NOTE: If code appears here, it's a cyber ghost.

FROM THE OTHER SIDE

During my mother's final days, I asked her to let me know she was okay when she got to the other side, if she could. She nodded with a look in her eyes that told me she probably couldn't do that.

Less than two months after she passed away, on the first anniversary of her birthday, I was attending a computer workshop at the library where I worked in an adult literacy program. I picked a computer at the back of the room, moved the mouse so the screensaver would go away, and read a message in lovely script on a chalkboard green background that said, "Hello, Lynn." I looked away, and when I looked back it was still there.

Everybody else in the library was chatting. I had picked the seat randomly, and I wondered how the tech staff knew to put my name on the greeting, but beyond that, I did not think about the message. I did not think of it then, but I now suspect that the clear, chalk colored handwriting and the green chalkboard were clues. My mother had been a teacher. Now I wondered if  she was trying to teach me to open my heart, something she had not been able to do while she was alive.

The workshop started. My screensaver returned. When I went back in, the standard library screen was up. It looked like everyone else’s. I never got the message back.

Months later, I told a colleague about the message. She had told me stories of her deceased grandfather rattling spoons and pots in the kitchen, and when she heard my story, she said, "How nice of your mother to visit."

I agree.

It took me a while to catch on, but I treasure the memory of those two words on a screen the color of the old classroom chalkboards from the fifties.

How like my mother to give me that one, quick private message, letting me know her soul was alive and well. For the longest time I did not realize that I may have heard from her again three years later when I met a psychic named April in Felton.

I have no doubt that her sprit lives on and that she is giving me the help from the other side that she could not give me while I was here.

Lynn

www.writeradvice.com

Author of You Want Me to Do WHAT? Journaling for Caregivers