Love Doesn’t Die

My mother plays DJ from the other side

My mother died in January 1996.

Before her death, she told my sister, brother, and me that “if we did not remain in contact with one another that she would haunt us.” I believed her. You would also have — if you had seen how serious her facial expression appeared.

It was a hot summer day in Brooklyn, New York. Moving is stressful, but a cross country move is even more so, especially when leaving your entire family behind. My younger sister was moving to Los Angeles, California, for her new husband’s job. Fortunately, she was being transferred from her company’s New York City headquarters to their Los Angeles office.

Everything seemed to be going smoothly, but I could feel my sister’s tension. I felt worried for her, and a little for myself — with her going so far away. Even though it was a new beginning for her, it felt sad on many levels.

I knew she would miss seeing her nieces, my daughters, and the rest of us, too, of course. My girls loved their aunt — her physical presence was a regular occurrence in their lives. As she was in ours. We were all there for each other and enjoyed living near one another. And our brother lived next door to me. It was a brief period in our lives when we were all living nearby. I’ll always be grateful for that time.

It seemed my sister felt all of that — grieving the loss of the proximity that was taking place.

As we were packing up my sister’s life — a song came on the radio, O-o-h Child by the Five Stairsteps.

I said, “everything is going to be ok with your move. Mom’s here. This is my song from her that tells me when things will be alright.” With that, she said, “What!? This is my song from Mom! She sends me this song!” We laughed for a while because it was kind of like — “no, that’s my song from Mommy” — like we were two little kids all over again.

We had the powerful realization that we had discovered the same song independently, each multiple times, as a message from our mother.

Synchronicity. Its definition is “The simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection.” If ever there was synchronicity, it was evident with this.

A few months after our mother died, I visited a very famous psychic (name deliberately withheld) who gave me a hauntingly accurate reading. In it, I was advised that my mother would communicate with me via music. I think that was an understatement.

I began to notice that whenever this particular song (O-o-h Child) came on the radio was when I needed some sort of reassurance or when I was experiencing tremendous grief. Then, it was played “off format” for the station that I was listening to. It was being used in a radio documentary. That one blew me away.

Now that everything is digital, the song will pop up on my playlist “just at the right moment” — again, feeling like my mother is all around me. Or, the song will be playing in some random place — a reminder that Mom is saying hello.

I’ve been told that those that have crossed over try to communicate with us all the time. We can learn to pick up those signals from the other side if we choose. I’m pretty sure that I’ve managed to interpret one correctly.

“O-o-h Child, things are going to get easier, o-o-h child things will get brighter…” — I’ll take that message any day.

Jennifer Friebely is a New York-based content writer covering stories from personal development, marketing, and productivity to politics and music to whatever idea strikes. She has a 30+ year background in marketing and advertising and holds a BA in Political Science. Email her at [email protected].