Dear Carolynn

Dear Carolynn

A day or two after your funeral, you let me know you’d arrived safely where you needed to be. The butterfly you sent to escort me from the car to my front door told me everything. You already knew I’d felt this kind of comfort twice before—the dragonfly visit after Maggie, my beautiful Border Collie, passed away just months before you, and years earlier when Tess left in 2008.

Not long before Tess died in that terrible car accident, she and I talked about how she often sensed spirits. I confessed how I envied her gift. She simply said, “Open yourself up to it, darling.” Weeks later, she became my first spiritual visitor—a dragonfly carrying her message to ready me for an important dream later that night. I wonder now if that conversation we had was her sub-consciously preparing me, guiding me to watch for that moment of awakening.

At the time, I thought it was cruel irony that Tess’s death opened this door. But over the three years following her death, I received three unmistakable dragonfly visits—far beyond coincidence. I know the difference between ordinary nature and something much more. There was no irony, and she helped strengthen my resolve for the further grief to come my way.

It took five agonising years for me to come to terms with Tess’s loss. But Maggie was beside me through it all—her innocent, unwavering love, the kind only a pet knows how to give in full. The day after Maggie left, you were there for me, Carolynn– and a dragonfly circled the backyard all day, lingering in Maggie’s favourite spots. By that evening, I thought it had vanished—until I opened my front screen door. There it was, flying up the stairs at exactly the angle Maggie used to ascend to come inside.

I know not everyone believes these things. That’s okay. What matters is that I felt you, Maggie, and Tess. These moments are mine. I’m not religious, nor do I have to be to know there is some form of higher power. You, Maggie and Tess proved this to me.

Last night, though, a paranormal video sparked a forgotten memory: my father intervening to protect his wife, kids and a family friend the night before his funeral in 1987?

After viewing Dad’s body, Christine—a close friend of his and Mum’s—drove us home through unnervingly and unusual quiet streets. It was by no means late and there would normally have a reasonable amount of traffic at this time of the evening. But it was like we were the only people on the roads. It was freakily weird, especially after only half an hour or less after seeing Dad laying in his coffin. Maybe everything feels surreal under those circumstances.

Here we were, driving back. Mum sat in the passenger seat, my brother behind her, my sister in the middle between my brother and me, and I was behind Christine.

The journey from Mum’s Clayfield house to the funeral directors and back was no more than a 10 km round trip. On our way home, and only 2 km’s away from Mum’s, we turned onto a small bridge to cross one side of a railroad line to the other. To keep traffic flowing, the rules gave us right-of-way. We were turning right—but Christine stopped as if she had reached a stop sign.

Out of the darkness, an older model Toyota Land Cruiser with a bull bar and no headlights hurtled past from the right. Had Christine not stopped, none of us would have survived. The headlines would’ve been brutal: “Grieving family killed after viewing well-known newspaper journalist’s open casket.” Or some tabloid headline like that.

Now I wonder: Was it The Eagle (Dad’s nickname) intervening? That truck, speeding without lights… it would’ve obliterated us all. Christine stopped for no reason. Or maybe—for every reason. It’s impossible to know why because Christine was unsure as to why she stopped.

Our entire family could have been erased within a week. We just never know what the next moment brings us.