Where are those who have gone before us?

For over a year now, the most bizarre thing continues to recur. Nearly on a daily basis, and in the most unexpected places in this little house, I will find a penny. Impossible to keep losing a penny every time I turn around, right? I go into the bathroom, there’s one on the floor. Get up in the morning, there’s one on the floor by the bed. Reach into the breakfront for a bowl, there’s a penny. Under the desk, in front of the tv, by the automan, in the sofa. Everywhere. One at a time, nearly every day.

It became apparent that the message was obviously that I needed to mind my finances. I had already begun to desire to invest the little money I have, the little money I make. These pennies showed me undeniably that money was "dripping through my fingers" and I needed to tighten the reign. Soon I found a financial advisor and began to gather my files and plan toward working investments.

The pennies continued to show up intermittently, and I found them frequently on sidewalks, near where I parked my car at work, around my office, and so forth.

A friend asked me outright: "Could there be someone who is trying to get your attention?" Immediately I thought of my grandmother.

They say when a loved one dies, the living one will feel her closeness more strongly, more intimately. Perhaps that’s true. Even those of us who do, that closeness changes in substance, frequency, like all relationships.

When my maternal grandmother died, the force of loss threw me into a tailspin I never would have guessed or could have foreseen. There were other difficult things in my inner life at the time that rendered unconscionable the possibility that Mama Ruth, such a force of nature, could be humanly lost to me, or to our family.

Though she was not always an easy person (no one really is), she was always true to herself, dignified, sincere, dedicated to God and her family, and bossy—with the best interest of her loved ones at heart. She was foundational and still is. I knew her mother, too, briefly. A similar presence, a similar strength, but somehow Mama Bagley was already more spirit and deific than human to me when she died.

Soon after Mama Ruth died, my Mama gave me her engagement ring. Since I don’t ever plan to have children, the one condition was that I would leave it to my niece Emily, who was born a week after Mama Ruth’s death, and was named Emily Ruth.

Several weeks, or maybe even months, before Mama Ruth had her stroke that would eventually take her life, I visited her on my own. Having finally reached adulthood, this became a treasured tradition for a short amount of years. On this visit, I took a picture of her in her kitchen one early morning. She is in the corner making cheese toast from biscuits made the day before. Rounded corner shelves frame the space between her windows and cabinets; on those shelves and window ledges are miniature pitchers as well as two healthy dark green ivy plants cascading behind her—these live on, cascading in my kitchen. She’s turned because I called her name from the doorway. She has on her house dress with a white sweater over it. The kitchen is bright and clean and evokes happy and eternal memories. I’m looking at it now, sitting prominently on a little dark wood corner shelving that she’d used in a bedroom.

At the moment I live in a tiny 495 sq. ft. cbc cottage with no sheet rocking. It is a glorified garden shed. But there is something in its coziness, and in the furniture and in the atmosphere that is reminiscent of her home. From the moment I found it, there was never a question that she is present with me here. There have even been times when it felt almost as if the wee cottage was, in a sense, her very self. Like I am living inside her presence. There were times early on when I could feel a palpable presence—hear her voice or the little grunt she’d make when she didn’t like what she heard or saw. She was overwhelmingly with me and I was exceedingly grateful.

As do most things, the sense of her presence faded somewhat.

The pennies began to show up. Looking back, I can see a correlation. As if she were indeed trying to get my attention. As the living metaphor for pinching pennies, it made perfect sense this would be the symbol used to attract me to the reality that I needed to attend to my finances and take responsibility for shifting more fully into investment mode. She was perhaps instructing me, nudging me, encouraging me toward a more conscientious saving.

Since moving into this little place, I have been interested in the prospect of investing in my own house. Although this place is more than adequate for the basic need for shelter and peaceful living, I need a bit more privacy from my landlord 10 feet away who begins dinner on the grill around 8:30 or 9, the very time I want to go to bed. He has also turned the vacant lot about 20 feet from my sliding glass doors and only means of looking out, into a shooting range. He is a plastic deer hunter. No laundry and no closet space are beginning to bother me, parking on the street and having no mail box, and the fact that I am here somewhat illegally, paying for his boat and hunting trips while I am not wisely investing, is beginning to bother me. So I have been looking for a house for almost two years.

Odd coincidences occurred not long ago and the search seriously kicked in and intensified. Now I have found a house that seems perfect. Only a tad out of my price range, I put an offer on it last Thursday night. Awoke Friday morning after another night of odd and semi-disturbing dreams. The feelings were not buyer’s remorse, but rather a terror that I will be turned down, that my offer will be rejected, that somehow, I will not be able to buy this house and it disturbed me turbulently.

After first block class this same Friday (I teach high school during the day), I left my portable for the break only to find a penny (heads up, even) on the ramp. My entire being washed through with the realization that Mama Ruth affirmed me in my efforts—I had done the right thing to offer, I was doing the right thing taking the risk, pursuing investment. While it doesn’t impress me as a sign that I will get the house, it is an affirmation of the presence of her spirit, and confirmed that I am following the right path, whatever comes.

A couple of friends have said I should save the penny, that it means I’ll get the house, thoughts like that. But it isn’t about the penny or getting the house I want, it’s about being connected within our lives to the lives that have brought us to this place and to the spirits that have given us life and continue to strengthen our souls, linking with us, comforting us in our struggles and in our pursuits. We are fortunate to know some of their names, the ancestors we have met and overlapped with in time. Each of us is fortunate to have even the nameless ones among us, companioning us on the journey.

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—Kim Ballard

In honor of my mama, Mama Ruth, Mama Bagley, all my family and friends here and beyond.