The Gate

                                                            by Laura Crum

            Ever since my husband died I have been trying to come to terms to what we can be now. Yes, you read that right. I’m sure that some of you, like me, believe that death is not the end of the human soul/spirit. Some of you perhaps believe a person’s soul goes to heaven (or the other place), some of you believe in reincarnation, and I know lots of us who believe we can talk to the spirits of our loved ones who have “crossed”, including our animals, and also think that we will see them again.

            I have never felt that I “knew” any particular thing about life after death, only that I strongly felt that death wasn’t the end for a spirit. And now that my husband has died, I have begun to get a lot of messages that he is still with me. This doesn’t really surprise me, in one way. I asked him to stay with me and our son, if it was possible. And I know that he would do this if he could. Andy was and is the most honorable being I ever knew, and I trust in his love for us. So yes, I believe he is with me.

            On the other hand it is perfectly possible that these messages are all in my mind. I am accepting of this. I don’t really care. If our future life is just a figment of my imagination, so be it. I choose to trust and let that trust guide me.

            But anyway, I have dreams where I am given messages and I have experiences in day to day life where I am guided, and it does seem pretty amazing at times, the signs I get. But something funny happened the other day that I’m sure you livestock people would appreciate, so I thought I’d tell the story here.

            First of all, I’m not trying to convince anybody of anything. It is, as I said, fine with me if this is all in my mind. So no worries if this story just seems like delusional thinking to you.

            Anyway, a week or so ago my friend/boarder, Wally, came pulling his horse trailer up my driveway, with one tire fiercely hissing as it leaked air (and scaring all the horses). When he unloaded his own horse, Wally said that he had hit my gate post. The tire was obviously the worse for wear and a piece of the trailer’s fender had been torn off, but I wasn’t hugely worried about the gate post, which is a big, solid, metal post, set in concrete. However, after Wally left I got a phone call from him.

            “I broke the gatepost,” he said. “I looked at it on the way out and it’s busted. You’ll need to have it reset and rebuild that part of the fence.”

            I wasn’t very happy about this, as you can imagine. I’m pretty fragile right now, and any little bit of adversity seems like the end of the world. I hung up the phone and cursed and swore. Then I made myself a whisky and soda and went down to look at the gate (OK, it was my second whisky and soda of the evening—but they are 90% soda—honest.)

            It was dusk when I got down there and the gatepost was clearly crooked. I put a hand on it and I swear it moved—the whole piece of fence next to it moved. I shook it several times, cursing and muttering to myself. I walked back up the driveway, crying.

            “This is all too much,” I said. “I need help. I can’t cope with this.”

            So I drank another whisky and soda and went to bed, pretty pissed off with Wally for being so damn careless. He didn’t even say he was sorry.

            The next morning I got up and called a friend just to complain. He told me to go down and have a look in the daylight and let him know how much work needed to be done. So I walked back down to the gate.

            The gatepost was still crooked and the fence leaned at a slight angle, just as it had the night before. But when I put my hand on it, it was perfectly solid. It wouldn’t move at all. The gate post was bent, yes, but still firmly rooted in concrete. The gate was closed just the way it ought to be—a two inch gap at the top the only difference. The fence was absolutely solid.

            I stared at the post. I KNEW it had been loose. Wally had told me that he’d broken it. We’re both livestock people—we’ve dealt with fences our whole lives. We weren’t likely to make a mistake like that about a gatepost and think it was broken when it wasn’t. How could it be solid now? And I know you all are going to think I’m losing it, but the thought came to me that I did get help.

            Now I have no idea what happened. The likeliest thing is that in the dusk, with two whisky and sodas under my belt, I thought the post was broken when it was only bent. But it still strikes me that I thought I had a big problem and it turned out to be non-existent. The gate was fine. A little crooked but perfectly functional. It may not have been a miracle in a material sense, but it was a miracle for me. I got the help I needed. And I thanked Andy.

            Since then I have had a lot of help that seemed magical beyond my understanding. I would hesitate to describe some of these experiences to others, because, like my story about the gate, they don’t make much rational sense. At the same time, I’m not making any of this stuff up. And I do believe my husband is helping me.

            So today I’m putting my little gatepost story up just in case there are others out there who have had experiences like this and can relate. It is absolutely fine to think I’m living in an imaginary land of wishful thinking. If this is all in my mind, so be it. I’m putting my trust out there anyway. And I can’t see that my thinking is any odder than the beliefs of many well-accepted religious faiths, now that I come to think about it.

            Anybody else have a magical story?