Do we only imagine????

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Two and a half years ago, I can give you the time to the moment if you need... the love of my life went to heaven. Our life had been one of prayer and faith and hospitals and long days and nights. It had also been filled with more love and more adventures than most people will see if they lived to be 150. Stricken with Muscular Dystrophy {Polymyositis} after just one year of marriage, my wife endured some of the most painful, frightening health issues one could imagine. We had our first daughter, Samantha by this time. Sheila spent the first few months in and out of hospitals while doctors tried to determine what she had. She went into remission several times and was able to function well during those times. It was into the second year that we found a new blessing was on it's way. Sheila's illness began to progress again and she was put into the hospital at 4 months pregnant, where she would remain until long after our second daughter Shannon was born. Shannon was taken at 7 months to save her life. She was 3.2 lbs at birth and would remain in the NNICU until she was 6 weeks old. My days consisted of getting up at 7a.m. and feeding the babies. Sam was two then and Shannon was new-born and on a heart monitor. I would dress them and we would go to the hospital to visit mommy and bond with her. Sheila quite often didn't really remember us being there but that was alright. The girls learned to be as familiar with hospital rooms as they were their own rooms at home. We would stay there until noon and then I would take the girls to my sisters house. I would then go home, get ready for work, work until midnight and swing by the hospital until 1:30 to sit with Sheila. When Shannon was first born, I would go there at midnight, learn to feed and care for a preemie baby, then see Sheila before going home. When Shannon came home at 6 weeks old, Sheila stayed in the hospital almost 6 more months. After seeing Sheila I would go home and feed Shannon and then watch T.V. until 4 a.m. when i fed her again. At 7, Sam would wake me and we would start the day all over again. We opened Christmas gifts at the hospital so that Sheila was with us and our life simply continued, never slowing down. Sheila came home and from there it was a series of hospitals and doctors and road travel and LOVE. We did not ever let her illness slow our lives down nor change it in any way. When she was feeling good, we went non-stop with life. She had years when she was so good and she took care of me and the girls in a way that any man would KNOW he had been blessed by an Angel in his life. So much more but not for now... For 24 years we loved and lived and laughed and cried together. She was my forever love. 15 times in those years they told me she would die. 15 times God and Sheila proved the doctors wrong. Coma's, skin infections, heart surgery and the side effects of meds that were slowly killing her but also keeping her alive another day, another year. She endure it all for her love for life and the girls and I. She was my strength and the life that kept me going every single day. God was always strong in our life and we trusted in him to watch over us. Sheila was the best of mothers and a love I know only as beautiful. 2a.m. on a wednsday morning, March 8th, 2006... The surgeon came to the waiting room and told me he could not save her this time. She would die in the next few hours. I fell to the floor and cried for what seems today to have been forever. The love of my life, my reason for getting up every day, was going to leave me and go to heaven. No more pain, no more suffering or sorrow. Yes, I wanted that for her, but selfishly, I wanted her to stay with me. At 4:30 a.m. she whispered she didn't hurt any more. She said I love you and I kissed her. She was in heaven and the tears that flow now are the same tears that flowed then. My youngest daughter Shannon and I moved into a different house and noticed things that happened. Sheila's favorite clock that hangs on our wall had stopped at 4:30. Shannon's chimes would ring softly when she cried in her bedroom. I would feel what I thought was one of my cats crawling on to the bed with me. When nothing was there I would smile and say "Hello love, nice to feel you here." She still visits me today but normally when I am feeling low. She still rings the chimes if shannon cries and the clock that has never had the batteries replaced since she went to heaven, still runs for a week and then stops at 4:30 for a few days. Is it all in our minds? Does she really come to me in the night? Do Shannon's chimes just happen to catch a wind when she cries in her bedroom? I believe she is here and watches over us as we did her when she was with us on earth. Her presence surrounds us when we think about her. I don't know why she is allowed to be here with us for now. All I know is she is and I am blessed by that. I doubt Shannon and I are alone in the visiting of a loved one from heaven.