My daughter Kim is a scaredy cat. She has a live-in boyfriend and 2 dogs for protection, but she can be mighty jumpy about things that go bump in the night.
Valentines Day is extremely hard for me and my kids know it. Mike is on our minds every minute of the day. During the last 15 years of our marriage, Mike liked to spend most of his time at camp. During the spring, summer, and fall, we lived there. Then the weather would get cold, and I'd go home leaving him behind until he couldn't take the cold anymore. Kim lived closer to camp and to his work than we did, so he would go to her house and raid her refrigerator while he did laundry. It was a pretty funny setup. We would tease him about eating her food while doing laundry. Kim and Mike adored each other.
Here's a picture of Kim, Mike and Meg being themselves.
Mike was a jokester. He loved to make people jump. There was the time he put a smoke bomb under my brother-in-law's jeep making it look like the truck was on fire. Or the time he shut the breakers off in the basement of his house, then jumped out at him in the dark.
So, on my second Valentines Day without him, Kim went into her basement to switch the laundry from the washer to the dryer. The washing machine lid was open and the machine was full of water (which meant she closed it). Then Shawn asked her if anyone had gone to the house while they were at work who may have taken the leftovers he was saving for supper. No one had.
Kim sent me a message saying "I think dad is visiting from the other side and I'm not scared." I told her it sure sounded like something he would do. We all laughed...still thinking there would be some reasonable answer to all of this...until it happened again later the same night.
This time, Shawn went down to switch his laundry....and this time the machine had gone through the full cycle...and the lid was up.
I like to think that it was him...letting us know that he still enjoys playing with peoples' heads...and that he's ok.
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