Birthdays and the Ever After

When I finally tamed the recurring dreams about my husband’s death (in a tractor-train crash) through lucid dreaming, Bruce only shows up in my sleep when I’m feeling lost or confused about life in general. It’s not his doing; not his presence. It’s just my brain teaching itself how to live with his death.

And here’s what I’ve learned: after 43 years, I still—and don’t ever want to— live without him in some capacity.

His presence has been particularly active (felt) this month—March, in which he was born and his daughter was born and he died—more than previous years.

Stick with me. This isn’t some hocus pocus theory.

Bruce doesn’t reach out often, but this year, on Carlene’s birthday (the 11^th), she called me on her way home from work and said that when she’d walked into work, she’d heard a train. She said trains only run through that area once a year, and she’d not heard one before. “Was he saying ‘Hi’?” she asked.

I looked out the window and saw that three daffodils had bloomed, a week early for daffodil blooms here in western PA.

Bruce had brought me daffodil bulbs when Carlene was born.

Was he saying “Hi” to both of us?

Carlene never knew her father. I mean, she was eleven days old when he died. But something about that train spoke to her. And believe me, Carlene isn’t tuned in to the Ouija board of life.

Today is Bruce’s 67^th birthday, and on my way home from the grocery store, I pushed the button for 80s on 8 on Sirius/XM, and it started, from the first note. No intro. It just…started. The song.

Bruce knows how that song gets me. Gets us. And only he would remember that moment we realized, tucked in the hay bales, how much we loved each other and wanted… Wanted it all.  

And for a few days, we did have it all.

I wonder what he’ll do on March 22, his death date, and March 25, his burial date. Does he know I’ve typed this? Is there Internet in heaven/space/universe? Or is he hovering around me this year, with messages spinning around in his spirit-self that he needs to deliver?

I guess I’ll find out in a week.