Charlotte and the Red Balloon

My cousin has a daughter named Charlotte, and she is the cutest thing ever. I know I probably describe all children as "the cutest thing ever," but she is really, really cute. My mom had a thing for her. I think Charlotte reminded my mom of me when I was a little kid, because we both had that wispy, barely-there blond hair, blue eyes, and a touch of sass. Charlotte is now about 6, she was born the year I was married (I remember this because she cried during the ceremony). When my mom died, I remember my Aunt Nancy telling me stories about the way she described death to Charlotte and her brother, Brooks. My Aunt Nancy is their grandmother, hence, my mother's sister and my aunt.

One afternoon not long after my mom died, my Aunt Nancy and Charlotte were walking outside somewhere and Charlotte was holding a red balloon. Charlotte spontaneously decided to release the balloon and "send it" to my mother as a message that she loved her. When my Aunt retold the story to me, I was really touched that a tiny child could care that much about someone she only saw a few times a year.

Last year, when I moved to the UK with my husband, I was walking through the market square in town and feeling especially lost without my mother. I stopped walking in midstream and looked up at the sky. I often find myself doing this, and then immediately questioning what exactly I was looking for in the sky, answers? A sign? My mom, waving down at me? Sometimes I make myself feel like a certified crazy person. As I looked up, I saw a red balloon float over the roof of a building. I immediately remembered Charlotte and her red balloon, and wondered if it might be a sign. I felt like my mom was with me that day.

Are these things signs of any kind, or do people tuck away memories of mundane things so that later their memory can be jogged into creating a false sense of security? Did I tell myself that the next time I saw a red balloon that it would be a sign from my mother, and then two years later remember that, or would a bird that flew over the roof of that building have made me feel the same way? Do people seek out these so-called "signs" to make themselves feel better, or are they truly put there for us to see?

Each person's manifestation of God, or a spirit of the person that they have lost, or whatever spiritual deficit that they have is different and special for each individual person. Maybe when God "speaks" to me, it is in the form of when I get a feeling that my mother is with me. Or maybe it is the other way around. Maybe when I feel really connected to someone who is far away that is what God is. The search continues, and I will keep looking for the signs.

The Mitten

On TV and in movies when people die, their loved ones always see "signs" that the person is with them, or hear voices, or have significant "feelings" that their deceased loved one is "in a good place." In the real world, I don't think this happens. Or at least I didn't right away after my mom died.

A few months after she died I was having a particularly rough morning on the way to work, thinking about my mom and wondering where she was, ondering life and people's purposes, etc. I just wanted one of those movie-esque signs that she was "out there" watching over me, walking with me each day. I parallel parked my car on the main street in Princeton for my daily visit to Starbucks before work. I got out of the car, stepped up onto the curb, and started walking down the sidewalk. Every morning as I walked the sidewalk into Starbucks, I looked into the shop windows as I walked. Princeton has really neat little shops with pretty old-fashioned windows. That morning, I spotted something red sitting in the snow on the windowsill of one of the shops. As I got closer and was able to discern what it was, I was overwhelmed with the sensation that my mother was with me, right then, at that moment. It was a tiny child-size mitten, made of red wool. It had been hand knitted for a child by a grandmother somewhere, and then it had been dropped in the snow by that child, probably cruising in a stroller while his or her mother window shopped. Some good samaritan had picked it up and placed it on the windowsill in the vain hope that the owner might come looking for it. A single mitten has no significance to the average person, but to me it was like a personal message from my mother. When I was little, one of my favorite stories that she read to me over and over was 'The Mystery of the Missing Red Mitten,' by Steven Kellogg. It was, as the title states, a cute children's story about a snowy day and a child that loses one red mitten. As I stood on the sidewalk staring at the tiny mitten, crying my eyes out, I came to the realization that I was going to survive the loss of my mother. Somehow, I would come through it and be okay. I can't explain how, but I just knew.

Was the mitten one of the "signs" that people see in movies, was it God, or was it completely insignificant and I made something out of nothing? It created a sense of peace in me for the first time in two years, so I don't think it matters what it was, or does it?

Continued

When I woke up on December 27, I called the airline to change my ticket home- we were scheduled to leave the next day. I thought that there was a possibility that my mom might die in the next few days and that I wanted to be there for it. While I was on the phone with the airline, my dad came running into the room and said that he didn't think she was breathing. I immediately hung up the phone and ran into their bedroom with my husband. My mom was lying in her bed, propped up with her breathing machine on. She looked the same as usual- as if she was sleeping. My dad switched her breathing machine off and put his ear to her chest to see if he could hear her breathing. He couldn't hear anything, and we couldn't find a pulse. We all sat next to the bed while my dad called the on-call nurse to have her come over. When he got the nurse on the phone all he was able to say was "I think she's gone." As I sat down next to my mom, I picked up her hand to hold it, and I looked at the underside of her forearm. Something that normal people don't know is that when someone dies, all of the blood that is no longer being pumped through their body gets pulled down by gravity and pools. When I saw her arm I knew that she was dead. Her arm looked like someone had painted a roadmap on the underside of it. As soon as my dad hung up with the nurse I called my brother, who lived ten minutes away. All I could do was cry on the phone when he picked up, but he knew, and he simply said "I'll be right there."

Hours later, after the mortician had already come to take my mother's body away, I was sitting in her room, staring out the window right over her bed. By then it was afternoon. The window that I was looking through had an incredible view of the Superstition Mountains. It faced East. As I was sitting there, all of a sudden, bright beams of sunlight streamed through the window and settled on her hospital bed. I was overwhelmed with an unebelievable sense of relief. I was instantly reminded that although it was the saddest day of my life, that my mother was no longer in pain. It was as if she, or God, or something was there in the room with me. The window faced East, and it was afternoon. Sunlight doesn't usually bend back upon itself and go over rooftops to stream in windows like that. I don't know what that was, but it certainly wasn't something that happens every day.

An Argument for God

Although I am a constant questioner of the existence of God, I also have many examples of experiences that I have had that might just make me lean towards the idea of God. Might. I think it is going to take more than one entry to explain them all, so I will attempt to go in chronological order.

In the few weeks preceding my mother's death, we had the world's most depressing Thanksgiving, followed by a depressing lead-up to the world's most depressing Christmas. The day after Christmas was the worst day since my mom had gotten sick. She had had a terrible day with her breathing machine, and her throat kept getting clogged with mucous and we had to suction her way more than the recommended amount in one day. From her perch on the couch she could see everyone milling about, trying our hardest to just make her comfortable, even though her pain was at a 10, and had been for weeks. She had a horrible (I mean, worse than you can even imagine) case of Thrush. If you don't know what Thrush is, you are lucky. She also had Shingles. On top of the disease that was killing her. The night of Dec. 26, my father and my husband took her into her bedroom to use the toilet, and when they did that they always had to take her off of the breathing machine. This was okay because the machine was an assistive machine, she didn't need it completely to breathe. When they were in the bathroom she collapsed and stopped breathing. So to recap, Thrush, Shingles, a pain level of 10, not breathing, dying of a terrible disease, unable to move any part of her body other than her eyelids on her own. The whole family watched the scene in slow motion horror. My husband and father picked her up and ran back to the living room to put her back on the machine. Luckily (luckily?) they made it in time. At that point all we could do was go to bed. When we had her settled in bed finally (the process took about an hour) we all sat around the hospital bed that had been installed in their bedroom and talked to her. She could hear us and understand, but couldn't even make eye contact in response. We all told her how much we loved her, and apologized profusely for how awful her situation was. I went to bed in a haze, going through phases of crying and disbelief that this had all happened.

I am not a person who prays. I don't even know if I believe in God, so praying is a bit silly in that case. That night, I asked God for a favor. I specifically remember saying "You may not even be there, but if you are, I need a big favor." I asked God to let her die. As soon as possible. I didn't think that anyone could stand to see her in so much pain anymore. I don't know what happened, but she died the next morning at about 5AM (nobody is really sure about the exact time).

Maybe God is listening.

Religiosity

One of my closest friends asked me to provide some insight into the non-religious nature of my project here. (Thanks for the direction, Lyn!) Religion is a tough topic to breach, because what someone believes is so dear to them that it is really difficult to challenge or question a person's beliefs without them feeling in some way insulted. I feel that if you believe (I mean really believe) in something, you should have to question it every once in a while, otherwise, you are simply being indoctrinated. So I like to ask people about their religious beliefs because I am curious about how I might come to have some of my own. This usually backfires.

Okay, here's an experiment- bear with me for a minute or two. For this minute, toss away all of your religious/spiritual beliefs and be a blank slate. If you were a person without a religious base (which the majority of people in the USA, believe it or not, are...) where would you find your beliefs about life, death, and what happens to a person's spirit when they die? If you had never been to Sunday School, Youth Group, and didn't go to Church, how would you come to understand the fundamentals of being human? I have been asked this question a multitude of times by my religious friends and family members. One person even suggested that I couldn't possibly understand life and death without God and Jesus to help me. Yes, Virginia, there is a way. All of my life (as short as it has been so far) I have questioned the existence of God. I guess you could say I am officially an Agnostic. Def: a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable ; broadly : one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god. Being an Agnostic isn't easy, believe me. It would be really nice if I really believed in something that could have guided me through my mother's death. Really, it would have been quite handy. Unfortunately, I was left still questioning.

I read LOTS of books about this topic when my mom died. One of the books was "When Bad Things Happen to Good People." It was written by a Rabbi who lost his son tragically, and he himself was left questioning why a just God would do something to such a good person. I have hear a lot of people's thoughts about why good people, innocent children, etc. die. I have heard lots of opinions like "God needs them with him," and "God has a higher purpose for them." It would be great if I believed that. The book was interesting but left me with more questions.

I don't wake up every morning wondering where God is. I do, however, find that I wonder a lot where my mother is. She died- I saw the mortician take her body out of our house the day she died. I know that her body was cremated, and I was there when my father scattered her ashes over her blueberry bushes next to her grave overlooking the ocean in Maine. But WHERE is she now? For some people, she exists in a heaven somewhere. I don't know what that is, but I know that she exists in me, my brother, and my father. She most certainly exists in my four closest friends. Every life milestone that one of them goes through I can just see my mother shining through them and I can feel how proud she would be of the amazing women they have become. She is with me every day.

In my next post I will write about the several examples of experiences I have had since my mom died that lead me to believe that God might really exist...