I'm Maggie Smith, and this is the slowdown.

When we lose people we love, it's hard to let go.

We want them to still be here.

We want to hold them, to talk to them, to ask them questions we didn't think to ask when they were alive.

We want the relationship to continue.

I've had deceased loved ones visit me in dreams.

I have friends who believe their loved ones sent them signs of their presence,

a hummingbird, a blue butterfly, a cardinal.

Or they found a feather, a coin, or a special object that they associated with that person.

Or they suddenly smelled their perfume, and it felt like they were saying, I'm here,

I'm still with you. I even have a dear friend who missed a call from her late father's cell phone,

even though it was sitting in a drawer somewhere miles away with no battery charge.

How to explain that? I can't. Skeptics might chalk it up to coincidences or glitches, But to me, it seems like the best kind of haunting

when someone is gone physically from this world, but not gone from you. The word haunt

originally meant to visit often and to continually seek the company of.

Only later did it evolve into its current unsettling meaning.

I like knowing the root because it reminds me that not every haunting must be scary or menacing.

Maybe it's possible to have a welcome haunting, to open ourselves up to visitors and to seek their company, however they are able to make themselves known.

Seeing, or even seeking out, signs from deceased, loved ones, helps people who are grieving

feel more connected and less alone.

Today's poem sees these signs as a way of staying connected.

It creates an active, vivid present between the deceased and the speaker.

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