Can the Dead Talk to You?

I just came back from taking my dog for a walk in the flower field. Any elation in my mood has disappeared and is quickly being usurped by my anxiety and my depression. As I was walking I started thinking about suicide again...visualizing myself jumping off the city's highest bridge ...that would give me something to be anxious about....as I see myself hit the cement like water and break into a thousand pieces. I already feel that way. Broken into a thousand pieces.

...And then I look up, and in front of me, at the end of a row of dahlias, is a lone "Shoo Fly" plant.

My mom and I went to a "Seedy Saturday" a number of years ago, and she found seeds for this plant. In her loving care they ripened and sowed their progeny everywhere in her garden. She was delighted and told me I needed some in my garden, as she, in her giddy, funny way sung:

"Shoo fly don't bother me,
Shoo fly don't bother me,
Shoo fly don't bother me,
'cause I belong to somebody..."

I took some seeds for the next year and delighted in them popping up in my own garden as they had in hers. Eventually, they disappeared, stopped sowing themselves and I have not seen any anywhere in the garden for years.

My Mom died a little more than a year and a half ago. I can barely write those words. She was too lively, too caring and compassionate, too needed by all of us who loved her...to die so young and too soon. She had three months to prepare herself and her family for her death. One of the things she said to us before she died was, "I will see you in the moon, the stars and the sun". It was a powerful image that left me with the impression she would always be around in one form or the other.

Recently, I was laying in bed at 2:40 a.m. still wide awake, hardly able to breathe I was so anxious and agitated. I tried to make the anxiety stop, but it held my chest in a vice grip, suffocating me. I wanted to die.

I started imagining myself stabbing my chest over and over with a huge knife until finally my chest deflated and the anxiety dissipated. I think thoughts of suicide calm my anxiety sometimes. I see this in the thoughts I have of slitting my wrists and watching all the sadness pour out of me.

I got out of bed and stepped outside. What should be the first thing I see, but a huge full moon. I could feel Mom passing me a message of hope. I went back to bed and thought about it...scoffed at the idea but, finally, fell asleep.

I woke again at 5:40...thinking what a dumb belief. Mom's dead, she's gone...god why couldn't it have been me. I have no life and nothing to live for. She was needed and wanted and her life was priceless to our family. I wish it had been me. I would give anything to have her return.

The sun had just started to come up and the sky was that dusky shade of twilight blue. There, framed between the fog encased blueberry bushes and the the wide open sky, sat the full moon, huge as it began setting into the horizon. The image, and my belief Mom was trying to be there for me again, was haunting.

This afternoon as I walked through the flower field I came upon that row of blood red dahlias; and at the very end of that row, reaching out to touch me as I passed, was that lone "Shoo Fly" plant. None had been planted in the cutting field, and none had been in my private garden for years. I felt Mom brush up against me as I walked by...and I swear I heard, "...cause I belong to somebody".