Like Sylvia Brown. Only Catholic.

Nine years ago this month, my step-mother died, quite suddenly, of a massive, fatal heart attack at the age of 73, while doing some rather vigorous yardwork. That same day, my dad asked for a sign that my step-mom was in heaven. Now, you have to understand that my parents are Catholic, very Catholic, as in go-to-church and say-the-rosary every day Catholic. As in volunteer-every-day-for-some-worthwhile-cause Catholic.

At my mother's wake, hundreds of people lined up to give their condolences to our family. These people were individuals that we, the family, had never met before, people who my step-mother had helped in some way or another in one of her many volunteer roles. According to these strangers-to-us, my step-mother was already a saint-on-earth.

So, the night she died, my dad asked my step-mother to give him a sign, a specific sign, that she was in heaven. According to my dad, he asked her to send him a white rose.

The day after she died, before the wake, a nun from the convent a few miles up the road, where my mother sometimes volunteered, knocked on my dad's door. He opened the door. Standing in front of him was a nun from the convent. She simply said "This is for you" and then handed him....a white rose.

Had my parents pre-arranged this? My father claims that they did not, and that the nun says she simply received a "message" from my step-mother, requesting that she deliver a white rose to my father's doorstep.

I myself remain skeptical, but I know my father to be a truthful man. Coincidence? Who knows. I only know that I cannot judge the experiences of others as to whether or not contact is possible with those who have left this earthly world.