I was looking through my night-stand yesterday and came across a journal I kept after my Son died in 1996.  I hadn't seen it for several years.  It is a collection of letters I wrote to my son after his death; as well as an assortment of short entries about my feelings, insights and experiences of spirit that I believed (and still do believe) that my son sent to help me after his death.  One of the entries outlined an experience I had in the middle of the night on the very night he died.  I did not know when I had this experience that he had already died in his basement bathroom of an aneurism.  (I found him around 9:00 the next morning.)

I am going to copy the letter just as I wrote it in my "grief journal" not long after Jimmy died.

Dear Jimmy,

It has been almost four weeks since that awful morning that I found you dead on the floor of your bathroom.  You fell and slipped quietly away while I slept unaware two floors above you.  The coroner said you probably died around 2:00 a.m.  At 2:58 that morning I felt a light tingling touch on my shoulder and as I began to sit up to turn around to see who had touched me I happened to notice that time on the clock radio on your Dad's nightstand.  I then turned around and found Brianna standing quietly by my bed.  She had never gotten out of her bed in the middle of the night before; but I picked her up and put her in my bed.  I noticed she seemed quite wide-awake; but she finally settled down and we went to sleep.

The next afternoon; after all of it had unfolded; Heather asked Brianna "When did you last see Jimmy?" She said:  "In the middle of the night, he came and played with me and laid in my bed."  For some reason this didn't really register with me until a few days later when Brianna told me that you walked her in to mommy's room and said goodbye.  It was then that I realized who had touched me to wake me...it wasn't Bri as she is too small to reach up that high on our tall bed...it had to be you.  I knew you were there with your little sister; playing with her as you had in life, then bringing her to me as you said goodbye so she would not be left wide awake and wandering the house by herself!  I will never forget the gentle, shy touch that woke me up that night.

Love, Mom.

The experiences I share in this blog are precious to me; and quite personal; but I share them in the hope that they will help someone else along the path of grief and loss.

Jimmy's dad was out of town when he died; I had to call him out of a business seminar and tell him the awful news.  He then had to board a plane and ride home to Utah from Texas as he tried to process and deal with the terrible news of his oldest child's death.  Ten years and one month later; Jim died at 55 of stomach cancer.  I miss them both terribly; but take real comfort in knowing that they are now together.