Thank You Mom and Dad, for Helping Me Write "Finding Filomena!"

I wasn't going to write this chapter. I kept telling myself it's just too kooky and "out there" and people might doubt my sanity :) But now that Filomena Scrivano, my great great grandmother,

has finished telling me, chapter by chapter, her very sad love story, I don't feel apologetic at all about telling you that my parents routinely have been contacting me via my iPhone.

How It All Began

I can't recall exactly when it started, but the first time I recorded their contact was in October, 2023, when Rich and I were travelling in southern Italy, in large part to research my great great grandmother Filomena's life. It was the 27th of October, 2023, to be exact, 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, in bed 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 iphone!

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.

This Is How It Works

What happens is this: I am on my phone, texting, and then I put my phone down for a moment. 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, when 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.

My Parents Have Helped Me Write Filomena's Story

I'm pretty certain I know why they have been in touch so often. Mom and Dad have been cheering me on as I have been busy writing "Finding Filomena," my tale about how Filomena fell in love and got pregnant and had to give her infant son (my great grandfather Pasquale Orzo) away because she was an unmarried mother. Filomena was my Dad's great grandmother. His mother's maiden name was Orzo, which may also explain why in the last ten years of his life, Dad tried so extraordinarily hard to complete the ORZO family tree.

The Orzo Family Tree

He spent days using an exacto knife to cut out tiny rectangular pieces of paper with each family member's name; he glued them very carefully on a sheet of 11 by 17 inch paper. Despite all his hard work, however, Dad never quite finished the Orzo family tree, which is why I feel certain, in my heart of hearts, that he really wanted me to tell his great grandmother's tragic story.

Dad has also appeared when Rich and I have been 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.)

The Weirdest iPhone Message of All

By far the most puzzling sighting EVER happened at the end of December, 2023, when 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 strangest thing about this DEE sighting on my iPhone was that it came in a 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 completed a FOUR (yes, four!) hour meditation. 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

on my iPhone. 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.

Our Ancestors Are With Us 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. Many many times as I have been writing Filomena's story, I have felt their presence. Even though I don't see my therapist Mary Marino 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 bit of a shaky limb. I am quite sure that there are readers who are highly skeptical that my parents have been in contact with me. I fully realize that I am asking you the reader to believe in...well, in ghosts, as Noah suggested.

So now, the book is done and soon it will be coming out as an ebook. When I look back, I realize that it is my parents -- along with many of my other ancestors -- who have been the wind in my sails as I've written this book. I am very very grateful: Sono così così grata!