A Doe Appeared in the lavender garden

When a person passes on, their possessions must be sorted, dispersed, saved, or discarded. Decisions must be made about their private life. Once the larger items are taken care of, such as furniture, cars, and the like, the monumental task gets whittled down to smaller items, those found deep in drawers or in the recesses of closets.

Though my aunt had passed on more than twenty years prior, we recently had to sell her summer cottage after years of family members enjoying her “Doll House,” as she so lovingly referred to it. Over time, generations of stuff had accumulated.

After days of rummaging through things, I found a brown accordion-style folder stashed in a small closet on a shelf above the vacuum cleaner. Inside was a smaller manila folder full of old letters, clippings of newspaper columns and articles, poems, jokes about aging, and various other pieces of paper she had saved.

I carefully pulled them out, sat on the couch, and read them one at a time. With each piece, I learned more about who she was: what she valued, what made her laugh, what she deemed important to save and perhaps refer to later. I started to understand her better now as an adult myself. We were alike in many ways, from her sense of humor to her spirituality.

She had saved letters written in 1944-45 from her brother, my dad, who had served in the navy and was stationed in Okinawa during WWII. His type-written words on thin airmail paper lifted into my mind from another world and time before I was born.

Some of my aunt’s letters were from a suitor who later became her husband. These sweet love-letters were written during their middle-aged courtship. They read like teenage confessions of love. It warmed my heart to know she had finally found “the one,” a mature love, reciprocated, and equal.

With that love letter in my hand, I fell deep in thought about my aunt and who she was, when suddenly…

A doe appeared in the floor-to-ceiling windows in front of me. There she stood, staring and still, just ten feet away in the lavender garden. I gasped and sat transfixed at the sight of this beautiful creature, so near to me. That’s my aunt, I thought. She borrowed the doe to say Hello!

When our loved ones in spirit try to get our attention, it usually happens in ways that are out of the ordinary. This was certainly that. And signs are often timely or “coincidental,” like this one, just as I was feeling deeply into the essence of who she was in life.

The doe took a few steps forward, then darted off down the hill, disappearing as magically as she had appeared. Over the years of sitting on that couch looking out those windows, never had an animal larger than a mouse or an occasional bunny rabbit appeared before me.

We know so little about the spirit world and what they’re capable of, even though each one of us has traveled there or will one day make that short journey ourselves.

Physics tells us that everything is energy vibrating at varying speeds and that energy never dies, it just transforms.

Next time something happens that you think might be a sign from a loved one, be open to the real possibility of a message. Try not to explain it away with your rational mind. How would you feel if your loved one on earth ignored your attempts to communicate from beyond to let them know you are still around and watching over them?