Up until recently, I realized that something that happened fourteen years ago could very well have been an ADC from my mom. My mom died in 1988 during a quadruple bypass. The night before she passed, I was all set to go to the movies at the Navy base where I was stationed. There wasn't anything playing that interested me, so I decided to head back to my barracks, and make a phone call. I felt compelled to call my mom. Not two minutes after she answered the phone, she decided to tell me that she was going in for a quadruple bypass the next day.

I was only 18 at the time, and she didn't want me to worry about her. She had a bypass five years earlier, and she came out okay, but she changed her mind mid-conversation, just in case. I'm so glad that she did, because Mom died during the surgery. When I was called to the chaplain's office, I started to cry before he even said anything, thinking back to my mom telling me about her surgery. I was flown home to be at my mom's service. I gave her a kiss on the cheek in her casket.

Five years later, I was sitting at a bus stop, and I happened to look at one of the passing buses. Inside the bus, I saw my mom's husband, Bill. He was so heartbroken when my mom died, but we just lost touch after. When I got home, I thought about if Bill still lived in their old apartment. I didn't have a car, so I made a day trip on the bus. I was so glad that Bill answered the door when I rang the doorbell. He was very happy to see me. We sat and chatted for a little while. He said to me "Your mom wanted you boys to have these," and he took out some photos from his photo album.

There was a photo of my mom and her first husband, Jake, when she was 22. It's my favorite photo I have of her. Also, there were a few of my baby pictures. He also gave me Mom's address books. I treasure those today, because I have her handwriting with me, and I found some family through those books that led to some nice reunions later on. Do you think this was an ADC from my mom? I sure do!

I also believe that she influenced Bill to be in the right place at the right time for us to connect again. Thinking back to the phone call I made to her the night before she died, I think that she was nudged, maybe by her own mom or dad, or even one of her guardian angels to tell me, so that we would have that opportunity to talk before she passed. I still talk to her, and it's so important to talk or write to them, even after they're passed, because they can and do listen.

What's even more amazing is that just a couple of years ago, my brother found one of our sisters that Mom gave up for adoption years before we were born, for reasons we don't really know. My sister, Gayle, looks just like my mom, and I look so much like both of them. I am so happy that my mom gave me so many ADCs. Up until just a few days ago, I never even made the connection that these were, in fact, ADCs, until I read some posts at Bill and Judy Guggenheim's ADC message board that dealt with the loss of a mother. For the past four years, I've been reading up so much on ADCs since my son's experience with seeing and hearing my dad telling him "I'll always be with you," and it's so nice to know that my mom was right there for me from the beginning, just as my dad has been. Just because I haven't been able to recall my seeing my mom in a dream visit doesn't mean that she hasn't connected with me in some way. I only had to pay closer attention. I wonder if she helped my brother find our sister. Absolutely!

God really does work wonders, doesn't He? There is one more thing that I find really neat. Whenever I'm writing a poem on my computer about ADCs, my mom, dad, or my kids, etc, and also when I'm posting about ADCs, the cursor on my monitor will slowly drift from the right side of the screen to the left. It never does that when I type. Wherever I set my cursor is where it always stays, but coincidentally, it only drifts when I write about ADCs. It started to drift when I was writing about my sister, Gayle. The funny thing about that is that the cursor always happens to drift across the exact spot on the screen that I happen to be typing.

Could that be a sign from my mom, telling me she liked what I just wrote, or my dad, or whomever I'm writing about at that particular moment? Absolutely! If you have ever doubted that your loved ones do hear you, because you haven't had an ADC from them, you may already have, so know that they do hear you. The signs that they send us are so frequent that we can miss them so quickly, but we may also discover later on exactly when and where an ADC happened. It took me many years to realize that my mom had already given me several ADCs, and I came to realize all of them at one single moment. Coincidence? Wishful thinking? Absolutely not! The more open you are to receiving them without being too overwhelmed, the easier they are to recognize, and the more frequently you WILL notice them.