Messages from Daisy
Most of us will have experienced the loss of someone who we have loved dearly, and known the sadness and heartache that this temporary physical separation brings. However much we know that we will one day be re-united, we still grieve, and yearn for them to be there as they used to be. I’m sure they miss us too – after all, they love us as much as we love them and they aren’t going to simply forget all about us; and so they do what they can to ease our sorrow and to reassure us that we’re as still as much in their hearts as they are in ours. This applies to both human beings and to animals, and “Messages from Daisy” tells of the wonderful ways that our beloved pussycat – who passed on at the end of March 2005 and whose photo you can see on our title page – has been able to show us that even though she’s no longer physically here, she’s still very definitely close by.
Daisy has found several different ways of letting us know that she’s still around; ways that, at first, I found difficult to accept. But now I’m simply overwhelmed by, and so thankful for these many little signs of her nearness – not physical anymore, of course, but the real, beautiful, true self of a cat who was always so loving and wise and serene and who, I know, will continue to become ever more so.
Daisy first came to remind me that she wasn’t far away just two days after Steve and I had taken her to the vet’s to be “put to sleep”.
It was a Friday afternoon and I was standing in the kitchen making a salad when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a tiny movement in the passage. After a few seconds I saw it again. For the briefest of brief moments I registered the movements as being Daisy, making her way through the doorway from the dining-room and ambling along towards the kitchen: then my logical mind took over and said ‘of course it’s not her, it’s just a shadow.’ Where the shadow was coming from, I don’t know, but anyway, reason prevailed.
A couple of days later Steve and I were having a wander around the garden before dinner, and when we came back indoors he told me that he had seen Daisy underneath the archway. I, too, had caught a glimpse of her, also underneath the arch but, as before, I’d explained it away to myself as a shadow.
Could it be her? I wondered.
The next day I was feeling very sad and down-hearted and as I sat in our front room I imagined to myself how wonderful it would be if Steve E. a medium friend of ours, phoned to say he’d had a message from or about Daisy. Just at that moment, the phone rang – it was our friend, and he had phoned to pass on a message he’d just received about Daisy.
The following week, when we were at the Psychic Development Group we attend in Broadstairs, one of the girls gave me a message she’d received from Daisy. And one of the others said he had a sense of Daisy lying across my chest – just a few minutes before he told me this I had been thinking of her, and that is where I had pictured her.
Two days later I brought home Daisy’s ashes. I opened the cardboard box and took out the polythene bag containing the tiny collection of ashes. The bag was folded over, and when I unfolded it, there, right on top of the bag was one of Daisy’s hairs! Although I recognised it as being Daisy’s, once again my mind started trying to find a rational explanation. The bag of ashes was resting on a book my Mum had sent me: Perhaps, I thought to myself, the hair belonged to Henry (Mum’s cat) and had somehow become attached to the book and then attached itself to the bag of ashes. How complicated the rational mind can be, and yet most people still accept it as being reasonable!
The following day I noticed another of Daisy’s hairs – it was in the centre of the top cover of a book on my bedside cabinet. The title of the book was “Spirit Healing” by Harry Edwards, which seemed wonderfully apt. And yet still – still! – my mind was trying to provide a logical explanation: there were still lots of Daisy’s hairs everywhere; she used to sleep on the bed; perhaps one had migrated onto the top of the cabinet and landed right where it did, in the very centre of that book….
I suppose that I so much wanted these signs to be from Daisy, that I was half-afraid I was imagining them.
Okay, I said, I know I should simply accept that these are messages and that I shouldn’t be asking for more proof, and feel free to ignore what I’m going to say next because I’ll quite understand, but if you really are around, let me find a whisker.
About an hour later I went back upstairs to get something from my chest of drawers. Amongst all the bits and pieces on the top of it is a tiny, cut-glass jar with a lid on it that I don’t use for anything, and which just sits there. For some reason I suddenly reached out and lifted the lid. Inside, it was empty - apart from a single whisker! I guess I must have found it at some time and put it in there, although I don’t remember doing so.
I stood and gazed at it, awe-struck, a lump in my throat. Almost at once, that wretched logical mind started to elbow its way in, suggesting that perhaps my subconscious mind had known the whisker was there and now that I wanted it, my memory had brought it to the surface. But no. I do believe this was a message. I asked for a whisker, and I found one.
The day after the whisker, I thought I saw a movement near where Daisy’s food dishes used to be and I thought, ‘I bet if I looked in that exact spot, I’ll find one of her hairs’. So I did look and, almost immediately, saw a hair. How could it be? How many times have I swept and washed that floor since Daisy passed on? Once again, I found myself trying to rationalise. Then I stopped. Why shouldn’t she want to leave me messages, and let me know she still comes to us? And how awful for her, when she makes such efforts to do so, for me to try to explain them away. I must simply open my heart in love and trust, and have faith. Some things can’t be explained, they just are.
Two weeks later I was standing outside our back door, looking at the sunset. Not far away was the garden fence and I suddenly recalled the time when Daisy leapt up onto the top of it from an almost standing position, and, after an initial wobble or two, maintained her balance on its narrow ledge – as cats do. She was getting on in years then, and it was quite a feat. For some reason or other, I went to look at the spot on the fence where I could remember she’d landed and there, caught amongst the weathered grain of the wood, was one of her hairs. I looked all the way along the rest of the fence, but there were no other hairs anywhere. And yet it must have been eighteen months ago at least since Daisy did any serious jumping and leaping about! There had been rain and winds and snow; I had hung a mat out over that fence; how could that hair still be there?
All I know is that it was, and that it was one of Daisy’s and because I can’t understand how it could come about, doesn’t mean that it could not be possible.
A week or so after this we were sitting in Circle and as each of us randomly picked an angel card, I silently asked for a message from Daisy: when I looked, my card was “The Angel of Communication”.
A few weeks after, I was sitting down when I felt I wanted to pick up my bag which was on the floor nearby. Why I should want to pick up my bag, I had no idea; there was nothing in it that I needed. Anyway, I did pick it up and there, on the outside of the bag, in the centre near the bottom was – yes, you’ve guessed – one of Daisy’s hairs. And later that day, once again while I was standing in front of my chest of drawers, I suddenly felt I should look for one of her hairs. A few seconds later, I found it, on the lid of the box in which I keep my earrings.
The most recent message was last Saturday, the 28th May. I was out in the garden, cutting back some of the dead wood on the honeysuckle and, at the same time, remembering how Daisy used to lie beneath it on summer days and sleep for hours. Although last year she wasn’t so well and didn’t venture over there, preferring to sprawl on the pathway near the door, or sleep on the back of the settee bathed in the sunshine coming through the window.
I crouched down and looked at the place near the wall beneath the honeysuckle where Daisy used to lie, almost certain I’d find one of her hairs. Seconds later, miraculously, I discovered one. Even though it was lying on the earth, it wasn’t difficult to find. And yet, as with the hair on the fence, there have been winds, snow, rain and storms since Daisy last lay in that spot.
It would be so easy to dismiss all these signs and messages as chance or coincidence and one could go on forever trying – and probably succeeding – in finding some sort of logical explanation, but in the process would miss so much. There is no reason why Daisy, and all those of our loved ones – animals and humans - who have gone on, should not want to reassure us that they are still with us and that all is well, and that all continues. They love us, as we love them and if they are able to give us comfort and ease our sadness and let us know they are near, how glad they must be.
The messages are there – all we have to do is recognise them, and believe in them.
