I had been back in London for over a year and it was now 1967. I was lying on my bed meditating, when I felt, or rather actually knew, that someone very much wanted to see me. There was a longing involved and I could only think of two people who could possibly want to see me that much. I had a little conversation in my mind in which I said, “Lord, Padre Pio has bilocated and been seen in various places at the same time. I’m no saint, but I’m sure you’ll let whoever wants to see me, see me.”
A few days later I received a telegram telling me my mother was very ill. I took the first flight out and arrived in Malta to find my mother was in Hospital in a coma. She had had cerebral thromboses and there was little likelihood of her ever recovering.
My heart was saddened especially remembering my parting words that she would never see me again. The memory of those words haunted me even though they were spoken with no malice, just a certainty. My aunt who had played an important role in bringing me to Christ, came up to me. “David,” she said, “there is something I want to tell you.”
I listened to her quietly while she told me that a few days before my mother had her stroke, she was lying down having a siesta. My father who now shared the room was with her and both were fully awake.
“George,” she said suddenly, “David has come to see me.”
She then kept up a conversation for quite sometime. It all sounded very sensible but Dad could neither see nor hear me. When she was finished, it seemed to have calmed her spirit.
I spoke about it to my father a long time afterwards and he assured me that it was all true.
It was only a week or so after that event, that I was now standing by her bedside, unable to communicate with her. It seems, poor mum had wanted to say goodbye too.
As well as calming my mothers’s spirit at the time, it also helped me. In later years, whenever I remembered our original sad parting, my aunt’s story always gave me great peace. My mum died a few days later and I returned to London immediately after the funeral.
Getting back to London, I resumed my life but I now realised that I could not go on in this rather nomadic existence. I needed to settle down. If I was meant to follow God in the world, I needed to get a better career and possibly think of supporting a family eventually.