Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Tag: mints

  • Mints – A Double

    Soon after the husband of her friend had passed the white-with-red-stripes, soft, sugary mints he loved gifting to his wife started showing up. (See “Mints”.)

    For over 20 years now, this particular type of soft mint had been recognized as a welcome message of his everlasting love!

    While planning to be visiting with their family in Tennessee, they learned the husband of a couple they had gotten to know through their daughter had just died. The funeral was taking place while they were there and they were going to be able to go. In the long line waiting to visit with the wife before the funeral started, she spotted a dish of the special mints across the room. She went over, picked up two, snapped a photo, and sent that to her friend.

    After the funeral, as she was exiting the building, she walked back to the bowl to get a few more for her friend. When she looked closer, there was a double!

    The precious response to this photo of the double was, “I am always touched when a double appears.”

    It seemed a perfect assurance that this friend, too, would be faithfully watching over his wife….

  • Mint-to-be

    We had been on the road for over ten hours and decided to stay the night somewhere near where dear friends are now living. Breakfast and a visit before heading on to the scheduled visit with my brother-and-sister-in-love seemed perfect.

    With the help of another friend who was reading reviews online, we settled on a private (rather than a chain) hotel, and while I was checking in sitting on the front desk was a Santa Clause dish filled with the soft peppermint candies my dear friend now calls “therapy mints.”

    “Oh, you have therapy mints,” I began to share. “These are the candies my friend’s late husband always gave her. She did save them but she did not eat them. A dietician would not eat pure sugar. After he passed, she found them everywhere: at his work when she took the death certificate; at the hair salon; at the bed-and-breakfast when she returned to the city in which he had died. For years now, I have been finding them and I always take some for her. It is odd, too, because I worked in the candy section in a grocery store years ago and I had never seen this soft peppermint candy. And now her father is on hospice care and she is away from her home caring for him. I will take one for her. She eats them in loving memory now.”

    The desk clerk said, “Wait there. I will be right back.” She came back with a baggie. “That is such a sweet story,” she began to stuff the baggie with mints, “so take these for her.”

    When my friend called to ask how our accommodations were, I shared what had happened and said, “The location was meant to be.”

    As I heard those words I saw it spelled out as mint-to-be….

    Psalms 25:4-11
    Show me the right path, O LORD; point out the road for me to follow. Lead me by your truth and teach me, for you are the God who saves me. All day long I put my hope in you. Remember, O LORD, your compassion and unfailing love, which you have shown from long ages past.

     

     

  • Mints and More Mints

    It had been almost 18 years since her husband had passed, at the young age of 50, so she had driven the many hours to join a local nature group for a kayaking trip once again as a “single” person.

    Arriving at the hotel to check in, there on the reception desk were his favorite mints! (See “Mints” posted December 27, 2014 in Sacred Stories.)

    A photo of the two she took was sent to a dear friend who had witnessed the appearance of the mints so many times and places over all these years. The following day, she received a photo back from that friend, saying, “On the conference table at our appointment with the Elder Law attorney’s office this moment.”


    And the attorney added a very significant detail, “The funny thing about those mints is that I just bought them yesterday. If you had been here before, they would not have been here. There would have been life savers in the bowl instead.”

    The closing line from that “Mints” 2014 post, “And she knew now that love truly is eternal. His sweet mints prove it to her over and over and over.”

  • Spirit is Everlasting

    Sacred Stories

    Packing Christmas away she happened upon a photo of her husband. She had cut out and placed in the frame with the photo these words from Unity’s Daily Word on his birthday seven years after his transition:


    “Physical forms are temporary. Spirit is everlasting. When your journey on Earth is over, you will set down your body and free your soul. This is a normal process. Those left behind may feel sorrow, but this transition is a joyous event in the soul’s journey. After your human life, your soul will be reunited with the source of unconditional love and continue its work in the spirit realm.”

    Soon after seeing the photo, she received this photo of two mints which had just been picked up for her by her friend’s husband at the barber shop just minutes earlier.


    She responded: Arrived at a perfect moment.

    Read more about the way these sweet treats became one of the ways her husband sends her assurance his spirit is everlasting in the Sacred Story, “Mints,” published on December 27, 2014.

    It is so important we are able to honor these assurances….