I have.
There was the sweetest old woman in the world, who I had befriended... and was the mother of a young man that worked with me... came to me, in my sleep....after she had passed on from sclerosis of the liver from being an alcoholic...
I loved this woman...she had such a hard life, one that she did bring on herself when young I suppose...but her soul was a shining beacon of love and goodness.
She had a long term affair with a married man that she loved for around 5-10 years or so and Eric was born from it...but this man's wife found out and he ended up walking away from the relationship, and Eric never saw his dad (Uncle) again, when he was around 7 yrs old.....
Anyway, she was full of remorse, and became an alcoholic and eventually died from it....Eric had a love hate relationship with his mom over the years from the drinking a 6 pack of beer every night....I can't blame him either...he was young and was just breaking in to his 20's when I had met her and he was going out with his girlfriend night clubbing and dancing and anything to stay away from his own house and mom....but I knew he really did love her....he just could not cope with seeing her waste away...
A month or two or three before her last breath, she begged me to watch out for her son, to please guide him in to a new life, a good life....that's all she wanted for him
Anyway, after she died, I and another girl from work, and his girlfriend and another friend of his stayed at his house for a couple of days to help him clean and paint and get rid of the garbage that had piled up so Eric could put the house up for sale...
We kind of made a party out of it, even though it was a very sad period....and all of us slept in the living room....I scored one of the couches and not the sleeping bag on the floor!
I was crushed when she died, and just could not stop crying whenever I thought about her....I was fairly young as well and this was the first person, I ever knew, that had died....my parents and grandparents were all living....so it was a rude awakening, that life isn't always so peachy keen for other people in the world....
the second and last night spent there....his mom came to me....she was as alive as if she was sitting there in her favorite chair, and she started talking with me, reminding me to help Eric get on his feet and lead him in to the right way in life, with good hard work....I felt her, I smelled her, it WAS HER....not a dream though it happened while I was sleeping on the couch....and she ended by telling me to let Eric know she was okay and she told me to tell him, how much she had always loved him...then POOF she was gone....no one else in the room had seen her or heard her, like I did....
I followed her instructions, told eric that she told me to tell him she was ok and loved him....he started to cry for the first time since her death, he played the tough guy through most of the time after her death...
and he said to me, I wish she had come to me and said that....and continued to cry... (I'm tearing now, reliving it, and it was nearly 30 years ago)
that was it....the one visit from her....I help Eric for the next two years, until he matured and helped lead him in to a career....and a good life....and as fate would have it, after he sold his mom's house, he became interested in selling real estate and went to real estate classes and got his license...about 5 years later he became a real estate broker for Commercial real estate in Miami, making good money, and got married and had kids of his own, and even got to reunite with his father, who was still living.
