Resurrection Lily

CHAPTER 1

Resurrection Lily

Dad, seriously? How can one person accumulate so many boxes of crap! That’s what was going through my head as I opened the door to Dad’s home office closet. Thankful all the stuff inside did

not come tumbling out on top of me, I wasn’t exactly sure what I was searching for; there was just the feeling to investigate that closet while I was home visiting my parents.

Old photos were sticking out of one box, so I began there. Sifting through these pictures was very moving for me. I loved seeing my dad as a little boy—all the black-and-white photos plus the sepia ones of him as a little boy with his parents. Dad’s parents, as well as my maternal grandparents, died long before I was born, so learning anything about either set of grandparents was both exciting and fascinating for me. Seeing all of these hidden treasures of Dad’s childhood, I wondered why he never shared them with me before.

As I looked at all the great memories in front of me, I thought it would be an excellent idea to make Dad a scrapbook for his seventy-fifth birthday, which was later that year, August 2002. My daughter, Brooke, was only six months old, so I knew I would have time to sort through everything after I put her to sleep. I was sure if I kept at it for a few nights, I would be able to get through all Dad’s stuff.

One evening while sorting, I came across a piece of paper about my dad’s mother, Lillian, my paternal grandmother. However, the flowery verbiage of 1934, plus the decayed quality of what seemed to be a letter, made it extremely hard to read, almost illegible. It appeared to be a medical letter. I knew my grandmother Lillian had passed away when she was very young, at only thirty-three years old. As I attempted to read, I paused briefly on a word—metastatic. The overall message seemed to be about Lillian having an illness, but I couldn’t make out most of the words, and I wasn’t sure what metastatic meant. It didn’t faze me too much, as I didn’t mention that word or even the letter to either my parents or my husband, Jon. I was enjoying all the photos and focusing on my new scrapbook project for Dad’s birthday and mostly on keeping it a surprise.

A year later, when I was back home at my annual ob-gyn exam, I felt compelled to insist on having a baseline mammogram at age thirty-four, even though the recommendations in 2003 were to start yearly mammograms at age forty.1 Something seemed to be pushing me to insist on getting a mammogram—something in my subconscious. You can call the feeling woman’s intuition, the sixth sense, or that inner voice Oprah Winfrey is always talking about: the whisper on your shoulder. Some people call it universal energy, after-death communication, or even having an angel.

So, I had the mammogram. Results: mammogram normal.

I had another distinct overwhelming feeling after my son Ben was born in June 2004. The feeling hit me right as Jon wheeled me out of the hospital. I thought, Wow, I think this is the last baby I am going to have.

Why was my intuition telling me that? I’d always thought I would have at least three kids. So, while I was beyond joyful with Ben’s arrival, I had a deep sadness upon leaving the hospital, a bizarre feeling of sorrow and mourning so oddly contradicting my ecstatic newborn euphoria just ten seconds before Jon wheeled me out. My intuition told me it wasn’t postpartum depression. It was the feeling.

CHAPTER 2

Root Feeling

All I know is that I don’t know. —Socrates

I distinctly remember the first time I had the feeling.

As I stood in right field watching my third-grade classmate gear up to nail the yellow kickball, unknown energy raced through me, and in that instant, I knew the ball was going to come directly to me and I was going to catch it. In high school, I had the feeling when I dreamed that the mother of an old friend from middle school was in the hospital. The feeling seemed so random that I was compelled to awkwardly approach my acquaintance from middle school in the busy high school hallway the next day.

“Hey,” I said. “How are you? Um, I just have to ask: Is—is your mom okay?”

“No,” she said. “My mom is in the hospital.”

Intuition, coincidence, synchronicity, serendipity, spirituality? What was this? Telepathy? Can someone inherit “telepathy”?