Mimi Speaks with Me From the Other Side

Judy and Glenn have been friends of ours since I was pregnant with Rob. Their daughter, Kia is Martie’s age. They have been friends since they were two.
When they were about seven, Kia got the chicken pox. She was at our house and even barfed on the floor in Martie’s room. I waited for the spots to break out on Martie and Rob, but they never came.
Fast forward twenty-six years. Martie is pregnant with Jack. She goes over to Kia’s house so Rachel can play with her son Nickie, but before she even opens the screen door Kia yells, “Don’t come in if you haven’t had the chicken- pox, because we think Nicky just broke out with them!” Martie turned around and left. Two weeks later Martie came down with the worst case of the pox that I have ever seen or heard of. She couldn’t even open her eyes.
I began to worry, and research cases of chicken pox and pregnancy. I read that if its occurs in the first trimester it can cause deformity in the limbs. If it occurs in the second it can cause permanent skin lesions and discoloration. We figured that she was at the end of her second trimester and beginning the third while she was sick. Her doctor does an ultrasound and things look OK. I still fret.
Meanwhile our beloved 92 year old grandmother, Mimi, gets sick and crosses over on June 6th. Martie goes into labor just after midnight on June 7th. We are in the birthing room. It is very quiet while we all rest between contractions. I am sitting in a rocking chair with my eyes closed. I hear, as clear as day, Mimi’s voice. She says, “It’s going to be OK.” My eyes flew open! I looked around at everyone else in the room, but their eyes are still closed. When Mimi grew old her voice got old, too. The voice that early morning was her thirty-year-old voice! The same voice she had when she said, upon losing the key to her trunk, “Oh, I’m so mad I could just spit!”
I smiled and whispered a thank you to her.
She was right.
Everything was OK.