I was asked back to speak in Woodstock Illinois this week. I’d been to Woodstock only once before; it was back in January, and I talked to 300 women at the historic Opera House. We sold two boxes of books, and the response was so fantastic, they asked me to come back for an event that billed as “dinner, and conversation with author Jenniffer Weigel”.

The stories that people continue to share with me about their loved ones from “the other side” sending them signs and signals just keep blowing me away. This is an email I received from Lynn after I met her Monday night:

"My father (age 56) passed away March 4th, 1999. He had a wonderful spirit, but found
this lifetime too painful to experience and took his own life. We did not see it
coming, so it left us shocked and confused needless to say. After his death, I
remember begging him to send me a sign to tell me he was OK. Nothing. Not even a
dream with him in it. It was a devastating time. Then an old magnolia tree in the
front yard bloomed profusely that spring - like it had never bloomed before. In a
dream, my Dad appeared and told me he put the flowers on the tree so I would know he
was OK and he was happy. Every year the tree reminded me of him. Last spring the
tree did not bloom. The entire tree was dead as a door nail. Not even a branch with
a leaf on it. It made me sad to think that my father was gone from me. Now I see it
in another way - perhaps his soul is ready for more lessons and he has moved on to
another lifetime. In fact, this year I noticed that shoots are coming out of the old
stump … and they have blooms on them!

I’ll add a side story to this … just before my father passed away, my 85 year old
grandmother (his mother-in-law), whom my father adored and had a special
relationship with, was very ill and in the hospital. She was as close to being on
the other side as you could be. We were all attending to her bedside when my father
committed suicide. It’s almost like he took her place. After, I remember many family
members sitting by her bedside telling her it wasn’t her time. She couldn’t leave us
now. We needed her strength to get through my Dad’s death. We just couldn’t handle
another death. Through her unconscious state she must have heard us, she managed to
pull through her illness and live another five years. The day she died? Yup, March
4th. I’m sure my Dad was there to meet her."

March 4th was my Dad’s birthday. Thank you Lynn for your story- and I will never look at Magnolia trees the same way again.