Sunglasses make a reappearance

Maybe I shouldn’t bother to post this trivial bit of information.  It won’t even make any sense to anyone who hasn’t read my post for yesterday.  For anyone who has read it, however, you will understand why it’s significant that I found my rather expensive sunglasses today.

But do I think it’s evidence that Mary, my sister who died 13 years ago and to whom I often ask for help when I’m looking for something I’ve lost, is in some way responsible for my finding the sunglasses?  Well, let’s put it this way:  if instead of sunglasses, I’d received advice to put a thousand dollars into the stock market, I wouldn’t do it.

I’m willing to concede that there are a lot of things that happen in this universe that seem mysterious or strangely coincidental, but they don’t seem to me to approach anything like prove of life beyond the grave.  Finding my sunglasses isn’t nearly as improbable as someone winning the lottery and although it’s a ten-million-to-one chance that a person might win, it happens regularly. 

So my sunglasses remind me of Mary.  But I don’t give her credit for my finding them in the crevice of the car seat where they’d slipped.  Faith, by definition, doesn’t come with proof, though unfortunately it can sometimes be buttressed with superstition.  Which is what I would call giving Mary credit for my finding my lost sunglasses.  If I believe that death is not the absolute end of everything, it is not because I have received any kind of sign from beyond.

Besides, it wasn’t even on the anniversary of her death.  It was the day after.