Almost eleven years ago, after attending a string of funeral services for friend’s family members, I was sitting with my husband at another service for a colleague’s mother, when I received what I call a “knowing” that my husband was going to be next.
When we arrived home, I told him what had happened and at first he started kidding with me but stopped when he saw how serious I was. He did have experience with me just “knowing” things. I asked him to tell me his life details so that I could give the correct information for his eulogy. He just looked at me, we just stopped talking and our life resumed as normal. Two days later while I was sitting in our family room reading, he walked up in front of me and said, “OK, I will tell you my story, you write it down”. I went and got a pad and pen and we began. Once I had his timeline and details in order, I put the pad away and asked him to promise me one thing; that when he passed over to the other side he would let me know if everything was as I believed. Well, he flat out refused because how would he know if he could keep his promise - that was the type of man he was. So I began to try to convince him and tell him that he will be able to do anything over there (so here I was already validating what I was asking him to do…..). And so we had this back and forth for a good long while with me pleading and telling him that there will be nothing he couldn’t do. Finally, being done with the conversation, he reluctantly agreed and then asked me exactly how he was supposed to let me know I was right. “Send me a sign.” “What kind of sign?” “I don’t know. Let me think about it.”
We had just bought a beach house, waiting to close, after looking for 3 years and so I asked him to leave me a conch shell. That if I was right about everything he always chided me for, and all of the goings on in the hereafter, then he would leave me a conch shell. Agreed.
We then resumed our day to day lives. I never thought about it again as if it was erased from my mind and he never spoke of it again, but I wouldn’t realize that until after the fact. About three weeks later and four days after we closed on the beach house, he left our life quite suddenly and unexpectedly at first, but then I remembered the “knowing”..
One and one-half years later, I accompanied my best friend and step daughter-in-law to Mexico for the weekend, just the girls, to celebrate her 50th birthday. We stayed at a resort in a gated community with three other resorts. One afternoon we took a walk to the open market which was about 15 minutes along a perfectly manicured lane towards the entrance. We had to cross the street and walk down about ten steps to access it and so we shopped, or she did for the both of us. After a couple hours we took our leave and ascended the stairs back to street level. When we got to the top at street level, both of us stopped abruptly and she had grabbed my upper arm in a very tight grip. We said nothing for a minute or so and then she said, “Do you see what I see?”, “Yes”, “Do you know what that is?”, “Yes”, “It’s from Chuck”. “I know.” Across the street, directly in front of us, was a conch shell, sitting at the base of a palm tree; raw, unpainted like it had just been plucked from the ocean.
Two weeks ago while sheltering in, I put my garbage out for pickup and when I went to retrieve it, the lid was missing. I roamed around looking everywhere but my complex is not that big and it was nowhere to be found. I continued to look for it everyday when I went out walking and doing my prayers. As we are required to keep our cans inside the garage and out only for pick up, this was a problem. A can filled with garbage and no lid would smell up the garage, which I use to come in and out of the house. A garbage can outside waiting to be picked up without a lid would be torn to shreds by the animals and I would have to clean up that mess. I was not happy and told every one of my friends my story (like this trumped the pandemic….). When I had time on the weekend, I went to Home Depot and tried to buy a lid but they wouldn’t sell them separately, they did tell me though, to contact Rubbermaid and ask them for a lid. Another thing to add to the “to do” list. I was a bit put out. So what did I do? I prayed and told the Divine that I really needed a lid for my garbage can and if they could arrange to find me one, that would be great. I figured while I was praying for everyone else I would throw that in. Couldn’t hurt and I planned on going online this past weekend.
Every other week is recycling pick up on Wednesdays. I put mine out later in the day because usually I am not sure if that week is recycling and I know they do not come until late afternoon. So this past Wednesday morning, on my way downstairs, I stopped in the front room to look out the window, to the right, to see if the neighbors had put out their recycling cans, letting me know definitely that it was recycling day. From the angle though, I really couldn’t see, so I proceeded down to the living room window and looked out, directly ahead.
Across from my window, laying at the base of a tree was a blue lid. My garbage can lid.
Thanks Chuck!
Now I think he is just showing off………………………………….
