Interesting...

I was talking with a childhood friend of mine and she was telling me a story of a vision or dream she had after the death of her young baby daughter. They knew her baby would die shortly after birth, but they chose to bring her into the world.

She was so grief stricken, and she said a prayer before going to bed one night. She wanted to know where her daughter went, after she died.

In her dream, she was taken to the place where her daughter was now living. She was in a place that was surrounded by many villages of Anishinaabe people, the people were dressed in the traditional manner. She was standing on this hilly knoll and she could hear voices of the people around her. They were speaking in the Anishinaabe language. She heard the voice of a woman, and she turned around and saw this person who had an aura of kindness and goodness about her. From behind this woman, came her daughter. Her daughter spoke to her and said that she was happy and free of pain. She was adopted by this woman and she was waiting for her Mom & family for when it was their time to join her. Until then, she would be with her "adopted mother".

Needless to say, this dream or "vision" gave my friend great solace and eased her grief a little bit. She said it felt so real, the experience was very lifelike.

When my own mother passed away, she apparently sang a traditional song before she slipped from this world. My mother suffered a stroke and slipped in and out of lucidity. The nurse who was in the room with her before she died said that she said some names (people my mother grew up with and had passed on before her) and then she sang a song. My mother never sang in "Indian" while she was alive, but she sang her song before leaving this earth. She knew she was going perhaps to join the others in the "happy hunting ground." My older sister who died two years before my mother also seemed to get ready for her journey to the next life just before she slipped away. She was making motions like she was smudging herself and she was also speaking in Ojibwe to her husband who passed away a few years before she went. Maybe he came to accompany her?

I just thought I would share...Miigwetch.