, but had been stymied by the medications that slowed her mind.

As I sat on this couch, a small grey squirrel entered through the open door, ran across probably 20 yards of carpet, and hopped up onto the couch on the opposite arm. It sat there and looked at me with inscrutable eyes for maybe 10 seconds, then hopped back off the couch and scampered back outside.

I've dreamed of her many times since, and I believe we are visited in our dreams, but to me these were the last two messages in the waking realm from a departed soul.