Only two times in my life has something so inexplicable happened that I haven’t known what to do with the memory of the event. What I narrate here is one such event. It happened many years ago now, but my recollection of the incident is as fresh as if it happened yesterday.

In my entire life, this is the only time when something happened which my rational mind said couldn’t have happened. It couldn’t have happened because the person who came to me very briefly had been dead for some years.

You may say that this is a bridge too far. But my response can only be what I know. While I don’t understand it, and I can’t explain how it happened, I absolutely believe it did happen. It happened many years ago now. But, my memory of the event hasn’t faded. I think it hasn’t disappeared because I had never had such an event happen previously, nor have I ever had it happen since.

So. To recap. Someone dear to me, who had been dead for some years, came to me and told me something. In no way did this present itself like a dream – something fuzzy upon wakening. On the contrary, this visit felt absolutely real. Flesh and blood reality. The visitor was someone I had known very well and had loved, who was not blood kin of mine, but blood kin of people dear to me.

The message was straight forward. I was going through a particularly rough patch in my life. The words were comforting words reassuring me that it would all be alright.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t usually have dead people come to talk with me. The event had nothing scary about it, it was not the result of watching one too many Hitchcock thrillers. It was actually quite kind.

Just a few words telling me that all would be okay. That’s all. You don’t know me – perhaps you think this is just imagination. My response to that suggestion is that my imagination isn’t that good. This wasn’t some kind of stress-induced vision. No weird drugs were involved. Just an ordinary night when something extraordinary happened.

If God the Father can raise His son Jesus from the dead, then surely, he can send a known messenger to a distressed woman to assure her that it would all be okay. The only part that seems beyond my comprehension now is why, so many years later, I have felt compelled to put it on paper. Perhaps that will be something discoverable in time