The day after Mum died, one my besties came with her son to spend a few weeks with me. She cooked, she cleaned, she organised, me came to give me a hug when she’d notice I’d wandered into Mum’s room. “Whatcha looking for, love?”… “I don’t know…” and the tears would come. She’d encourage me to go to the beach with them, or get in the pool. And his little toddler laughter filled the hours with joy again.

I remember waking up one morning, with heavy sadness. The song in my head was the hymn I sang to Mum every night when I’d say goodnight to her. “Here I am, Lord…is it I, Lord? I have heard you calling in the night….” Immediately it was like someone changed the record and in my head it turned into “….we’ll alwaysssssss be together….” from Grease! haha! Talk about a wild transition, especially as I haven’t heard that song in at least a few decades! But that was the first record I owned…one my Mum bought for me for Christmas one year.

Later that day, they managed to get me to the beach…and into the water. Which is a bit of a feat, as I love being near the water, but not in the water. As I was telling my friend the story about the song in my head, a single red rose petal floated right up to me. As fresh as if it had just come from a florist…in the middle of the sea. With no other petals anywhere in sight. Mum’s favourite colour as well.

I saw a lot of white feathers in my path in the weeks leading up to her passing…and a friend who didn’t know that, brought me a gift right after she passed. The gift was tied with a string that held two white feathers.

I do believe that when we leave our earthly bodies, our energy remains. When people die, they are still with us…just in a different form. In the last month before Mum passed, she was having lots of conversations with friends and family that are no longer here. One day she was staring into the corner. I asked her what she was looking at and she said ‘your Grandfather’s here!’ I was about to ask her which one, when she said something that only he would have said. I looked at her nurse and said ‘yep, he’s here!’. She was so comforted, and entertained, by those visits in the end. I would hear her in her room, laughing away with whomever she was talking with. Laughing, flirting, gossiping…they were keeping her company. And they were reassuring her. Once, I heard her tell someone that I had been taking really good care of her. And that I would be fine.

I’ve been missing her immensely as it’s coming to the close of the first year without her. I woke up the other morning, filled with sadness and tears. I padded into the bathroom to have a shower and when I stepped out of my slippers, there was a small, fluffy, perfectly curled white feather sitting in one of them. I have no idea where it came from in a logical sense…other than it was there to remind me she’s always with me.

I also started a non-profit company this past year, to help people who found themselves in a situation like we were. In another country, not fully speaking the language, and needing help. I set up the company so that we could help families hire English speaking carers and we would do all the organisation, taking that mental load off of them. Now when I say that anything that could go wrong did go wrong, it would be an understatement. A wonderful first client, who was in pretty much the exact same situation with her Mum as we had been in. We hired six carers for her and then all hell broke loose. I decided we had to pivot and move in a different direction, as it just wasn’t working. She found an alternative, and yesterday I helped her make the transition to the new arrangement. When I was getting ready in the morning, I said to myself that it was almost like Mum was ‘up there’ throwing down every obstacle possible to tell me I was taking the wrong approach. I mused that I had only been trying to help people like me so that they didn’t have to go through it all without support, like I did. Then it hit me…I wasn’t taking care of the metaphysical ‘me’, I was still taking care of the metaphysical ‘her’. I was meant to support the people like ME…not HER. So backing off from the actual ‘care’ side, and focusing on helping the family carer, was exactly the direction I should have been going in from the beginning. Talk about learning lessons the hard way! I said ‘why didn’t I see that before?’ and I heard, quite distinctly, ‘because you’re stubborn. Like your mother.’