Glimpses Beyond the Veil
signs or coincidences?
The morning I got the call to say my mother had died, I stepped out the front door as two geese swooped overhead in coupled symmetry. You know how it is—how we can affix meaning or attach messages to ordinary events. I did that morning in early May 2003.
Because my mother was grateful to know she was dying, the stone that had lodged in my chest when my father died lifted with those geese. My mother had grown pale and gaunt with her longing to join him. The stroke had been a blessing.
While parrots squabbled in the palms, my father had gazed out over calm blue-green water, impatient for the thread that held him to break.
So as I stood with the warm May sun on my face watching them arc overhead, I saw my parents, feathered and free, returning from the south. Twenty years before, they’d left this frosty country to live on an island cooled only by Tradewinds.
It’s likely pure nonsense that I injected those geese with the likes of Betty and Bill.
But later, when we let my mother’s ashes drift into the sea off the Rum Point dock, the exact spot where eighteen months before we’d released my father’s ashes, two small stingrays glided in, circled in that crystalline water, and followed the spray of roses and hibiscus fanning out in the current. Amazing Grace stuttered in our throats as two bright blue and pink parrot fish swooped by the dock and went out to sea.
Maybe we’re all wrong about meaning. Those were ordinary geese coming back to Canada to breed and raise a family. And stingrays are attracted to the colour red. Or maybe they were drawn to three adult orphans singing, and grace will lead me home.
Life is a mystery, the veil between worlds fragile. The flower blooming out of season. The sound of a dog’s nails on the parquet. A blue stone—her favourite colour—on a path she never walked. Who is to say these are not signs offered to us by those we love?
My son has always been able to glimpse the other side of the curtain. When he was three or four, he began a conversation while driving with his father: “When I was an angel…” “You were an angel?” “Of course. You were too. Don’t you remember?”
Before we found him, he knew that our dog, Ting, had been hit. A week before his uncle died, he bolted upright in bed and cried, “I don’t want Uncle Webster to die. He’s my favourite uncle.”
Before that, though, when he was about five or six, he sat on my lap and began to play with my hair, an odd look in his eyes. “When I first came out of your tummy,” he said. “Were you in a wheelchair?” It had been a difficult birth and near the end, I’d been given an epidural. He’d had to be revived, having aspirated on his meconium, and was taken away to be “cleaned up.”
When I was wheeled in, Ben was lying on his back in an isolette. Our eyes met. His were calm and deep. I can see them yet, conveying to me that everything was absolutely fine.
“Yes,” I said, more than a little shocked. “I was in a wheelchair.” Again, he tugged at the ends of my hair, his expression somewhat glazed. “Tell me more about when I came out of your tummy.” I told him there were clear domes over the babies and he interrupted me. “Oh yes, I remember.” I asked if he’d seen something like that on television and he said, “No. I remember watching those doctors pushing those babies around.” I was speechless. Each time I’d come into the NICU, he was in a different spot. Those units constantly shifted. As he focussed on the ends of my hair, I said, “My hair was quite a bit longer then.” His eyes instantly cleared. “Oh yes, I remember.” Now he had a complete picture of his world when he was an hour old.
When Ben was about ten, he told me that when I died I was to give him a sign. You can sit on my bed. Just don’t come back in a mirror—that would be too scary.
I assured him that I would not appear in a mirror.
I could inhabit a lonesome small-mouth bass in our favourite fishing spot and snap onto a familiar hook. Just before he releases me, I’ll give him a wink or swat him with my tail.
Or perhaps I’ll jump up from the lake and hover for a few extra seconds so he will know I’m with him still.
Signs. Always signs. 💜
Beautiful piece. Thank you