I'm amazed at how instantly I recognize my father each time he shows up lately. As I've spotted him in any number of settings, I've immediately had a strong, sensory recollection of the way the skin on his cheek and hand will feel; what the breadth of his shoulders will be like if I put my arm around them. In these recent encounters, those shoulders are, once again, broader and better padded than they were when I touched them a year ago, not long before he died.

The nighttime visits of these dreams have become very matter-of-fact for me, as down-to-earth and straightforward as my father himself tended to be. They feel so concrete that when I enclose him in a sturdy hug, or kiss his cheek — knowing full well, as I do, that he's no longer living in this same physical world that I am — the experience feels as solid and real in my memory afterward as it does during these affectionate reunions.

In each dream, he comforts me with his presence and I respond with reassuring words about how I know, deep down, that all is well — with him, and with me. True to his personality, my father doesn't really surprise me with these visits so much as follow through on what I would expect.

My mother, on the other hand, is a whole other matter. Without a doubt, she was — is — an enigmatic, quicksilver personality who loved the element of surprise too much not to wield it as best she can, even from beyond this world.

I know that my parents, each in his or her very own style, have been close over this last month. That's in part because when my sister, my only other family member, had surgery recently, she was quite fearful. She told me that she'd been dealing with a host of dreads and demons as the surgery date approached, one of which was the terror that she wouldn't wake up afterward.

This was her second journey through the experience of cancer. I asked an ever-widening circle of souls for prayers on her behalf and prayed my own, one of which was that she would feel our parents' love close to her. The last time she walked this road, a little more than 10 years ago, Mom and Dad had gone to be with her almost as soon as they received news of her illness, and stayed with her through the days of her surgery.

So, I made my prayerful request, and there was Dad, dropping by between the end of one day and the start of the next. "Why are you showing up here?" I wanted to ask afterward. But I should remember that the way in which my father tended to try and connect with my sister was usually through me.

Then I turned once again to the boxes I've been working my way through as I find the emotional strength to do so. They were shipped from his Florida home, and my passage through each, brimming as it is with a veritable pharaoh's tomb of feelings and memories, is no small challenge. If nothing else, my father's nocturnal visits left me feeling a bit psychically nagged about these containers of his belongings.

Suddenly, as I was unpacking one day, there she was, between a framed photograph of a British relative and one of my father's journals. The image of my mother's face gazed back at me from a misty cloud, as though looking in from a world beyond. This was clearly a "mistake" of a photograph, a double-exposure, perhaps.

But its effect was somehow timely and pertinent — and there was another just like it stuck to the back. "One for each of you," I could immediately hear her say, whether in imagination or actuality. The tone of her voice to my inner ear was real enough, as real as her resolve always was to treat her two daughters fairly.

Then, in the next layer of the box were four folded pieces of stationery with her writing on them. As I looked closely, I saw that the pages contained a list of her recollections of family life from the time that my sister was 4 or 5, a period in which she and my parents had lived in France and Germany shortly after World War II.

The warmth, and wit — and unmistakable love — in my mother's voice were alive on those little pages. By the next day, they were folded around one of those photos of my mother and on their way to my sister by mail, her very own one-of-a-kind "visit."

And that day I mailed it out, my sister learned that her surgeon had given her the "all clear" for cancer. How about that?

I was struck yet again by the individuality of the way in which each of us reaches out with love to others, whether in this world or beyond it; whether in a more pragmatic, time-to-unpack-the-boxes way, like my father, or my mother's time-transcending message.

I was also reminded how very subtle and beautiful the responses to prayer can be, almost like hummingbird sightings or shooting stars. All too easily missed, if we're too distracted by the clamor of life around us.

"O thou who art turning thy face towards God! Close thine eyes to all things else, and open them to the realm of the All-Glorious. Ask whatsoever thou wishest of Him alone; seek whatsoever thou seekest from Him alone. With a look He granteth a hundred thousand hopes, with a glance He healeth a hundred thousand incurable ills, with a glimpse He layeth balm on every wound, with a nod He freeth the hearts from the shackles of grief. He doeth as He doeth, and what recourse have we? He carrieth out His Will, He ordaineth what He pleaseth. Then better for thee to bow down thy head in submission, and put thy trust in the All Merciful Lord." (From the Writings of the Baha'i Faith.)

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Phyllis Edgerly Ring, mother of two, is a writer and editor. Her current book project addresses how adults can recognize and nurture children's spiritual nature. She is a former program director at Green Acre Baha'i School in Eliot, Maine, and has been a member of the Baha'i Faith for more than 30 years. Email her at {email columns@bahai.us}columns@bahai.us{/email}. See the website of the Baha'is of the United States for more information. © Copyright 2008 by Phyllis Edgerly Ring.