Sometimes things happen that make me think; that make me believe that this isn’t all there is. When my Mom died in a hospital in London, I said that for so many things that went wrong, there were just so many things that went right.
Last month my Uncle Don passed away. Uncle Don loved fixing up old bikes and he would keep a row of bikes from small to big in the front yard that were for sale. Thirteen years ago we had a teenage foster son for about a month. Michael was the kind of guy who was happiest when he was busy. I had rented a trailer out at Clearville for a week and so on the way we stopped at Uncle Don’s and he sold us a bike for fifteen dollars so that Michael could go for bike rides around the park. After a month, Michael moved back to his hometown of Wallaceburg. He called once in a while for a short time but then he moved on and I hadn’t heard from him since. Before the initial visitation time for Uncle Don, I went home to get changed. I was just walking out the door to come back to the Funeral Home when a car pulled into the driveway…it was Michael. Why did that happen right at that moment?
Years ago Uncle Don’s daughter did a school project tracing her family history and made a scrap book about it. Aunt Donna has kept the book up since then, adding dates and photos etc. After the funeral they left the book for me to look at. When I picked it up, a piece of paper fell out of it. I was afraid that I had messed something up and when I picked up the paper, it was a clipping from a church bulletin in 1975 that announced the birth of my niece; the daughter of my sister who later passed away. Of all the papers that could have fallen out of that book, why that one?
So many times I hear families explain that Mom waited until everybody made it home to see her, or Dad waited until we all had just stepped out of the room, that a special song came on the radio…
Things that make you think…