Donna's Silver Watering Can

Growing up on the old neighborhood, I knew Donna and Wally, a wonderful couple who were great at ballroom dancing. They lived on the next block, and they often got together with my folks for socializing. They were a happy, committed couple. My mom, who tended to twist her words, sometimes called them Walla and Donny or Dolly and Wanna, and we would all laugh.

In late February. 2001, Donna died, and Wally was heart broken. A couple of days after Donna died, she appeared to me in a dream in which she said, "SHEILA! You forgot to water your plants!". She pointed to a silver watering can. Then, she danced away from me very happily into a waiting crowd of people. She was wearing red, high-healed shoes, a red belt, red earrings, and a delightful black and white paisley dress, very muted, with a full skirt for dancing. It was just the kind of thing she used to wear. I watered my plants, and then I wrote to Wally ti tell him about my dream. Then I more or less forgot about it.

About two weeks later, my husband, Brian, was driving his forklift around at work moving huge slabs if granite and marble. Suddenly, he noticed something small and silvery down on the floor of his forklift, next ti his size 13 boot. He bent to pick it up, and it was, of all things, a little silver watering can, about an inch high and an inch wide! One of his co-workers said, "Oh, that's for Sheila!", so he brought it home and set it on the table in the living room. I spied it immediately and exclaimed over it, and Brian looked pleased.

For several days, I carried it around from room to room, admiring it and wondering why it should have appeared in my husband's forklift. About ten days later, I was meditating, and the little silver watering can was on a table within my view. Suddenly, Donna's face appeared in front of me, and she silently pointed to the watering can! I finally "got it"! I burst out laughing and said, "Thanks, Donna! Now I understand!". The little silver watering can was Donna's gift to let me know she had really been there in my meditation. The watering can itself is what we call an "apport": a physical manifestation of an object seemingly out of thin air that is a gift from spirit. Apports are very rare.

What a splendid, tiny reminder of life's perpetuity.