Growing Up With Maureen

At one Medium’s Day, at the New London church, Barbara had a reading from a medium from the nearby Norwich church. Terri was a long-time member of the Norwich Spiritualist Church. She had experience in a variety of Spiritual organizations and brought all her training and goodwill with her to New London that Saturday. Barbara sat down with her, and Maureen came through. Terri said Maureen had problems ‘up here’ and patted her head. She was referring to Maureen’s mental disability. Further Terri said she didn’t have it anymore. It was one of the best evidential readings Barbara had, before or since. Terri also said, ‘Maureen will move a picture to let you know she is around.’ That afternoon after Barbara relayed the substance of the reading to me, we did a survey of the pictures in the house. None of them seemed to be in a different place than usual. Every few days we took another look around, longing for some trace of a visit. Nothing. One of the October weekends when her brother Martin was home we all went to the spiritualist church in New London. After service there was a raffle to raise money for the church. A small painting was being raffled. It was a hand painted snow scene of trees and snow drifts. Although Barbara hates winter, she liked the painting. She said to herself ‘I want this for my office”. When the winning ticket was drawn it belonged to Martin who immediately handed his prize over to Barbara. When we arrived home Barbara put it on the dining room table. It sat on the table and was leaning backwards onto the chair which was tucked under the table at the far end. On Christmas Eve Martin was home from college. Maureen’s absence was felt by us all, especially Barbara. Marty and I were worried about how Barbara would be doing, knowing the one who delighted in Christmas wasn’t with us. Martin and I volunteered to pick up Chinese food for dinner, so Barbara didn’t have to cook. When we returned, we began arranging the food on the dining room table. Barbara looked up and said, “You only got three egg rolls”. Marty and I looked at each other with ‘Uh-oh’ expressions. Maureen was so close to Barabara’s thoughts; we were a family of four still. At that moment, the framed snow scape at the other end of the table flipped down onto the tabletop with a bang. We looked at each other in stunned surprise. Maureen had moved a picture and was with us as predicted months before Christmas Eve. The picture was unharmed, but the mood was broken. We went from missing Maureen terribly to knowing she was with us. We sat down to eat our Chinese dinner. Christmas passed more easily for her presence.