A Message from Pat Hadsell
I found this document in Helene’s files. I assume she typed it up to send to family and friends after Pat’s passing, since they wouldn’t have a memorial for several months.
On Tuesday morning, February 12, 2002, at age 81, Pat made his departure from the physical body.
THE MESSAGE FROM PAT
The state of my husband Pat’s soul, four months after his death, still concerned me until the night before his memorial service. The memorial service would take place at our country home on his birthday, May 22. Pat’s wish was to be cremated and to have his ashes spread on the grounds of our five acres. I just finished showering and decided to sleep on the daybed in our office. After lying down, turning off the light, I finally found a comfortable position, and before falling asleep, I let my mind wander down memory lane, reviewing the sixty years my husband and I spent together.
It was fifteen minutes later when something awoke me. I remember looking at the red numbers on the digital clock, indicating it was eleven fifteen before I closed my eyes, and now the time was eleven thirty. A fluttering sound, then something falling on the tile floor, aroused my curiosity. My first thought was butterflies…but how could they have gotten in the room? When it got quiet again, I turned over to go back to sleep. “It can wait until tomorrow,” I told myself. Next, I heard a loud thud, which got my full attention. This I could not ignore. I turned on the light by the bed to investigate. The floor was scattered with flowers and a box of Gaviscon. The box of Gaviscon made the thud; my husband kept the Gaviscon handy on the knick knack shelf beside the door to use when he had indigestion.
A month before my husband died, I had him place a basket of silk flowers on top of the seven foot bookcase in our office. I remember his commenting on how real the flowers looked. I purchased them at a craft store sale and piled them loosely in the basket until I was ready to use them. I enjoy making arrangements using greenery from the hedges on our property and adding plastic or silk flowers.
As I sat up in bed looking at the floor strewn with flowers and the box of Gaviscon, I realized that this was the message that I had been waiting for. It was then that I realized life goes on beyond this world. We go on.
When I was fully awake, I checked to see what might have caused the incident. There is no fan or air conditioner in the room.
Anyone can analyze what happened and decide that the laws of physics would explain all of it—that the door open to the living area sucked in a whisk of air producing the chain of events with the flowers. But what about the Gaviscon that was on the shelf across the room from the bookcase? And why that night? Why not during the four weeks the flowers were there before he died? We were both in and out of the room all day long.
I don’t need physics to provide me with an interpretation of this message sent from my husband. Remembering what happened helped me as I greeted family and friends who attended his memorial service the next day. My grandson showed a video that he produced, capturing my husband’s accomplishments and scenes of his family surrounding him. It made us all realize how his absence would leave a gap in our lives that could never be filled. The reign of flowers on that night will carry me from that day to the next for the rest of my life, and provide me with hope during the bleakest of times. We go on. My husband showed me.
