Shooting Stars or Satellites?

I have been thinking a lot about death lately. Not my own, but the deaths of those close to me. I’ve lost seven aunts and uncles in four years. The hardest ones for me were Madge, and my Uncle William, who passed away only two months ago at the age of 92.

When I look at a picture of Madge, sometimes I think only of her laugh. Other times I feel such a deep sense of sorrow that I have to purposely push her memory from my head. No death has impacted me like hers. I think the reason is equal parts of being closer to her than anyone else, and having been the only one present as she passed.

Being with someone as they pass from this world can only be described as horrifying. And beautiful. I was scared. I was alone with her. But as much as I dreaded it, I would not have been anywhere else in the world.

One of the strongest memories I have about Madge is how she would stroke my hand, my arm, or my leg as we sat on the couch together watching television. She used to place her hand on me and occasionally and almost absentmindedly, stroke her thumb across my skin. I never paid much attention to it then, but now that she's gone, I remember her touch. So, as she lay dying, without even realizing it then but remembering it well now, I held her hand and stroked her skin. I remember looking at her fingernails and feeling really upset with myself that I had nicked her skin the day before as I clipped her nails. She murmured in her sleep and was talking to someone as if they were in the room with us. I felt without a doubt that it was my Uncle Budie and after nearly 50 years apart, they were about to be reunited. I whispered for her to go to him and she did.

I have lately become fascinated with “Cross Country” with John Edward, the medium who proclaims to talk to the dead. There is a part of me that feels in my bones that he is indeed able to do what he says he can do. He says that when something really unconventional happens when you’re thinking of a loved one that has passed, it’s just their way of trying to break through and let you know they are with you.

One day last summer, while camping high above Leadville, I was thinking of Madge, as I always do when I look to the stars. As a kid, I would spend the night with her on the weekends and as we crossed the yard to her house on the blackest of nights we would stop to find the Big Dipper. So that night, after the campfire was out, I stared up at the stars and asked her to send me a sign. I felt childish making such a request. And as I was thinking how silly it was, a shooting star caught my attention out of the corner of my eye. I held my breath, wondering if I had seen it or imagined it. “Madge, was that you?” My silent question was answered quickly as another shooting star, brilliant, with a long tail, arced across the night and fell…right into the Big Dipper.

Now, it could have been a coincidence, but it stopped my heart. I didn’t know what to think, and I still don’t. But John Edward knows.