The Case of the Ninety Six Flowers 


My 93 year old mom has a meaningful encounter with the memory of her late husband. 

We just recently celebrated my mother's 93rd birthday with a cake and just close family. She was just delighted with all this attention, as she always is. To the left is a small picture of her with two of her seven great grandchildren. Even at this advanced age, and despite having serious macular degeneration and painful osteo-arthritis, she still insists on making lunch for the two of her children still living in town who drop in on their lunch break. She also still insists on beating the pants off of Stephen and me at Scrabble. Since I live 500 miles away, I try to call mom a couple of times a week, and almost always, the call is quite enjoyable.

Today, mom and I had one of our good conversations, exchanging the stories of which our lives are made. Towards the end of the conversation she asked, "Did I tell you about my Christmas cactus blooming?" I told her that she didn't. "Well," she continued, "I've never seen it so full as this time! You know, each flower is a beautiful red. Tom came in for lunch the other day, and he commented on how full that cactus was. We got to talking about it, and he was wondering how many do you suppose there are on there. I said I though there must have been about forty, but he was of the opinion that there were a lot more.

"When he came into the room to eat his sandwich, he said that there were exactly 96 blooms on that cactus. It hit me that that day was dad's [her husband's] birthday, October 22. You know he would have been 96 if he had of lived. And then I got this strange feeling. I really can't explain how I felt."

"Maybe you received a visit from dad," I volunteered.

"Well, no, I just felt that he had MADE IT. Made it to the other side."

"That's what Karl Jung called a synchronistic event, mom," I said.

"Now I knew you would have a name for it," she replied.

I said this to mom: "You probably remember that I told you that I had had a moment like that right after you called me and told me that dad had died [13 years ago]. After you hung up, I went into the dining room, and this feeling came over me. I said to myself, 'If anybody is going to heaven, Squee is.' And you know then about 3 months later, he came to me in a dream and told me that he knew so much more now that he was wherever he was."

Mom went on to tell me once again about how her grandmother came to visit her after her death back in 1951. I had heard the story many times before.

Mom said, "The day after Tommie counted those flowers, I decided to go out and check to see if there really were exactly 96 flowers. So I went and counted twice and each time I came up with 90. Then I noticed that exactly six blooms had wilted and fallen on the floor under the plant. So there really were 96 blooms on that cactus, one for each year of his life."

Make out of it what you will, I think it's a beautiful story. And it wouldn't surprise me at all if there were something to it more than coincidence. 

Posted: Wed - October 25, 2006 at 10:37 PM          

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