The Kind Of Surprise I Like

As a courtesy to people unfamiliar with my experiences, I will give background on the spirits residing in and around my home. There is a little boy named Adam who died in the house and sees the room he is in as his sanctuary. My maternal grandmother, who is here as a guardian to her family, by choice, and my friend, Charlie, who is my guardian, also by choice.

My three best friends all have some level of medium qualities. There is Jay, who is sensitive and can interact, but only to a certain degree. He used to run ghost hunting trips in Pilgrim's Rest (one of our country's most haunted towns) and has the most amazing pictures taken in the graveyard. Elaine, who is sensitive, like me. She feels and hears more than she sees, and my gran has taken to communicating to me through her. Finally, there is her husband, Tim, who is a full on medium. He can interact on all levels, gets premonitions of deaths to come, and is almost constantly on sensory overload due to this sensitivity.

This past weekend we were all together again in my home. My twins had celebrated their 7th birthday and I had arranged a party for them, so Saturday morning was hectic from the start. The venue I chose only had the morning session available, so by lunchtime the party was over and we were all relaxing at my house. We decided to have a braai (barbeque) for dinner, and afterward, as the kids played inside, the four of us sat outside, in our favourite spot, under the lapa overlooking the pool. If you exit the house via the glass sliding door, you walk directly into the lapa. When entering, you see the braai in front of you, roughly 5 metres away. Elaine and I always sit to the left of the braai, where there is a wall, as to the right is a small walkway and then the swimming pool.

Saturday evening we were sitting in our favourite spot as usual, the guys had gone to get themselves something to drink. As Elaine and I were chatting I suddenly caught a scent. And this wasn't a slight wisp of a scent, making you wonder if you had in fact smelled something that hadn't been there before. This was full on, like the person (and it is a feminine scent so I knew it was a woman) was standing right next to me, to my right, and between Elaine and I. I looked at Elaine and she was staring at me before asking, "Do you smell that?" I nodded and told her I think I know who this is too. I got up out of my chair and headed into the house, looking for Tim. He had been in the room with my mom, she had been feeling ill. He left the room just as I entered the passageway and I immediately asked him if he could sense someone with us who wasn't usually there. He grew pensive for a moment, trying to sense, and he looked at me and said, "Just give me a minute" and he headed to the TV room.

I followed him to where he sat down on the couch. Now I was anxious, because my gut was screaming that I knew who this was, but I needed confirmation. He told me it was a woman, elderly, with a wonderfully kind heart. As he said that, I remembered a picture in my dining room, so I asked him to walk with me and took him to the picture. When I pointed at her, he smiled and said, "She's here" and I started to cry. Now, not only had my maternal grandmother, who I had never had the chance to form a living bond with, come to be part of our lives, but the only grandmother I ever knew, who I loved with all my heart, my dad's mom, was here now too.

I remembered the day she passed away, she had been terribly ill with cancer, and we had been 500km's away from her when she passed. But the morning of her passing, as I was standing bent over the basin in the bathroom, brushing my teeth, I heard her say, "My time" as clear as a bell, as though she was standing in the doorway right behind me. She eventually passed seven hours later.

Tim and I returned to the TV room and my gran, her name was Mary, started communicating. She spoke of things we shared, little moments that she and I knew about. How she knew, the day that she decided to make a list of where she wanted her worldly belongings to go to after her passing, what she wanted me to have. Two things specifically. The one was a watch. A gold watch, which was simple and yet so elegant, with the finest little gold chain hanging down from the clasp. Since I was a little girl I had been fascinated by this watch, loved it. She mentioned that we had gone to visit them once and I had noticed that she was not wearing the watch, and I had asked her to show me where it was, because I was afraid it was missing. Not even my mom knew that.

The other thing she left me had me falling to my knees the day my parents came home with it. When my ex-husband and I had split up, he took the one thing that he had bought as a gift to me, the one thing he knew I needed, being left alone with our twin boys who, at that stage, weren't even two years old yet. When my parents arrived that evening, my dad called me out to his car, told me that my gran had been insistent in her wishes that this had to go to me, and then he removed the sheet covering my gran's brand new washing machine. She had taken to heart a conversation we had over the phone one night, when I told her that my ex had taken my machine and she gave hers to me. Hearing Tim relate this, especially given that I had never told him about it, had the tears running freely. And, when I looked at Tim, he was crying too.

I told him that she was such an amazing woman. She had been one of a set of identical twins, and when I was a girl, I looked like a mirror image of the two of them. I also had given birth to my own set of twins, and ouma-grootjie (great grandmother) was so proud and thrilled that she could be a part of their lives. She never held any grudges, never spoke ill of anyone, and abhorred fighting. She managed to touch people's lives, in some miraculous way or another, even if she spent 5 minutes with them. She exuded love and compassion. Tim noted that she had so much love and light in her that it seemed impossible to be housed in such a tiny form. He then looked at me and asked me if my sister and her husband were trying to have a baby. I told him, as far as I knew, they were thinking of starting a family. Then he told me that my gran wanted me to go and buy pink wool and start knitting. And she had said, congratulations with the daughter. This is the most exciting news ever. We spent the better part of three hours communicating, before she let go, telling me that she had been with me all the time, but I had not heard her until now. She also said that I could now rest assured that there is another soul in the ranks looking out for us.

On Sunday morning Elaine and I took the kids and went to the shops. And one important thing on my shopping list was wool. I noticed that Elaine's little girl had been around me constantly, following me wherever I went. When we got home we mentioned this to Tim, and he said, "She's following your gran. She likes her; she's a real 'cookies and cola' granny, the kind any kid wants to be around". He also stated that gran was very impressed, not only did I buy the pink wool, I also bought the exact kind that she wanted.

I asked Tim to ask gran if she had seen my cousin, who I had spoken about in "She Didn't Want Us To Sleep" and she answered saying that she was ok and she promised, in due time, she would come say hallo as well.

I really feel terribly blessed.