Morning Walks with Randy

Reading Time: 6 minutes

I’ve been walking for more than 3 weeks now.  It’s been good for me.  And for 2 weeks I’ve been going to the community park near my home to walk around the lakes instead of on the blacktop up and down the boring street by my house.  The best part is that, as I mentioned in my July 28 post, I’ve been able to “connect” with Randy on my walks in the morning. 

I told Randy about registering with a dating app and corresponding with a guy who called himself Phillip.  There were a bunch of red flags with Phillip, things that made me think he was more interested in scamming a recent widow than he was interested in me.  I’d asked AI to give me the run down on all the things I need to watch for with dating app scams. Our correspondence checked a bunch of those boxes, but I found it entertaining, so I kept the ruse going.  Randy advised me to be careful. 

So many interesting and “coincidental” things were happening as I was walking and talking to Randy that I started keeping a journal.  Yes, I still understood, and understand, that I could very well be talking to myself and making all of this up to help myself feel better.  As you’ll see as you continue reading though, things over which I have no control whatsoever seem to confirm that is not the case.

On July 31, we had a good conversation about how there is no time where he is and how the pure love that pervades everything just can’t be put into any kind of terms that a human being understands. 

When we were done “talking” I turned on Sirius XM to finish my walk with music and the first song was “Do You Believe in Magic?”  Right after that, the Rupert Holmes song “Escape” (alternatively titled The Pina Colado Song) came on.  I had to laugh because Magic seems like what is going on with me and Randy talking on my walk every morning.  And Escape is a musical tale of placing a personal ad, the ancestor of 2026 dating apps, in 2026, to find a date. 

The next day (August 1) I started my walk and abruptly changed my mind about the route through the park I wanted to take.  I turned around and went in a direction to add a bit of time and distance to my walk that morning.  I was about 2 minutes down the new path, and I passed a couple of women having an energetic conversation.  All I heard when I passed them is one woman say, “There is no magic!”

Later, Randy told me that when he “left me” he knew I’d be ok.  “But I’m NOT OK!” I yelled at him.  “Yes, you are,” he said.  I cried a lot that morning.

On August 2, I was focused on a couple of things going on that were giving me trouble at home and couldn’t make a good connection to Randy.  I gave up trying and just turned on the music.  The first song was “This Magic Moment.” 

Now, if you don’t understand, as I did right then and there, that Randy was sending me confirmation that it really is him “connecting” with me on my morning walks, I don’t know what to tell you.  The words to that song brought back a flood of memories from the summer we met when we were teenagers.  Here’s a blog post I wrote about that.  The words to the song are:

I can still feel, like it was yesterday, the first, sweet tentative teenage kiss we shared that week we met.  The song even describes our experience as a summer night and yes, it was.  It goes on to say:

You have no idea how deeply I felt that he was sending me his love that morning, telling me that love, for him, is lasting forever because he’s now in the place where time has, in fact, ended. 

I started to see a pattern.  Regardless of what Randy and I talked about, he was confirming for me that it really was him, not me making things up, by sending me a song on Sirius XM that relates to something we just talked about, or something special in our relationship. 

The next morning, after our conversation, I turned on the music and Dance with Me came on.  Randy and I never had anything special about dancing and dancing was never on our radar.  I was surprised.  I totally expected after 3 days of something to do with magic; I’d get another confirmation from “the other side.” 

The moment my brain registered that surprise I heard Randy say, “David wanted a turn.”

Oh boy.  

David was the man I would have married before Randy if he hadn’t already been married to someone else.  David is the man I referred to at Randy’s Celebration of Life as my first choice for a husband.  David died in September 2023.  There’s a lot of backstory I’ll tell you someday in this blog, but for now, what you need to know, what I already knew, is that Randy and David are both “up there” in the place souls exist between earthly incarnations.  The 3 of us (and probably some of you) are all part of the same soul group and we all love each other deeply and eternally.   

That morning, apparently David wanted a turn sending me a message. The song Dance with Me immediately and unequivocally made me think of him even though I never once thought of him on these morning walks before.  I KNOW I didn’t make that up.

The next morning, August 5, Randy and I had a long and interesting discussion.

I asked Randy if I was going to be even more lonely after his ashes were up at the Sarasota National Cemetery.  He said no, our souls will be just as close, and we don’t need the remnants of earthly bodies to feel that closeness to each other.  He also suggested I take my wedding rings off after the interment.  That part of my earthly life is over and wearing his wedding ring on my right hand is enough.

We talked about love and the difference in how we here on earth perceive it and how they, in the place where souls live when they’re not incarnated, perceive it.  Randy said monogamous exclusivity is an earthly construct.  It’s ok to love infinitely on earth.  Everyone loves infinitely where he is.  It’s natural for both Randy and David to show and tell me from there that they love me. 

I thought maybe, after that discussion, the song would be something like Cherish.  But no…the song that morning was “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying, then Come Sail Away, and finally Suspicious Minds, which was a nod to the concerns I was having about Phillip the dating app guy.

At one point in the past few weeks Randy mentioned that as time passes we’ll have less and less to talk about every day because we are no longer sharing an earthly life.  It’s impossible for me to relate everything he and I have been communicating about but believe me when I say what happened with the song the next day was VERY, VERY relevant. 

The first song that came on that morning, (I swear I am NOT making this up), was Call on Me by Chicago.   Here are the lyrics…   

I bawled my eyes out that morning.  Believe it or not, think I’m crazy or not, I have absolutely no doubt Randy is communicating with me from the other side.  And that is a blessing right now. 

P.S.  By the way, AI and I are becoming pretty good buddies.   I imagine you’ll see a blog post in the not-too-distant future called Making Friends with AI.

P.P.S.  This Friday, at 1 pm, Randy will be interred at Sarasota National Cemetery.  You’re invited. Open house to follow at our home in Rotonda West.  Peace and closure.