Dead Ex-Husband Alive at the DMV Part 12

Yesterday, Lily woke up with a clear intuition to visit her grandmother, Barrett’s mom, who for the last few years has lived in her hometown of Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, the "mecca" of Barrett’s former religion, where there’s a beautiful and cohesive community—an entire town’s worth of New Church people. Barrett went to college there, and he’d be thrilled to know she was making the effort to contact her relatives to make a trip happen. Our friend Steven was thinking that exact thought as he drove us to the San Francisco airport, Lily texting her cousin and exclaiming with glee, when I glanced up to see an exit off the expressway: “Barrett Avenue.” That second. That was pretty cool in and of itself, even cooler than the day before when Lily called me so I paused my book on tape, somehow at 1:55:55. And also cooler than when, on the plane, I told Lily my computer was using battery too quickly, was already at 68%, so she turned off my computer's wifi, leaving my computer battery at an amazing 55%.

It was our Christmas trip. He was making himself known.

I had been slightly unwilling to believe (because this may be getting old to some people, and because really I have no proof, do I?) that he was making himself known a week before, when we were decorating the tree. It was the one time a year I’d invited him over for dinner when he was alive—to put the lights on the tree (my not-favorite task) and to make us dinner. (Yes, I invited him over annually to make us dinner, and it was the same dinner every year, called, post-mortem, “The Barrett Dinner.”)

Lily put the lights up herself this year for the first time ever; my kid is a trooper. She is absolutely committed to having great holidays and loving life, even when she’s sad. So the lights were up, most of the ornaments were on, and she was staring at the tree, when she said, “Mom, see how that one light is WAY brighter than all the others?” Indeed. It was weirdly bright. Five times brighter. Transfixed for a moment, we were silent. Lily, because she’s like this, reached out and touched it. “Ouch!” she yelped, and that entire strand went out. “It was really hot!” she said.

Our friend Steven arrived for dinner and he simply IS all things Christmas, yet he had no explanation for the weirdly bright, burned-out light. My instinct then and there was that Lily’s dad was making his presence known: on that one day a year he’d come for dinner, on that one day a year he and I would simply get along, so our daughter would have a tradition that included both of us. Never in my daughter’s 19 years did we have a strand of lights go out, let alone have one amped-up bulb.

We kept it to ourselves; she’s less inclined to share, and even to my most mystical friends I hesitated to say, “There was a really bright light on our tree, and it was Barrett!” Because, come on. I completely see the ridiculousness of it, while at the same time I regularly and randomly feel his presence with no need to tell people or seek proof. And I’d have let this Christmas bright-light magic/weirdness recede into coincidence had this book not arrived today, reminding me of the synchronicity of the Barrett Avenue sighting.

So I texted his sister, who told me she had just been scanning photos of their grandfather, who Barrett strongly resembled, and had therefore been thinking of Barrett. I then texted our most heavenly new age friend, who said she’d recently come across a photo of Barrett and me from 1992. That’s a lot of Barrett, and synchronicity, and 55’s in one week.

“I Am The Word.” I will keep you posted.

>> 18 hours later: I quite enjoy the book. I read Chapter One last night. It is very Barrett. Had it been given to me by a client, I'd say they were very intuitive and possibly even guided from beyond by Barrett, due to the fact that Swedenborg is mentioned on page three, and that the book is just, well, verrrry Barrett.

But indeed it was not given to me by someone. I called Amazon. I waited happily on hold, while the customer service rep searched two times each for the USPS number and the Amazon order number, neither of which were in the system.

Neither of which were in the system. If YOU sent me this book, now is the time to jump out and say, "Surprise!"

I wonder if Paul Selig has ever had any other readers receive his book in the mail from anonymous and possibly post-mortem loved ones.