CHAPTER EIGHT: "Mom and Dad Are Looking Out for Me!"

I wasn't going to write this chapter next. I was going to write a chapter about TIME, about how Einstein says/said there is no such thing as time. Past, present and future, he says/said, are all an "illusion."

OK, but now I have to put that chapter aside, for another time, because Mom and Dad keep calling me! Not on the phone, well not exactly.

It started quite a while ago. I would say it's been happening for at least six months or a year.

But lately, they've been stepping up their contacts. The other day, I got one from mom, AND one from dad, on the very same day, February 7, 2024.

What happens is this: I am on my phone, texting, and then I put my phone down for a moment. And when I go to pick it up again, I have, in the texting line, either:

mom

OR

pop.

Here below, I will show you the latest two contacts, from last week.

The first is from Mom, while I was texting with a friend in the morning:

And the second, three hours later, from my dad (calling himself pop) while I was texting with my daughter Lindsay:

Something similar happened about two weeks before, on January 23, 2024; again, mom and dad got in touch on the same day. First, when I was texting with my friend Leslie in the morning:

And then, when I was texting with another friend in the afternoon, my dad popped up again.

This has happened many many times. I've only been recording them (via iphotos) for a few months.

The first time I recorded a contact, Rich and I were travelling in southern Italy (in part to research my great great grandmother Filomena's life). It was the 27th of October, 2023, and we were in Lecce, a beautiful old city in the region of Puglia (the heel of the Italian boot.) Rich had just been diagnosed with COVID. He was pretty sick with a fever, chills, aches, congestion, and a sore throat

I had gone out in search of a "farmacia" for medication; I was completely distracted because my husband was busy texting me. He was trying to explain what medication the physician, who spoke only Italian, had told him to buy. The woman at the farmacia didn't speak English either. Ayayayay.

The last thing I expected at that moment was to see my "pop" suddenly pop up on my phone!

Perhaps because I was so so surprised, I decided to record dad's appearance. When I told my sister Holly about it (because we often talk about missing our dad!) she was skeptical. "Claud, dad never called himself pop!" she observed. And while she is right, most of the time he did not call himself pop. I do recall times when he was in a good mood, he did refer to himself that way.

Anyway, it kept happening.

Once, Dad appeared while Rich and I were texting about politics.

That's not surprising, considering the fact that my dad and I had countless arguments about politics. Dad supported Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and on and on while I supported Carter, Clinton, Obama, Biden. (I never asked my dad if he voted for Trump, because, by 2016, when Dad was 90 years old, I had told him that I refused to argue about politics with him anymore; he was too old, and I cared about him too much.)

So lately I have started to keep track of the "sightings." There have been perhaps one or two a week. And then something even weirder happened.

At the end of December, my mother appeared not as MOM but as

DEE, which was everybody's favorite nickname for her (my mother's first name was Dena.)

The weirdest thing about this DEE sighting was that it came in conversation with my son Noah, who lives in Colorado. Noah was texting with me and my husband, telling us that he and a good friend had just been meditating for FOUR (yes, four!) hours. He texted:

"Lots of images of grandparents came up in the last hour"

"Lots of crying"

"They loved me so much!"

And that's EXACTLY when his grandmother DEE appeared as

/e

e dee

When I pointed this sighting out to my son, he responded:

"That is VERY weird"

and after I sent him more examples, he wrote

"Hmmmm!"

"Maybe there is a ghost afoot!"

Even my sister Holly lost some of her skepticism. When I described to her what had transpired with Noah, sending her that chain of texts after he meditated for four hours, she replied

"Holy crap!"

So now, of course, the question arises: can I explain what's going on here?

Of course not, not if you're asking me to present the underlying physics of how this happens.

But I do have an answer to the question: What does this mean?

What I think it means is that my parents are very close to me, spiritually. I do feel their presence, quite often. Even though I don't see my therapist Mary anymore, I remember how clearly and emphatically she believed that

there is no death, for the soul, the loved ones we lose are always with us, and

our ancestors are looking out for us, and they love us beyond measure.

She explained it to me this way: "Think about how much you love your children. Then think about how even more precious your grandchildren are to you. Now imagine your grandchildren having children. And those children, and on and on..."

With each generation, your love intensifies.

So I am going to stop here. Because clearly I have gone out on a shaky limb here. I am quite sure that there are readers who are highly skeptical that my parents are trying to contact me. I fully realize that I am asking you the reader to believe in...well, in ghosts, as Noah suggested.

But that isn't going to stop me from pursuing contact with my dear parents. I decided not long ago to text them directly. And to write the invitation in Italian!

In English, what I wrote was:

"Dear Dee and Ric, if you want to speak to or through me,

I am listening, especially when I meditate!"

So far, they haven't answered.