Whimsical Tree © Lena Montecalvo

This week’s post is a repeat of one of our earliest posts, about how our loved ones can leave great gifts behind when they leave this physical body.

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Sometimes when loved-ones pass on—if only we open our hearts—we find they’ve left us gifts greater than anything we could have imagined. Here is a story of one such gift.

Lena has always felt there is more to life than we see with our eyes, so the possibility that her deceased parents might communicate their love to her, even after their deaths, has been easy to accept. As a young woman, she felt and smelled her father’s presence during her deepest sorrow after his passing. In later years, Lena has seen and heard the presence of her mother during some of her most difficult times.

But something Lena could not have predicted is the way her mother would help her make a new beginning and reveal a talent she did not even know she had.

“My mother was a talented artist who didn’t share her work widely. She was a little on the shy side and suffered depression in her later years. Painting water colours and folk art gave her great personal reward and comfort.”

After her mother passed away, Lena wrote her eulogy and concluded with words she’d found scribbled in one of her mother’s sketch books: “Mantra for new beginnings.” Then, needing to know something about her mother’s next journey, Lena consulted a set of rarely-used angel oracle cards.

“I said out loud: ‘Mom, if you want, and if you are able, please help me pull a card that will tell me you’re alright; that you are here with me.’”

Lena shuffled the deck and, “I pulled The Butterfly. I turned it over and read a comforting and completely fitting passage about ‘new beginnings’. It was clear: It was Mom.”

Later, she and her sisters sorted through their mother’s belongings as they prepared to sell her house and give away the things they could not use. For a reason Lena could not explain, she kept the art supplies.

“One night, I decided to try a tiny painting,” she says, and this led her in a direction she could never have predicted: “I had no idea I was able to paint!”

A few years afterward, “I have found I possess a definite and recognizable style, and it makes me happier than anything I have ever done.”

Lena is now an active participant in her local artistic community where she gives art classes and sells her own work. She also makes a few prints and cards of the water colours her mother left behind.

“I know for certain this comes from my mother’s inspiration. I feel her close when I pick up the brush,” says Lena. “It’s a perfect legacy to me.”

If you have an inspirational story to share about a comforting experience you have had with a loved one who has passed on, we would love to hear from you. Please contact us at themeaningofforever@gmail.com. You can find out more about our project on our Website and our Facebook page. If you like this story, please click “Follow” at the right of your screen and feel free to share with others.

 

As far back as Sibyl can remember her father, a Presbyterian minister in Scotland during the 1940’s, told stories of suddenly seeing friends and relatives coming to say goodbye not long after they left this life. Always, he would say they were accompanied by a blue globe of light.

Sibyl longed to see this blue globe, but many years would pass before she did. In the meantime, she became a registered nurse, immigrated to Canada and began delivering babies at a hospital in Ontario. It was 1975 when that light finally appeared.

“Every time I welcomed a newborn baby into the world I became aware of the small blue globe of light that accompanied each baby at birth,” writes Sibyl. “My Dad, on the other hand, experienced the blue globe of light when his deceased friends came to say their goodbyes.”

So, she formed her own conclusion: “This blue light was present whether a human being was coming into this world or leaving it! I came to the realization that, regardless of faith or belief, a loving Divine Presence is always with us.”

More than a decade later, Sibyl made the sad journey home to Scotland to be with her mother who was dying of cancer. There, at her mother’s bedside, Sibyl saw that same blue globe—much larger this time and, although she experienced the agony of knowing her mother was about to pass from this world, she also felt “ecstasy knowing that this Divine Presence was there to lead her to her new home!”

A couple of months after her mother had passed away, Sibyl had three dreams in which she learned that her mother had a lovely home in the new world where she now lived. When Sibyl made her dream visits there, she was also able to visit her deceased brother.

“In the third dream I was shown how happy my Mom now was with her new life and friends. As I prepared to leave she reminded me in a kindly way that she was no longer my mother!

“This showed me that I needed to learn a certain amount of detachment and let my Mom get on with her new life.  I also knew that this bond of love that we shared in life would never die.”

Thank you, Sybil, for your wonderful story. For us at The Meaning of Forever Project, it illustrates three very important principles: 1. That each of us is accompanied by a Divine Presence whether or not we know it; 2. That, even though our loved ones may comfort us with their presence after they have left this life, there comes a time when they must continue to their next stage of unfolding as Soul, and it is important for us to let them go; and, 3. Even though we know this, we can also know that “this bond of love that we shared in life” will never die.

If you have a story about how you learned of the continuation of life, and how the love between Souls continues forever, please feel free to contact us: on Facebook, through our website, or by email at themeaningofforever@gmail.com

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