Day 33
They are everywhere. Signs. No not stop signs and other notifications of traffic control or historical markers or advertisements … but SIGNS.
Signs from another realm … another place … another well – whatever.
After Tim died I had several friends suggest that I be “open” to signs … from him. Okay, so I was … and as odd as it seems I/we did notice things that were out of the ordinary … coincidental … eerie.
For months after he passed I’d turn on the radio to hear a part of a conversation – the last bit of someone’s sentence and it was something like, “she’s my bride.” How Tim used to introduce me – even after 24 years. Or I’d turn on the radio and Petula Clark would be belting out “Downtown” … Tim’s 7 year old boy crush on her never waned! Or I’d be flipping through a magazine and I’d come across the words (that are now taped to my computer monitor) Plum Crazy … the name he gave his first car (that he painted purple!). Stuff like that.
Those little nuggets that pulled the heartstrings and made me think that perhaps he was around … perhaps somehow, someway he influenced the DJ to play that song or say those words … something that made me think that whatever little oddity I was experiencing, hearing or seeing was due to his other-worldly communication rather than sheer coincidence and happenstance. At least I liked to think that … it brought comfort. Those moments brought a LOT of comfort. They also brought reassurance that maybe – just maybe – I wasn’t in “this” all by myself. That he somehow was out there sending me a sign that he and all was good. Like I said, at least that’s how I took those moments. And I’d respond back with a, “Hi honey – thinking of you, too.”
And then they, those signs/oddities of the moment, bothered me … out of the blue reminders of what I had lost. I didn’t want to hear Petula … I didn’t want to hear songs that sang of some mournful guy “wanting to come home” (thanks tons Michael Buble) … I didn’t want to have my heart broken when moments ago it was minding its own business and trying to beat and not notice that it was still shattered … and then a sign would come along my path and I’d be upside down again. Comforted yet deeply pained.
But then Sam and I went to Oregon to sprinkle some of Tim on the beach where we were engaged … and that all changed.
It was Sunday … a cloudy, foggy-ish day and the wind had picked up and the tide was in further than we expected. There is only one way down to this beach – the stairs from the resort’s parking lot (Otter Crest Cove at Otter Rock, near Cape Foulweather) … you can go north a bit along the shoreline and sometimes see sea lions sunning themselves on the outcroppings when the tide is out … there are tidal pools and it’s great fun to explore. Or you can go southward along the shoreline to a rock extension and if the tide is out you can go around the rocks and further along the coast to the Devil’s Punchbowl … a carved out “bowl” that is accessible with low tide and under feet and feet of water otherwise. Cool-creepy.
Anyway – Sam and I saw another family far off to the north so we went southward … and as we approached the end of the beach there in the sand was written, “I (heart shape) Tim”. Sure – the family could have written it … but how weird is that?! The exact beach where we were engaged. Eerie.
Later that afternoon I asked what the goofy moose was that we kept seeing all over town on billboards and in shop windows … it was the town’s mascot – unveiled that weekend – named … yes, Timothy. All I could whisper was, “Hi honey.”
Sam was with a friend on a trip and the only boat in the harbor was named Timothy.
Signs. Coincidence. Weirdnesses. Whatever.
And last night after I just turned on the radio, on my way to the airport for a red-eye flight to find a new hometown in Kentucky … what should come on but Neil Diamond’s “Kentucky Woman.” Hmmm … sign? I’ll take that as a yes!