When I think of strong souls’ expansive nature, empathy, and concern for other people, it doesn’t seem likely that my mother’s soul would have had enough substance or, well, juice to have connected effectively with me in my efforts a decade after her death to visit the places where she’d spent her last days on earth.

Yet today, it’s hard for me to imagine anyone but her guiding me to both hospitals she was in at the end of her life—and somehow in that process, imparting so much knowledge about the facility where she was treated for depression that I immediately recognized it, and walked without hesitation into the right building within the complex.

These experiences were also very much in line with what seems to be a principle that people’s souls retain key aspects of their personality and character.  In her more purged and healthy state, Mom still wasn’t especially good at talking about her feelings, but she was a whole lot better at allowing herself to at least forthrightly feel them—and maybe that was enough to enable me to feel a positive connection to her as a real person.