Bereavement

This past June, I had to deliver 3 boxes of family members' ashes to be interred. My younger brother and only sibling died in 1978, when he was only 23 - scuba diving adventure gone wrong. My dad died in 2011, at age 90 - had been diabetic for several years. My mom died in December 2020, at age 98 - COVID pneumonia. In the last year of her life, my mom lived near me in a senior living center.

My parents never buried my brother's ashes. I don't know why. My mother never buried my father's. I don't know why. So, I had to do all 3, which was a rather grim task, as you might imagine.

My parents had purchased 3 cemetery plots in Rochester NY, where I grew up, and where they continued to live. I live in the greater Chicago area. I inherited a small cottage on one of the Finger Lakes in NY that my parents purchased in 1987. We go there about twice a year.

My husband and I drove to Rochester in late May of last year, with 3 boxes of ashes in the car and delivered them to the cemetery. Spent about 10 days at the lake and headed home.

When we got home, I was lugging stuff upstairs and noticed that a light was on in the second floor landing that should not have been. It is one of those lights that has a metallic base and turns on and off when you touch it. The light belonged to my mom, and she loved it for the convenience of it. I got it for her when we moved her near us. The odd thing was that the bulb was very dim and the light coming from it was rather lavender in color - not one of the 3 levels of brightness I was used to seeing. I thought perhaps the bulb was about to burn out. Nope - I touched it and it went thru the 3 usual levels of illumination.

The bulb has never been that color again.

The on thing I could think of was that it was my mom either saying, "Welcome home," or "Thank you for taking care of all those ashes.

It wasn't scary or upsetting. Rather surreal and thought provoking, and I have no "rational" explanation for it.

Your experience sounds like something to treasure, sheshe.