Andrea Loggins, GPC Student
People often ask me how I can be so at peace with the loss of my mother. I always respond with a smile and tell them that I know she is still with my family and me in spirit because she has often come to us to let us know she is okay and that she watches over us. I feel her presence no matter where I go and this is a very reassuring feeling when I am down and need my mother. I can have conversations with her and when I get very still and all is quiet around me, I can hear her giving advice to me on whatever subject I have in question. I love knowing that she will be there for me no matter where I am, however I have not always felt this way. I want to share why I am at peace.
The first time she visited me after her death, I was twenty- five and married with a two year- old son. I was asleep one night when she came to me in a dream. I knew from the moment the dream began that it was her by the smell of the air, which smelled of red roses (my mother’s favorite). I suddenly found myself on a cobblestone walkway with rose bushes surrounding either side of me. The sky was blue, just a few white puffy clouds here and there. The cobblestones were medium – sized, each stone a different shade of brown and gray. They were also glistening, as if it were cobblestone tile that had a wax finish over it. I heard children laughing in the distance and as I drew closer to the laughter, I came to a small, cobblestone cottage, the stones resembling those on the walkway. Pink dogwood trees (also her favorite) lined both sides of the gravel driveway and more red roses were on a u-shaped trellis above the doorway. All of the sudden, I hear my mother counting to ten and children running, squealing delightfully as they ran around the corner of the house to the plush green front lawn, with my mother in tow. There was one thing about all of them: everything about them was white. From their clothes to their shoes to their faces and hair and not just white- they were all ghost white, including my mother. She was in a flowing white gown and was laughing and running after them. She looked at me and said, “ Don’t worry about me. I am ok. God gave me these kids to watch out for up here until you come. I still watch out for you guys too.” Having said that, she was gone in a flash to play hide and seek with the children. I knew that it was more than just a dream, because I could smell the roses, feel the warm sun on my face and the fact that she played hide and seek with them. Hide and seek was our game! I woke up at peace and felt her presence ever since.
A year later, the next family member to receive a visit was my sister, who was skeptical about angels, was always the one to watch out for us. When my father remarried, there were a lot of problems and my stepmother had a tendency to physically abuse my youngest brother when my father was working out of town. My sister called me one day in tears and told me that she had seen my mother standing in her living room, in the middle of the afternoon. My sister was folding laundry and she said that mother came around the corner and was in a white, flowing gown and she was white and she just stood there looking at my sister. Mother stayed for about a minute and then left. The next day, my stepmother beat my little brother. This happened twice more with my mother visiting my sister and then a day or two after, my little brother would call with something else to tell about what our stepmother had done. My sister put two and two together and when she saw my mother come floating in her living room in the middle of the afternoon with a worried look on her face, she immediately got in her black Jeep Grand Cherokee and raced over to my father’s house only to find my stepmother holding a gun on my little brother.
My father had told me of a story when my brother had died in 1991. He had a seizure while driving and hit a tree. He was not wearing a seatbelt and had a lacerated liver. After the funeral, I was still visibly upset and he took me aside and told me that everything was going to be ok, because my mother had come to get my brother. I asked him what he meant and he said that when he and my stepmother were sitting in the waiting room outside the operating room, he saw a cloud of smoke going towards the operating room doors. The cloud of smoke formed into the shape of my mother that only my father could see. She had on the same flowing gown and she stood at the door for a second and then went under the door. My father immediately felt the need to look at his watch at the time. The time was 6:22 a.m. Later, as the surgeon and my father were talking after he had told him my brother had passed away, my father asked him what my brother’s time of death was. The doctor told him 6:22 a.m.
The last instance I would like to share is the time my guardian angel saved my life and the lives of my oldest son and the son that I was seven months pregnant with. In August 1997, my oldest son, who was 3 ½ years old and I, who was seven months pregnant were riding down a busy, two-lane highway towards my house on a hot August day. It was 5:30 in the afternoon and the orange sun was still blazing, with an outside temperature of 98 degrees. The air conditioner had broken down the day before in my husband’s red and gray 1998 Ford Ranger (the one I was driving that day) and my oldest son and I were sweaty, looking as though we had just gotten out of the shower, even though the windows were rolled down. We were going east on this road, about two miles from the house when all of the sudden, a large Tyson’s chicken tractor trailer came on my side of the road, towards me at an excessive amount of speed. I felt my heart pounding and I gripped the wheel, preparing for the worst when all of the sudden, I looked out my driver’s side window and there my mother was, in her long flowing white gown, pushing my truck to the side of the road. The tractor –trailer scraped my truck all the way down the driver’s side, but that was all the damage it did to the truck and us. I was still able to drive home and no harm came to us, thanks to our angel.
When people hear these stories, I know it sounds hard to believe, but they are true. I guess she meant it when she said she would always take care of us.