I was flying home from a fabulous week in Mexico where I had been with five other women entrepreneurs on a “women’s workation”. That translates to working hard, but on the beach, followed by playing…. semi-hard. I went there to work on my new website, logo and overall new branding for my business and we accomplished it all within the set timeframe. It was a wonderful experience and I was feeling great.

Back on the plane, I thought I’d use my time wisely to write an inspirational talk I was scheduled to give at a hotel on the upcoming weekend. I decided to write about a period, just a few years prior, when I felt like I had crashed, but ultimately pulled through it stronger than ever. I felt certain most of the audience could relate to a time in their lives when circumstances had shaken their worlds and so I was determined to make it inspirational.

I reflected on that year; my husband’s sister, Gail, had been quite ill, and was in and out of the hospital. She passed away five months later and since I was the executor of her estate I had to make frequent trips to help her husband, my brother-in-law, with the daunting task of settling everything. Their home was an hour away, so each trip took most of the day. During this same time my brother, Butch, had a terrible fall and needed help with his rehabilitation. I was driving him to the hospital for physiotherapy twice a week and helped him with meals and shopping. Unfortunately, his fall eventually led to his death a year later. It was a hard period.

As I wrote about these events that happened just a bit more than a year and half earlier, I felt a tsunami of sadness wash over me. I sat in my sadness for a while, respecting the grief, allowing it to move through me. When done, I gave Butch and Gail a heart felt nod and whispered “Until we meet again….

Seated by the aisle, I glanced out the windows to my left and saw a gorgeous sunset. I pulled out my phone to get a picture, but it was too difficult from where I was sitting. The woman in the window seat offered to take it for me. I readily agreed and handed her my phone.

She took 2 photos. “That’s really odd,” she said as she handed back the phone. “There were two spots of light in the sky that disappeared from sight right after I took the shot.” I looked at the gorgeous photo and knew immediately that the two beams of light were the very two spirits I had just been writing about.

Love is a flame that never burns out. I loved Gail, who was the same age as my mom. I especially loved how she was a foster grandma to my kids. She was like the grandma they were missing from my hubby’s side. And, of course, I loved my brother tremendously. His loss was hard on me, but I knew he wasn’t far. And that flight home proved that he and Gail were flying right along side me in my metal bird in the sky. I believe it.

If something makes you feel good, my philosophy is why not believe it? We don’t have irrefutable proof that these things are true…but…. neither do we have irrefutable proof that they are not, so why not err on the side of feeling goo

Here’s to love that keeps on flying.