Wishful thinking?

The wonderful Gothic architecture in Antwerp . . .

I don't often post "personal" thoughts on here, but today I would like to share these with you.

The day before yesterday, when I was sweeping the yard, I was thinking about what had happened to a forum friend (and fellow blogger) when she was sorting out her grandmother's effects, in that something very like a sign had been given to her that could well have come from her grandmother, who had recently died. In fact, I would go so far as to say it couldn't be anything other than a sign . . . I was thinking about my dad, who died in 1980. We were VERY close and when he died suddenly, I fell to pieces completely. I wished that somehow he had been able to give me a sign that there is something beyond death, not just a complete finality.

Whilst I was baking this afternoon, my husband came and dumped a pile of my mum's old papers in the middle of the kitchen table, so I had to quickly go through them and sort out what needed burning, pretty well all as it transpired. However, loose, in the middle of the pile of envelopes, I found a tiny printed book by Thackeray, "Notes of a Week's Holiday" about a stay in Belgium, with a picture of a cathedral in Antwerp inside the cover. My dad had been stationed there during the war, and I knew that the book would remind him of his time there, and perhaps rekindle memories of his Belgian sweetheart- she came from Antwerp. They had been engaged, but the romance fizzled out when he returned home to England. Inside the fly leaf, in tiny writing, is the inscription, "Percy from Bronwen, Xmas 1908." I don't know who they were - obviously a previous owner of the little book.

Now, I had gone through my mum's effects after she died last year, and it had been me who had put these envelopes in the drawer. Yet, I have absolutely NO recollection of this little book at all. I would swear I have never seen it before. Perhaps I missed it then. Perhaps it is just wishful thinking on my part that makes me want to think it is a sign from dad, as that would be so comforting. I'll never know for sure, but it was dad's, and precious to him, and it's in my special little box of his photos now.