Dear Reader:

While I was at the beach I came across an article by Guide Post…Mysterious Ways that I found fascinating. It is about the miraculous and inexplicable bond between mothers and their children.

Source: The Miraculous Bond Between Mother and Child: Evan Miller

An Army private during World War II, stationed in the South Pacific, hears the voice of his mother thousands of miles away in Baltimore, telling him to duck just seconds before a bullet whizzes over his head. At that precise moment, his mother, at the hospital recovering from brain cancer, sits up and yells, “Duck, James!”

A boy whose mother died when he was a toddler is visited often in his dreams by a woman with curly brown hair and blue eyes. She comforts him. The boy has no memory of his mother and no photos of her. Until, as an adult, he sees a picture. An image identical to the woman in his dreams.

A struggling young woman is visited in the middle of the night by her deceased mother, who tugs at her ankle and warns her to break up with the guy she’s seeing.

My search for answers led me first to David Kessler. He’s a renowned grief expert and the author of Visions, Trips and Crowded Rooms: Who and What You See Before You Die. In his research, Kessler has talked to thousands of people, many of whom have been visited by deceased friends and loved ones. He has noticed a trend throughout his many years of research.

“The person who visits the most is your mother,” he says. It’s not even close. At the time when we most need comfort—whether in grief or near death—it’s mothers who answer the call. Hospice workers concur. According to one nurse quoted in a 2019 Atlantic article, “everyone is calling for ‘Mommy’ or ‘Mama’ with the last breath.” The reason, Kessler says, is simple.

“Mothers are the strongest and first connection we make in life…it stays with us forever.”

There are millions of documented case after cases of mothers who come to their child’s rescue because of a seemingly inexplicable bond. Take the patient of Dr. Orloff who suddenly experienced intense stomach pains, only to find out later that her son—away at college—had appendicitis.

“Mothers have a sixth sense about their kids because of their strong connection genetically, emotionally and by virtue of carrying the child in their womb for nine months,” Dr. Orloff says. “Adopted mothers can also feel this connection on a soul level, and their intuition can reach out to save their children too.”

Research supports that mothers hold a special place in our consciousness. A 2016 Stanford University School of Medicine study found that children’s brains responded positively to their mothers’ voices in audio clips less than a second long. During MRIs, these recordings lit up parts of the children’s brains related to emotion, reward processing, facial recognition and social functioning.

After reading all of this…I couldn’t help but think about Ben’s story in his book about his experiences in Vietnam. Mother had made Ben’s favorite cake for his birthday….a chocolate cake…she wrapped it tightly and sent it literally through the mail to him in Vietnam.

Ben was just coming back from a patrol in the jungles when an officer told him he had a package. He opened it and there was mother’s chocolate cake…just as fresh as if she had made it that morning on his birthday July 26…because it arrived on his exact birthday. What are the odds?

Kessler concludes the article sharing his own story….his mother died in a New Orleans hospital when he was only 13 years old….he and his father moved away after her death and he didn’t return until decades later when he was giving a talk in New Orleans soon after Hurricane Katrina went through.

In late 2005, Kessler was in New Orleans to give a talk. The city had recently been devastated by Hurricane Katrina. He found himself outside the hospital where his mother had died, the building shuttered by the storm’s fury. Kessler hadn’t been inside since he was that 13-year-old.

Now he felt compelled to find closure there. He asked a security guard if he could go inside. The guard escorted him down the darkened hallways, past wires hanging from the ceiling, tiles ripped from the floors by floodwaters, broken glass everywhere. They made it to the ICU and, inside the doorway, Kessler turned, remembering that his mother’s bed had been the second on the left. There in the dark, above where his mother had died, Kessler noticed the call light. It was blinking green.

“Green means the patient is being seen,” Kessler says. “Forty-two years after she died, my mother was there looking after me.”

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So until tomorrow….Happy Mother’s Day to Everyone! When it comes to our mothers…(and others who were also a mother to us)….we never let the green light go out.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

We got a jump on Mother’s Day….John and Mandy invited me for a cook-out last evening. Jakie was dying to show me all he has learned in the pool and Eva Cate wanted to catch me up with all her goings-on…it was a wonderful time. The family gave me a beautiful garden butterfly decoration (See Eva Cate) that is solar, makes the water bubble and the wings flutter. Can hardly wait to put it in the garden!

Chef John outdid himself…my favorite meal!

Thank you Turners for a delightful evening. Monday I am going to Rutledge’s school to tell a story and they are having refreshments in the court yard for mothers and grandmothers. The fun continues.

Tommy sent these pictures of some of their fun adventures and new acquaintances in Dingle.