Being Hugged By A Hoover

Since my mother’s death twelve years ago, I’ve regularly swapped “spirit world” stories with both strangers and friends. For me, it only takes hearing someone’s claim to have spoken with—or for—the spirits of the dead to get me wishing that I could nose my way into an intriguing conversation about the “other side of the veil.”

Admittedly, like an amateur sleuth who’s binged on too many episodes of TLCs “Long Island Medium,” I am easily captivated by even the most suspect “evidence” of communication with those belonging to the sweet hereafter. In truth, none of my own consultations with mystics and mediums could be classified as informational home runs, but a few have been eerily on the mark. As a result, I remain enamored of the idea that departed family members can queue up at a kind of psychic payphone and wait their turn for help in making a long-distance call.

Rationally, of course, I “understand” the argument of those who insist that such communication defies plausibility and is too much of a stretch. Or, at least, I “get” it. From a logical standpoint, it makes more sense to view chats with the dead as indicative of dips into magical thinking—the kinds that occur when we are flattened by heart sickness for a loved one who’s left us. As such, I recognize the validity of their belief.

With my mom.

However, as an intuitive gal—and a psychologist—whose brain is wired to consider all sorts of weird ideas and lots of “what ifs,” I am reluctant to judge psychic phenomena as pure nonsense and sham. After all, I’ve reminded myself (and told anyone polite enough to listen), I have more than a few of my own “I know what I saw, or heard,” tales to tell.

In fact, one incident in particular stands apart from others in my memory—one bend of reality which was also witnessed by my commonsensical husband, thus lending it weight.  I believe it provides me with a sort of  “street cred” that I might otherwise be unable to claim.

As it happened, I had a chance to trade this very story again only last week, when, at a neighborhood BBQ, I overheard a young woman describing a Zoom consult she’d recently had with a clairvoyant: her mother, who’d died five years ago, was the subject the medium contacted from the “spirit world,” whom she’d identified with her old nickname, and then went on to nail her personality absolutely. “I hadn’t known what to expect because I’m not really into the ‘woo-woo,’” Jane gushed. It was then that she’d admitted, “Basically, I did the whole thing as a lark .”

Shortly afterward, when the conversation began to shift, I pulled Jane aside and, after some brief banter, shared with her a plan I’d once pitched to my staunchly religious mother: “Just drop a few white roses where I can easily find them,” I’d suggested, secure in the knowledge that roses of that color were her favorite; and no one could possibly “guess” such a specific detail. “On the driveway would be good. Or maybe at the front door?”

Laughing as we ate our hamburgers, I clued Jane in about the puzzled look that had then crossed my Mom’s face: she was a woman who’d spent her entire life obeying the church’s rules and following its sacraments in exacting detail, feeling that it was imperative to ascertain she’d have in her pocketbook all the right tickets for entry into heaven. She’d probably given little thought to what or whom she was leaving behind.  

“Earth was my Mom’s purgatory,” I clarified to Jane. “The physical world was not a place my mother fretted about leaving. Rather, she viewed it as a place from which to escape.” I described how my mother had waved off my proposition about scattering white roses before her youngest daughter: “Oh, Terry,” she’d answered, “I don’t know if I can do that."

With a cheeky attitude, I’d responded: “Wouldn’t you think, after naming me after a saint famous for her ability to make flowers appear from nowhere, that St. Therese would teach you how to toss a few at my feet?”

Looking squarely at Jane, who now had a smile of amusement on her face, I decided to enlighten her by including the way in which our conversation had ended: I’d  patted my mother’s powdered cheek and said in a quiet tone, “Just tell me you’ll give it a try.”

“No way,” Jane whispered, as I paused to take another sip of my Chardonnay. “You did not find a bouquet of roses on your driveway.”

“Nope. Not a single bud in a dozen years.”

From Jane’s tone, it was obvious that she had hoped I would recount a special delivery bouquet from above. This prompted me to move on to the more elusive element of this story: several months after Mom had passed, her vacuum cleaner powered up of its own accord, no on/off switch required.

“No way.” Jane again. Louder this time.

“No, really,” I asserted as I explained that I’d been running my Mom’s old upright across our family room carpet when, mid-task, I turned it off to have a brief convo with the “practical” man who also happened to be my husband. “Five minutes later, while we’re still gabbing away at least a dozen feet from the sweeper, it fires up with a ‘vroom!’”

Anticipating the question that would inevitably arise as I shared this vignette with Jane, I told her why I believed it was my mother’s spirit, rather than some electrical malfunction that had caused the strange occurrence. The incident, I explained, had been a one-off. To this very day, the machine operates without a hitch.  

“But here’s the point,” I went on. “Vacuuming my mother’s rugs, especially when she became old and frail, was part of our routine. A way in which we connected. She’d sit in her favorite chair and watch me as I did the roll-around.” Raising my red Solo cup, I smiled. “I should have known that being showered with roses wasn’t my mother’s style. But being hugged by a Hoover? Totally Mom.”

In the days following my exchange with Jane, I’ve considered more carefully the ways I fit into what some researchers describe as the “profile” of someone with paranormal beliefs.

Female? Check.

Scores high on measures of empathy? Check.

Has a tendency to blur the distinction between animate and inanimate objects? Totally me.

So it was not surprising when, early this morning, as I walked past the crystal vase of white roses which sat on a table that had belonged to my mother—the exact same blossoms I’ve replenished each week since her passing—I heard myself toss out a cheery, “Hi, Mom.” Clearly, I’m the sort of soul who meets at least some criteria for paranormal leanings, inevitably believing that the veil between the physical and spiritual world is thin, and that contact between the two realms can and does happen.

If some others think I’m weird because I am willing to entertain the possibilities of reality, I’m okay with the label.  My riposte would be that rejecting life’s mysteries is just not my thing.