October 13, 2024
In his book, “Whispers of God’s Love: Touching the Lives of Loved Ones After Death,” Catholic author Mitch Finley recounts a story from the late author and Presbyterian minister, Frederick Buechner, who shared his experience in a talk sponsored by the Book-of-the Month Club in 1987. The following is an excerpt of the account in Finley’s book:
“Frederick Buechner told his audience that a good friend had died one year previously, and a couple of months later he and his wife stayed overnight with the man’s widow. That night, he dreamed that his friend stood there in the guest room ‘looking very much the way he always did in the navy blue jersey and white slacks that he often wore…’ Buechner told his friend how much they missed him and how happy he was to see him, and his friend acknowledged this…
“Buechner then asked, ‘Are you really there, Dudley?’ I meant was he there in fact and truth, or was I merely dreaming that he was? His answer was that he was really there. And then I said, ‘Can you prove it?’ ‘Of course,’ he said. Then he plucked a strand of blue wool out of his jersey and tossed it to me, and I caught it between my index finger and my thumb, and the feel of it was so palpable and so real that it woke me up. That’s all there was to the dream.” …
“The next morning at breakfast, Buechner described his dream, and he had barely finished when his wife spoke. She declared that she had seen a strand of blue wool on the guest room carpet that morning as she was getting dressed, and ‘she was sure it hadn’t been there the night before.’ Buechner wondered if he was losing his mind. ‘I rushed upstairs to see,’ he told his audience, ‘and there it was—a little tangle of navy blue wool that I have in my wallet as I stand here today.’”
©Mitch Finley
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