FMF31 2018 Day 30: VOICE

I am participating in 31 Days of Five Minute Free Writes 2018 (all of my submissions can be found here).

Today’s prompt is: VOICE

I was trying to wrap up my tasks Sunday night so I could get to bed. I had CNN on in the background. I kept stopping to watch, because Lisa Ling wanted to connect with her grandmother.

Lisa Ling has a show that airs on Sunday evenings, and this episode was centered on a town in New York that is known as a haven for mediums. Besides sitting in on another individual’s session, Lisa did her own session where she tried to connect with her beloved grandmother, who died some time ago.

Lisa’s asked her sister, Laura, to join her. As they sat with the medium, trying to conjure that treasured connection, things didn’t seem to be yielding any kind of result to speak of.

Therefore, Lisa pulled out an old-fashioned cassette tape recorder and popped in a tape that contained a recording of her grandmother’s voice. The grandmother was playing the piano and singing a Christian song.

The session didn’t yield any clear moment of “Grandma hovering in the room” or “Grandma’s spirit making itself known” or “Grandma mysteriously conveying through the medium some secret piece of information only Lisa and Laura would know.”

The medium told Lisa and Laura to look for more butterflies as that was  a way the grandmother’s love would manifest itself to them.

***end of five minutes***

I was sort of rooting for a more dramatic moment during the reading (although I have conflicted feelings about that type of thing in general).

Even without a transformational interaction with Grandma’s spirit, I was moved by the reassurance the sisters gained by listening to that old recording.

It’s the kind of reassurance that may alight in their own spirits again, as silently and unexpectedly as a butterfly.

Paula Kiger

Wife of one, Mom of two, Friend of many. My pronouns are she/her/hers.