Lucy Burdette: I have never considered myself to be someone who is visited by spirits of the great beyond. Maybe it’s that I don’t know how to listen for them. If you have read my Key West series, you will know that Miss Gloria has a part-time job in the Key West cemetery giving guided tours. In one of the scenes from my August book, A SCONE OF CONTENTION, Miss Gloria is visited by spirits of her ancestors in Scotland; she definitely knows how to connect.
Speaking of spirits, a most interesting thing happened during my sister Susan Cerulean’s book talk for the Friends of the Key West library. We chatted on zoom in front of 100 interested readers about her memoir “I have been assigned the single bird.” The book braids together two stories – her caregiving of our father during the last eight years of his life with Alzheimer’s, and her caregiving of the earth, particularly birds. She had just finished talking about how my father hated to be left out of anything and seemed to very much enjoy the idea of being the subject of her next book. Then she was asked a question about what people could do who are concerned about the planet. But at that moment, an alarm began to buzz. I knew it wasn’t something in my house, and she didn’t think it was hers. But after a few minutes, she left the screen and returned with my father’s old alarm clock, which had been in the pile going to the dump. Because it didn’t work! Have a listen to what happened next:
Honestly, we were quite flabbergasted about that event. The timing was too strange not to have been a message from our father.
Our good friend Pat Kennedy (who you may remember from various blogs written for us) sent us this note after the talk: “This gives me an awesome idea. If you know me well you will remember how I hate to be left out of a party. So I’m programming my own alarm clock that goes off at party time and demand that my children include me and the clock in all future family gatherings – after I’ve moved on.”
So here’s the question Reds: do you feel you have a connection with people who have moved on from this life? Or if not, have you had a particular experience that makes you question your doubts?
