‘The signs my mother told me were the dead reaching out to us’

I like to think when something unusual happens to me or around me it’s someone reaching out to me. My mother and our family, all born in India, have beliefs that others don’t necessarily agree with. As children, if we were eating a slice of bread and ate from the middle she would frown and break the bread, saying we were ‘digging our mother’s grave’. She also used to tell us to ‘never answer if you hear your name being called and you don’t see anyone’. She maintained that it was the dead calling.

Sometimes we’d be playing with money and we would put a penny on our closed eyes. That would really upset my mother. She said they did that to the dead to keep their eyes closed on their journey to the other side.

My mother had many fascinating stories and I loved hearing them. As a child she lived in a building and her bedroom was on the second floor. One night she went for a drink and heard her name and she said she saw a figure floating outside the window. She began walking towards it then her mother called out and the figure vanished.

She had a brother and as he grew up Mum said he became a ‘womaniser’ (I’ve always thought that was a great word). He would bring women home and into his room, which his mother did not approve of. One night he brought a ‘woman of the night’ — as my mother referred to them — home. He was upset as their mother had recently passed away. They drank many bottles of wine and he passed out. The woman began to go through his wallet and the drawers in the room. It seems she looked up and in the big mirror cupboard doors she saw my grandmother shaking her fist and warning her to go. This woman began to scream and my uncle woke up. The woman left empty-handed.

When my mother died I was miserable until white feathers started appearing in the strangest places. My mother also had a small music box that my father had given her and when wound up would play ‘You Are My Sunshine’. One of my girls took it as a memory of her beloved nanny. She gave it back a few days later telling me something odd was happening. My daughter said: “It starts to play at odd times and it’s not even wound. I think Nanny wants you to have it.”

I put the music box in my bedroom without ever winding it up. A few nights later it started playing ‘You Are My Sunshine’. It now lives downstairs in the wall unit.

My children have often rung me to say Nanny had visited because a white feather would be found on their front door mat. In their house and with me, I have stepped out of the car and at my feet lay a white feather. Driving along the expressway my husband and I both saw something flutter down and land on our bonnet, it was a white feather. My husband always finds a logical answer for these occurrences and I accept it.

One of our girls was run over many years ago to this day she remembers holding the hand of a beautiful angel. She says they were walking down a tunnel towards a bright light. Her sister, who was with her, called her and she said the vision vanished after that.

There are so many ‘signs’ and unusual happenings like these. I believe we all have angels who look after us.

Do you believe in spirits or signs from loved ones who have passed away? Do you and your family have any superstitions like this?

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