On Valentine’s day my husband got me a heart balloon which says “I love you” in Spanish.
At dinner yesterday I noticed it floating in the living room near the dining table while I was having dinner. I didn’t know how it got there as I had seen it near the bathroom earlier. I remember thinking “If it is you, Shawheen, you’ll have to move it while I’m watching so I’ll know.”
At bedtime that night I didn’t see the balloon anywhere. I opened the front door to let the cat in and there was my balloon, stuck between the front door and the screen door. Now that was weird. I thought in my head, “Did you do that?” to my son and I sensed this image of him waggling his hands by his head and jumping up and down, really silly, each foot taking turns hopping high. I’ve seen him silly when he was alive, but nothing this ridiculous. He was saying, “Duh!”
The grief has been hovering pretty close lately. I’ll think of him when I wake up and cry before I get out of bed. Sometimes in the car I’ll cry on my way to pick up my kids from school. Then there are the night times like tonight when I hurt and cry, always waiting until I am alone and everyone else is asleep. Those are the private times when the sadness can come.
So tonight after playing with my kids, I went into my bedroom to get my book and the baloon was there. It seems to be moving and my husband comes in. I wait for him to leave and lay down on the bed so I am not moving, not creating any wind to move the balloon. Usually it doesn’t move at all, it’s just still. But tonight it is moving. It floats over to the middle of the floor without furniture. Then it floats to the left, to the right, floats backwards and forwards. I am watching it with the window as a backdrop so I can see how the part of the window I can see changes as the balloon moves. At one point I can not see any window on the right side of the balloon. Then it drifts left and eventually I can see 10-12 inches of window on the right side of the balloon. It begins to pivot around to the right, then stops, and then pivots around to the left. It’s dancing! “Is that you, Shawheen?” I think. I sense in my head “Of course, Mom, who else?” He has this kind of half silly, half surprised attitude. He’s trying to tell me, ‘come on, by now you have got to KNOW it is me…’
I thought about videotaping it but I did that a year ago with a purple balloon and I can’t upload videos to this site, so I just lay there watching for 20 solid minutes of the Dancing Balloon.
Blessings to all you out there who have grief and to all those who are trying/hoping to discern messages from beyond the veil.
