He's sending him the right thing
My thoughts often revolve around God, religion, intent, coincidence, and is there life after death type of quandaries.
There are only so many times I can chalk things up to coincidence before I have to question -- Are the spiritual things which happen in my life governed by physical laws which are yet to be figured, or is God looking out for me?
I'm going with God, and not just to cover my ass. God makes the most sense to me and the relationship doesn't feel like it's with my imagination. While I feel confident there is a God, I don't feel secure in a truth of life after death.
When hooky things happen I run it through a categorical checklist: coincidence? Physics? God? Dead relative?
When I first met Rich his grandfather had died fairly recently (a year or two prior). Rich told me that he finds marbles all the time and that he thinks they may be from "Pops". Since this hooky thing wasn't happening to me, it didn't really merit the checklist right off the bat. I was pretty much, "if you think so."
Marbles were big in the seventies, they're everywhere -- if he likes to think they are from his grandpa, I think that's kind of sweet for him. I kept the "if you think so" attitude to myself -- on the outside I was more, "awww, that's nice."
Well, you can only go so many years with a man coming home from work, pulling his hand from his pocket and showing you the find of the day before you start to wonder.
Rich builds retaining walls, so he's going to be digging in the dirt -- the best possible place to find a stray marble, right? But he does a lot of new construction -- how many stray marbles are going to be out in the cornfields? Plenty. He finds one on every job he does. Month after month, year after year --marbles spot the pocket change jar. When the jar gets full, he puts the marbles in a separate marble jar -- which currently holds a good number of marbles. Truly, what are the odds?
I still don't know what to think, but when I go into the cupboard and see the most recent collection of marbles in Rich's change tub -- I can't help but smile and feel a little bit of warm comfort from the sight.
I hope it really is Pops, that would be truly cool.
Labels: rich
posted by kim at
10:30 AM
3 Comments:
i love this post. and i love that rich finds marbles and keeps them as a reminder of his grandfather. i'll have to say, i'm outside a LOT, walking the dog, in the park, running at the lake.... i've NEVER found a marble. i'm not LOOKING for them, but again, they're fairly obvious if they're a color other than dirt.
and i'm with Rich...i think our dead relatives, especially the ones we were especially close to, send us signs. example. my Papa (grandfather) passed away in late October. i loved him so much (i'm even crying as i type this). i was so lucky that i got to say goodbye mere days before he passed. This Christmas, my boyfriend and i went to one of the amazingly lit houses in the neighborhood. we got out of the car for a closer look and from the house came a short, pleasingly plumb black man in a santa hat with a basket of candy canes. he talked, acted like and phrased things JUST like papa. i knew i was somehow led there so i could spend one more christmas remembering papa and how much he loved doing for others, just like this man did. i'll be back there every christmas from now on just so i can feel closer to him.
maybe i got a little off topic there, but i had to write that down somewhere....
Great story Mel.
My beloved grandma died last year and I would love to come across something that made me think, hmmmm. But so far, nothin. But she wasn't sentimaental like that in life either.
I've been pondering death a little differently since she died. I was there just after she went.
I don't know what I expected -- I guess I expected to feel the presence of her spirit in the room or something more "chicken soup"-ish than what really happend. It just felt really final and empty and gone :o(.
Beautiful posts, both of you.
I lived in a post WWII house in the seventies. Marbles used to come up out of the ground all the time and, for this reason, I have a fascination with marbles. I would notice if a marble were laying around somewhere begging to be picked up yet I have *never* found a marble after we moved from that house. I think that something special truly is happening to Rich!
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