It was after midnight when I finally closed the book and reached to turn out the light. The book I had been reading was entitled, A Friendship With God. As I tried settling in and snuggled down into my pillow, my mind was racing. The man who wrote the book—the fourth in a series of books—said that he had been talking to God and that God talked back to him! Well what made him so special, I thought. After all, that was something I had been doing for a very long time—talking to God that is, though not as much in the past five years as I had done before…Before the death of my youngest child back in 1995 when my world fell apart.

I mostly stopped doing any talking to Him after that. I just couldn’t see any reason to do so. If He was going to take away one of the most precious parts of my life, then why should I bother? After all, God had never talked back to me! Or had He? That was the question my own mind was wrestling with now. There were so many questions that I wanted to ask of God…What’s more, I wanted answers from Him, and I wanted them NOW!

But first, I had to figure out for myself if He did talk to me in the same way as was described by the author of that book. Was it really possible that the voice I frequently heard inside my head—the one I had always thought of as being my own conscience—was that really God talking to me?

Was it possible that she talked to me in other ways that I never thought about before? Could it be, just maybe, that she had been talking to me all my life but I was too preoccupied with “life” to stop and listen to her? And could I now come to believe that somehow we do go on after our lives here are ended?

In the years since Kristina’s death, I have experienced so many events that to me were unexplainable, though most people would probably tell me that these events were only my own mind playing tricks on me as I walked the path of grief. I have heard her voice calling me, but, of course, she was no where to be found, even though I looked and looked for her.

There have been many occasions when I caught the faint smell somewhere in my home of the fragrance of the perfume she wore. Yet there is not even a bottle of the stuff in my home any longer.

Times when I would be feeling very sad and just plain did not want to go on for one more minute, much less one more day, and suddenly, on the radio, a song would play that spoke to my feelings at that moment and allowed me to let the tears I try so hard to hold back flow freely.

Then there would be times when I would suddenly catch a glimpse of “someone” just outside the side of my vision, or reflected back at me from the glass in a picture frame, who looked so much like her, it would take my breath away.

I have been awakened from a deep sleep by the “sound” of her car pulling into my driveway at night, only to find no cars around which could have made that sound.

Times when I would be completely alone in my home, thinking of her, and all that would not be, and suddenly words would come from nowhere into my mind that seemed to be trying to give me comfort. Words like, “I love you Mom. Hold on tight. It’s gonna be OK,” and then I would sense the most gentle touch on my shoulder and feel surrounded by the most incredible warmth. And love. Such a feeling of being loved.

Are these “events” really my daughter, somehow, trying to make contact with me and let me know that she is OK and still here with me? That there is indeed a special place or dimension where we go on? I don’t know the answer to those questions. But if God can, and does, actually talk with us, then why would we—more to the point how could we—think that those we love so dearly can not do the same?