CHAPTER TWO: My Healing Begins as Mom Reaches Out to Me From the Great Beyond!

In that last crazy chapter, the one I called "All Things Must Pass and All Things Stay the Same," I mentioned several times that I was suffering from a meterological crisis four years ago, that is, I was emotionally blocked. I felt as frozen as my crusty white lawn.

I know that I threw a lot of you for a loop with that chapter, telling stories about Leah and Gina. Talking about climate degradation. Lecturing you the reader about Einstein. About TIME and CHANGE and CALCULUS. Apologies for all that.

So this time, I'm going to keep it simple.

I'm going to tell you about how my healing began, on the day when Mom came to me, when I first began to open my heart to the possibility of miracles.

It was SHABBAT, Saturday, MARCH 21, 2020, the very first Saturday of the GREAT PANDEMIC. When I refer to the GREAT PANDEMIC

from here on, I will refer to it only as the GP.

I was sitting that day with my laptop at the desk that Mom left me years back. It is an especially handsome oak desk, and the seat of the chair looks like something Mom

might have done herself, a tapestry of navy blue with colorful flowers.

I have no explanation for what happened next. But I am convinced that for the first time (but not the last) my mom, Dena Rotondo Ricci, reached out to me from the GREAT BEYOND, which I will refer to from here on as the GB, although that might be easily confused with the GP, the GREAT PANDEMIC. I believe Mom made herself known to me during that stressful time in order to offer her reassurance that everything would turn out alright.

It is only now, with the benefit of hindsight, that I can look back and say, yes, this was definitely DAY ONE of what is/was my healing, the melting of my deeply frozen self!

On that Saturday, the end of the first official week of the GP, that damn COVID 19 virus had closed everything down, including, of course, our synagogue. It being Saturday, and me being quite shaken and upset about the GP, I decided to Zoom into a Shabbat morning service at another temple in town. I even donned my purple prayer shawl.

To say the service was chaotic does not begin to describe what was happening that Shabbat morning on the zoom. How boring and disorganized it was. And when everyone tried singing together, oh dear LORD, what a disaster!

So I sat back. I muted the Zoom. Sunshine was pouring through the window of my studio/study, falling gently on my keyboard. I was enjoying sitting at Mom's desk, because most of the time I write in the living room, sitting as I am today on the sofa!

I began scrolling through Word files, just because, and suddenly I came upon a file called “Oh Spring!” which originally contained a poem that I had written a few weeks earlier for a local magazine, called "Edible Berkshires."

I decided to reread the poem, as I knew that I might have to find another home for it because the editor had told me he wasn't going to be able to publish the spring issue of the magazine, because of, what else, the gd GP!

So I opened the file. HUH? Somehow the poem had disappeared! Instead, the file contained THE BIRTHDAY LETTER that I had written to my mother seven years earlier on

March 30, 2013, her 87th birthday.

How could this be, I asked myself. How could one file suddenly replace another? This was impossible, and certainly this had never ever happened to me before.

So odd. So strange. But then something even more strange happened.

As I was sitting there puzzling over the disappearance of my poem, my husband walked into my study. "Going to the grocery store honey so wish me luck," he said. This would be the first time during the GP that he had tried to shop for food.

I turned to him. "Hey honey, would you mind buying me a small purple orchid?" I begged. Not that I needed another orchid. My kitchen counter had seven orchids already. But hey, the GP was a huge downer. I knew an orchid would boost my quarantined spirits.

He chuckled. "Hey, I have all I can do to buy food in these COVID times. Darling, you can do without another orchid."

With that, he turned and left. I then turned back to read THE BIRTHDAY LETTER that I had written to my dear Mom seven years earlier.

Imagine my shock when I read this:

"Dear Mom,

"Today is your 87th birthday. When you turn 87, there aren't a whole lot of birthday presents one can buy. You want health and happiness for yourself and all of those you love.

"Well, so, you love ORCHIDS! The one I bought you a year ago, all the blossoms have disappeared, and recently Dad said, ‘let's get rid of that plant, it's just three bare sticks.’"

"But no, Mom, despite your vision issues, you saw something tiny and green budding there on one of those bare branches. And yes, something wonderful did happen -- four or five new pink blossoms appeared!"

I stopped reading for a moment. I sat there in shock. I had just asked my husband for an orchid moments before and then I opened the letter to Mom and BOOM, it was filled with

ORCHIDS!

The letter continued:

"So eager are you to visit your sunroom each morning. And each week, on Tuesday, you put two ice cubes into the pot and not a drop more water.

"You are just adorable caring for your orchids.

"So today, your day, it wasn't difficult to know what to buy you: another orchid, of course!

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!

"We Love You So Much,

"Claudia"

I sat there staring, trying to comprehend what had just happened. Here was a coincidence of major proportion. Mom had reached out and brought me the orchids from her birthday letter, in order to offer me comfort and reassurance at a deeply stressful time.

Coincidences were/are not new to me. I had/have been witnessing them in my life for quite a long TIME. So many that my husband had coined them

COINKYDINKIES!

The more formal term for this kind of event is

SYNCHRONICITY,

a concept introduced in the late 1920s by psychologist CARL JUNG. He formally introduced the term in a paper he published in the year -- coincidentally -- that I was born, 1952.

OK. Speaking of SYNCHRONICITY, something just happened which is very very strange indeed.

JUST JUST NOW AS I WAS WRITING AND REVISING THIS CHAPTER IN ANTICIPATION OF POSTING IT IN THE BLOG TODAY, I stopped writing for a moment, just to check my gmail and

the very first email that popped up was one that began:

"Coincidence /ko-in-si-dens,/noun A sequence of events that although accidental seems to have been planned or arranged."

HUH? How weird is that?

What I want to say about synchronicity and coincidence, and that day MOM APPEARED VIA THE ORCHIDS and all the other COINKYDINKIES I have experienced IS THIS: When you are open to the concept of SYNCHRONCITY and the infinite wisdom of the Universe and Divine Consciousness,

COINCIDENCES SEEM TO HAPPEN ALL THE TIME.

Part of what has helped heal me over the past four years is my willingness to embrace this idea. I finally OPENED MY HEART AND MIND COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY TO COINKYDINKIES and to the possibility of miracles like my mom reaching out to me. It takes faith and even, courage to believe in coinkydinkies AND in the idea that loved ones will contact us from the GB.

Oh, by the way, something that is in itself

STILL ANOTHER COINKYDINKY is the fact that

my Dad

always

used to call

my mom, whose name was Dena,

DINKY.

Back to that morning, MARCH 21, 2020,

that first weekend of the GP, I wrote this in my journal:

“So OK Mom I guess you have sent me a sign. I see that now. I accept it. I think I am beginning to understand what [my therapist] Mary is trying to tell me, that life is full of mystery and miracles. And that we must embrace them. Also, I realize that Mary may be right when she insists that 'there is no such thing as death!'"

A few days later, when I told Mary about MOM AND THE ORCHIDS, she wasn't at all surprised. She simply told me to keep track of these small miracles. Mary Marino has a PhD in Jungian psychology; she is a brilliant therapist, and she has studied Carl Jung's work in depth. She knows all about synchronicities!

Mary said to me:

"Claudia, just write them down, keep a list of the miracles. And trust the idea that your mother was reaching out to you. Like all of your ancestors, your mother loves you so much!"

So I began to write down all the little miracles that were starting to happen to me. (I also wrote down some amazing synchronicities that had happened years before.) Pretty soon, I had such a long list that I posted them on my blog.

Meanwhile, I am very grateful that MOM REACHED OUT TO ME,

because that was the beginning of my HEALING! Today, I am delighted to say, I am no longer frozzzzzzen, but more about how that came to be, at another TIME.

If you recall, I wrote a lot about TIME in that last chapter, Chapter One. I wrote about the fact that

Einstein believed that there is no such thing as time. Or change.

He contended that everything happens all at once, in the ETERNAL NOW.

So, that Saturday of 2020 is then but it is

ALSO NOW!!

I know. This is a difficult concept to comprehend.

So too is the idea that SOMEHOW our loved ones can communicate with us from the GB, the GREAT BEYOND. Our ancestors are (and I cannot explain it) still with us!

It's taken me a long time to come around to believing this.

But I know now first-hand

that it

does indeed

happen!

And I know, at least in my case, that believing can help you to heal!