BY JESSE BERING
Shortly after my mother died, I began to experience certain events that challenged my otherwise skeptical beliefs about the afterlife. To any objective observer, these events wouldn’t seem particularly profound; some were in fact so subtle and mundane that they wouldn’t have even registered in my consciousness under normal circumstances. But in the wake of my loss, my mind freighted with grief, these banal happenings took on special significance. It was as though my mom—or rather, her spirit—was attempting to part the veil between this world and the next, intent on communicating with me, her stubbornly atheistic child.
The morning after she passed, for instance, I awakened to the faint, melodious sounds of the wind chimes that hung from a tree branch just beneath her bedroom window. It was a still morning, but surely a breeze must have stirred it. My kneejerk thought was not at all in keeping with my beliefs. “That’s her,” I said instinctively to myself. “She’s telling me she’s okay.”