Messages from George

by Sheila Greer

My ex husband died on December 11, 2008. We were divorced for twenty-two years but several years ago I spoke candidly with him about the past, about no longer wanted to hold on to the bitterness that had been the fruit of our divorce and about forgiving. It was very freeing, that conversation, and ever since we had a silent mutual understanding and friendship. He had moved on to marry two more times and I, once more.

Understandably his passing stirred up some old almost forgotten memories and affections and I didn’t know quite how to grieve over him since after all we had not been husband and wife for a long time. Over the weeks that my family was trying to come to some kind of acceptance that he was really gone, I began to function on autopilot. I would be going about my days in my normal manner and there would sometimes just be a sudden wave of realization that would wash over me and it would take my breath away with the significance of the fact that he was indeed gone. And I found myself missing him more than I had expected I would.

Then I received the “messages.” One such message that I didn’t understand at the time was that I saw one day while I was primping in front of my mirror, the image of a smiling face behind me. It was but a split second. One of those times when you dismiss what you think you see until sometime during the day you recall the moment and clarity rings in your spirit. It was him! But the image I saw in the mirror was feminine. It was, however, the same smile that my ex husband was famous for. As I began to think about this image and wonder at its significance, I had a recall of a time in my childhood. I remembered being at a funeral with my Grandmother and laying asleep in her lap. I remember waking up and seeing at the front of the church a movie screen. I might have been in a dream state because there was no movie screen at that church. On this screen was an image of my cousin who was the same age as me with whom I was very close. The dream disturbed me all of my life because I couldn’t sort it out and I wondered why my cousin’s image appeared to me that way at a funeral, smiling her big smile. More memories came flooding back and I remembered the many times I would awaken in the night lying beside my husband and feel the warmth from his body and listen to him breathe and get the feeling that he was not my husband at all but my cousin! Try and sort that one out.

During these flashes of memory I began to see that my ex husband was with me in a previous life as my little sister and she had died very young. The image I saw on the movie screen was not my cousin but the memory of the face of my sister. It just happened that my cousin resembled her.

This first message that came from my ex husband was a reminder to me of our relationship in that focus. The second message from him came through my eight-year-old granddaughter. I drive her to school for her Mom every day and a couple of weeks ago we were on our way when she began to speak about her Paw Paw. She was chattering away at me about her Paw Paw being a star in the heavens and about how he talked to her again and told her to tell me he loves me and misses me and then told me others in the family that he was supposedly sending messages to. And then she said a name I’d never heard and I asked her who this person was. She just got this furrowed brow and said she didn’t know but that Paw Paw missed him too. His name was George and since my ex’s middle name was George I just assumed that she had heard that before. I simply listened and responded with “how nice” and again asked her who is George. She didn’t know and then suddenly she said “his name is George Martin.”

After dropping her off at school and heading back to the house I decided I needed to know who George Martin might be. So I googled the name. One I found was a football player whom last year walked across this country raising money for families of the 9/11 attack.

The other George Martin was the producer for the Beatles. The very first you tube video that I “accidentally” fell upon was the song, In My Life. The article that I read about it this song stated that it was probably the best song according to critics that the Beatles had ever written! I listened to the words and it gave me goose bumps. All my life I have been listening to their songs and not once do I remember anything more about this song other than the very catchy tune. This is the song and I got the message through these words from George loud and clear.

“There are places I’ll remember
All my life though some have changed
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I’ve loved them all

But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new

Though I know I’ll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I’ll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more.” ¹

To me these messages have been a great comfort in missing a person who has been such a big part of my life. It does more than that. It confirms more than I’ve ever been aware of before now how Eternal Love really is. Love has no beginning and it has no end. Love is the Alpha and the Omega. Love and the connections it creates are never severed, they are never disconnected.

1 • In My Life, written by John Lennon and Paul McCarthy and produced by George Martin.