The Day I Met an Ancestor

I’m starting to hear voices from another world.

My skeptical self typically would respond to such phenomena with a giant “Nah”. Who were those people that seemed to speak from the great beyond? A creation of my own mind or actually the deceased that now appeared to be just a heartbeat away?

My wife’s mother Helen had died the previous day. Apart from the grief of the loss we were literally blown away by the ‘visits’’ she received on a daily basis from deceased friends, family, and ancestors. They literally swirled around her during her dying process.

Sometimes she reported that the room was full of celestial visitors and comment to her caretakers “Get me out of here, it’s too busy”. Other times she talked and laughed with what was later deciphered to be her mother, grandfather, husband, and close friend.

With each image that she experienced in her “visions” or “visits”, she seemed happy, even delighted, to see them.(Hospice staff routinely validate such experiences. They do not view them as delusional).

After her death, we sat up most of the night. We created a shrine, placing a photo of both parents and Kris’ great- grandfather’s mandolin on a small table along with a lit candle. We texted Karen and their dear childhood friend, Janice, in Hawaii. We all suggested music, which we played during this spontaneous memorial, as we waited for the mortuary folks to arrive. First, Kris played her mother’s favorite song, Moon River. After her body was removed, Karen played Blackbird by the Beatles:

Blackbird singing in the dead of night Take these broken wings and learn to fly All your life You were only waiting for this moment to arise

…. You were only waiting for this moment to be free

The night after the death, Kris sat at the window seat, looking out at the deep indigo New Mexican sky, radiant with stars. She was thinking of the deceased who may have come to help with her mother’s transition.

“If you’re here and you can, or have, the inclination”, Kris whispered, “show me a sign.”

The next afternoon we were sitting on our screened back porch where we had requested help from Helen’s deceased “visitors”. As we were chatting, Kris noticed a large green bug on my bare elbow. Startled, she got up quickly and told me to stay very still. As she approached to brush off the strange bug, she exclaimed, “It’s a praying mantis!” She moved in closer to observe the mantis. It cocked its head to the side, as if appraising her as well. At that moment, she decided to snap a photo with her phone, then gently, she brushed it off me.

She said, “I’ve only seen one mantis here and it was outside on the front porch several years ago.” As she finished her sentence, I noticed the praying mantis was now perched on Kris. “Now it’s on your shoulder!” I exclaimed. Carefully, we captured the mantis in a glass and took it outside, setting it free. Rather than leap away, it chose to linger on the porch steps.

Kris reached for her computer — she wanted to find out if the praying mantis had any symbolic significance. Years ago, she’d had a conversation with a woman in our village about totem animals. The friend told her that a totem animal represents a spirit and that you don’t choose your animal, rather, the animal chooses you.

According to the South African National Biodiversity Institute, if you find a praying mantis inside your house, it indicates the presence of ancestors. The Kalahari Bushmen in Africa worship and consider the praying mantis as the oldest symbol of God. They believed it to be an incarnation of God, and whenever they would sight one, they would try and decipher its message.

Here is what we found about praying mantis symbolism — there’s a lot but these were interesting…. Sign or coincidence? But I think our task is not to “believe or not believe”, but rather to open up to the mystery.

Recently we read how mythologist Joseph Campbell was once in his fourteenth-floor apartment in Manhattan, reading about how the praying mantis was a hero symbol in Bushman mythology. Campbell suddenly had a rare urge to go over to the window and open it. When he stuck his head out and peered to his right, he was startled to see a praying mantis staring at him.

A posting by Trish and Rob McGregor on the website The Mystical Underground captured my thinking about our and Campbell’s experience

“Think about it. How many praying mantises hang out on the 14th-floor windowsills of Manhattan apartments?”

Describing the appearance of this magical creature as a coincidence takes the poetry out of the experience. It was one of those awe-inspiring goose bumps revelations where the veil between this world and the next can sometimes seem very thin.

Kris had asked for a sign. Here’s what she wrote “Was this it, in the form of a praying mantis? Or was it just a coincidence? On the porch, the mantis had landed first on me, and then, as if to make sure we got the message before we returned to our conversation and forgot, it also landed on me. As its human-like head and alien green eyes fixed firmly on Kris’ earthly brown ones, it seemed to be answering her question:

Yes. We are here.

Our task is to pay attention.”