Forget Me Not
They Talk To You
My friend Brian Lund wrote an interesting post at his blog. You should read it. Brian is a good storyteller and writer. He’s a good guy too.
People wonder if there is life after death. I say that there is. Christians, of which I am one, believe in life after death. There are a ton of theories as to what life after death is and I am not well-versed enough in Biblical theory to posit one.
Of course, if you aren’t open to listening, messages will never come through. They also might not have any deep meaning, just someone telling you they or things will be okay. I suppose if you are really resistant, like Jonah and the whale, it would take a really jolting message from beyond to wake you up.
It might be a song. It might be something else. Maybe it’s a thought that you have when you are doing something and they intuit inside you the way to do it. Maybe it’s just in the words you use or the tone you use in a certain situation. There are lots of ways to connect.
It’s probably not going to be at Jackson Square in New Orleans with a paid soothsayer.
I will recant a couple of personal stories.
A guy I met in MBA school at Chicago and I became friends. He was from California and at the time of his death was a bicoastal person. Mark recommended me for the WW2 Museum board in New Orleans. I wouldn’t have been on that board without him. We spent a big chunk of the succeeding years we saw each other in NOLA. I invested in a company he started which ended terribly but we remained friends. Tragically, in his early fifties, Mark was walking down the street in SOHO and had a widowmaker. Heart attack. I found out from his sister. Mark was divorced but left behind two daughters. They are probably in high school and college by now.
The next time I got in my car, I put on some music. The first song that came on was a New Orleans jazz song. I think it was Mark telling me he was okay. How do I know? I don’t but if you were at a jukebox picking songs to play, Mark would have undoubtedly picked anything by The Who. New Orleans was something he and I had in common since I wasn’t a huge fan of The Who.
Here is another.
My grandfather and grandmother built the cabin we spend our summers at. My extended family spent a lot of time up here from 1972-the 2000s until they passed away. Both of them died at age 98.
When you go through stuff up here, you see my grandfather’s handiwork. Labels or other things that remind you of him. Sometimes though, it’s as if he is here and reaches out and touches you. Same with my grandmother. Her garden is still here and my wife works in it all the time. It still looks the same.
This year, my uncle passed away. He loved this place and was pretty close to my grandfather even though he wasn’t his son. There is a bridge he built which my youngest daughter ceremoniously walked across to get married next to the lake. At his funeral, my cousin said when you hear the song “Live Like You Are Dying” by Tim McGraw, remember her father. It speaks to the way he lived his life, especially after being diagnosed with a brain tumor.
It’s been a frustrating start to my summer, to say the least. Hit a deer with my truck in Colorado. Big storm rolled through our cabin and toppled some huge trees that I have to dispose of-and my chainsaws aren’t working great right now. Both our docks were messed up and the ice took away one of my boat launches. My boat’s electronics were messed up. I was stringing new line on the fishing poles and the bugs were merciless. We have had a lot of rain and the fishing has been poor.
Lots of frustration. A bit of anger. Why me and why am I here?
One of the things we do up here is pick out a white pine to take care of. It gets a nameplate with your name on it and hopefully, it lives. If it doesn’t you pick a new one. I picked four that were together for my family back in 1995, and three died. One remained so three of us have had to pick new ones. I decided to pick one for my uncle since he didn’t have one anymore since his original one was gone. I picked one that had randomly grown right near the outhouse that he had built with his son-in-laws and my grandfather. We used to joke that he preferred the outhouse. It’s been converted to a fishing shed now and has the original cabinets in it that my grandfather built but I digress.
I went into a tool shed and rummaged through a box that had wooden plant markers my grandfather had made to put by the tree. I pulled one out and looked at it. The label said, “Forget Me Not”.
Obviously, it was for the garden and the bed of “forget me not” flowers. But in this context, Forget Me Not meant something else entirely. I put the marker next to the tree and went out on my boat. It was a glorious day and the sun was shining. I put some music on and the first song out was Tim McGraw’s Live Like You Are Dying.
Tell me there isn’t life after death.
I was a nominal Christian for many years. My parents brought me up as an Episcopalian in the 1960s and 1970s and while I was a nominal believer I wore my faith very lightly. That all changed in the mid-1990s after my mother died and I reconnected with an old high-school buddy who had been and still was a profoundly evangelical Christian in a small group that the folks who track this stuff characterize as "non-denominational Protestant." I began worshipping with him and his family at their church and thereby reengaged my Christian walk.
All of which by prelude to my own stories.
1. In 1999 my father took sick with what turned out to be terminal cancer, and the oncologist informed me that he had six to eight weeks. Given that I had no idea he was even sick, this came as a shock, but I made all the arrangements to tend to him in his final weeks. At this point I'd already been visiting him every day in the hospital for two weeks and keeping him company. The day after he came home from the hospital, my neighbors in the building dragged me out to dinner, which was the first time since my father had gone into the hospital that I'd been out on my own. They invited me to say a prayer and I asked God not to let my father suffer. That very night, he died peacefully. As I always say, to me this proves that God answers every prayer: he just doesn't always answer it as you might have hoped or expected.
2. A few years later, on the anniversary of my father's death, I was feeling down at the mouth and I prayed that he was well and with the Lord. At that very moment, the phone rang and a friend told me to look out the window at the double rainbow, which I did. Suddenly the pain from my heart was lifted and I realized this was a sign in answer to my prayers that my father was fine and I shouldn't worry about him.
Thank you for sharing your own experiences, and may Lord God bless you and keep you safe in His mighty hand.
Beautiful.