"Any tree will do.'' That's what Mildred reckoned. She told me herself not three weeks ago.

Thing is, Mildred slipped from this mortal coil a year and a half ago, in January 2018.

Mildred is Gary's mam, my 'mother-in-law'.

Shortly after she passed away, I began having these weird 'visions', if that's not too grand a word, it seems a bit over the top to me. They usually put in an appearance just as I was drifting into the twilight zone, just before sleep takes over completely.

At first, I said nowt. It was far too bizarre, and obviously Gary was in deep grief. Now wasn't the time to go there with this madness. Not to mention the fact that my own mam, Val, had passed away only weeks earlier, at the back end of October 2017. I was struggling massively myself.

I assumed the stress of losing my rock, Gary, to his own inner turmoil was causing my brain to do strange things, in a vain effort to cope with the trauma of it all.

I'm a believer in letting your mind 'settle' during periods of stress. Give yourself a break. Some people may call it meditation, but that seems too focused for me - I just like to daydream and see what happens. The mind will usually find it's own equilibrium if it's allowed, positioning itself into a mode you can cope with at the time. I take notice - it knows best, I know nowt. I simply accepted that the colours and images I was seeing were part of this process.

Two lost mothers and two lost souls. It was horrendous. We of course went through the motions, as I suppose everyone does - work, family, domestic stuff. All of this interspersed with finding each other collapsed in random places, silently screaming snot into piles of freshly folded washing, staring into space down the side of a bed, curled up in the shower tray, water running. Being too fucked up to be any use to each other.

This was not a good time.

Slowly, I felt myself reaching some sort of stage of acceptance. My mam had spent the last five years of her life practically locked up in her own home by Lt. Douchebag of the C.O.P.D., and we all know what a bastard he is. I was glad she was out of her pain, we all were. I eventually got my head round how much I missed her physically. I realised she is always around somewhere, after all, she keeps sending me 'postcards'. A household cleaning tip from the 1940s. A recommendation for a good Hollywood scandal or biography programme on telly. An old wives' tale. A crap joke. A filthy laugh. These things all pop out of my mouth - and they are all her. Postcards from Val.

Postcards are apt, as I like to think that she is away travelling, going where she pleases. Celestial backpacking, kind of, whilst looking fabulous. After a life of caring for others, it's her turn now - and that's only just and fair.

Anyway, these images and colours. They just wouldn't stop. I had to try and work out what it all meant.

I've never really been into Spiritualism. I've always been a bit dismissive of it. Val used to drag me to psychic fairs and Spiritualist churches sometimes, and of course I dabbled in the Ouija as a teenager, frightening the crap out of myself, but I've never truly bought into it. However, I did love reading Val's Doris Stokes paperbacks and the large glossy tomes on 'The Unexplained' that were always around the house, picked up from charity shops or borrowed from the library. It was these memories that made me think 'Could this be Mam??' But it just didn't feel like her, and I wrote that idea off pretty much instantly.

I tried to make more mental notes about what was happening. These 'images' always began with lime green swirls, which would then become more distinct images.

Finally, after a few weeks, when Gary was feeling a little bit more himself, I told him what had been happening. He was really interested and insisted I told him everything when it happened. So I did. None of the images meant anything to me. I tried to make them fit, but they didn't. But they meant something to Gary. The messages were meant for him, not me.

'It's me Mother - I knew she'd be in touch eventually.'

Now, Gary and Mildred had spent many hours together doing 'spiritualist stuff' - it was their thing, something they did, just the two of them. Mildred knew what she was doing in this area. (I'm glad someone knew what the hell was going on!)

I tried and tried to get Gary to see what I was seeing. I was getting knackered from it. It was as if now that Mildred knew I was passing stuff on to Gary, she was giving it rock all, ramping it up. I could now hear what she wanted me to tell him and I passed on what she had to say. Usually some sage advice. Sometimes it would get very physical, draining my energy as she passed what I guess was healing energy through me to him, through my arm and hand. I would be driven to place my hand on him, and would be unable to move it until she had finished - no matter how bad the cramp got. It was all really mental - but totally fascinating, and Gary found it really helpful and calming, even though he still couldn't hear or see anything.

This went on for months.

One day, when things had been particularly shit for numerous reasons, I'd had enough and went to lie down on the spare bed. I couldn't settle. Gary came up. He was pissed off and drained as well.

'Your mam says there's a tree you need to go to.' I blurted out.

(This was all just par for the course now.)

'Oh aye? Where?'

'Sherburn. I dunno whereabouts, but she's telling me how to get to it.'

I explained Mildred's directions - I had no clue, I didn't know the village at all, other than the main drag, where Gary's parents' house was. I'd had no need to venture anywhere else.

"There's a gate from the main road, on the way to Sherburn Hill, then you walk down the edge of a field until you come to a crossroads in the path. There's a fence, a stile, and a big tree."

"We'll go tomorrow, if it's nice".

"Oh, OK."

ZZZZZZZZZZ.

So we did. We parked across the road from The Entrance. Except there wasn't one. My heart sank.

"That's where we need to be, over there!", and I pointed.

"Oh, you can get to that bit another way, I know whereabouts she means."

A short walk through a housing estate later, we were in the fields. On The Path. I felt a bit sick. This could be embarrassing, and I certainly didn't want to upset Gary. I felt nervous. What if this was all bollocks?

We came to the conclusion that a lot of the gates, hedges and paths would have changed over the years. Mildred wouldn't have been down this way for a very long time.

"That's the tree!" Now I was far too excited.

Then we were upon the crossroads. There was The Fence. Complete with The Stile.

"Fucking hell, this is mental." I was practically jumping on the spot with excitement.

'Behave man, someone might come past. What do we do??'

'Go over the stile, obviously!'

I went ahead, Gary following a lot more cautiously behind. I think he was a bit taken aback by it all. I jogged up to the tree, no idea what species it was.

'No way! Look at this! There's a big hole in the trunk, and you have to stand in the hole. Get in and close your eyes, see what happens.'

I wandered a short distance away to give him some space, and Gary stood in the tree. After a shortish while, he came out.

'What happened?' I could tell by his face that something had.

'She put her hands on my face and I felt her love - then a little girl with curled hair smiled at me and showed me a posy of cowslips.'

'It's her, she used to come here to play.' (Mildred had grown up in the village.)

'Yep, I think you're right.'

'She says we have to walk round this field, behind those hawthorn bushes.'

We couldn't believe our eyes. Behind the hawthorns were huge swathes of cowslips. More in one place than either of us had ever seen before.

'Wow.' There was nothing else to be said.

We walked around the field full of marsh loving flowers, then followed the Sherburn beck (or burn) that the village takes it's name from, to another stile and crossed that.

'She says there's a church in those trees.'

'Yeah there is, Hallgarth, why?'

'We have to go. She's insistent.'

So we trooped off across a large open field. I could now see a high stone wall amongst the trees. I hung behind, letting Gary and Mildred walk together. Beyond the wall was indeed a church. The beautiful Norman Church of St. Laurence.

The door was open, so we ventured in. What a beautiful place. There were two people inside, a man and a woman, who were really friendly and welcoming. They told us about the history of the church, about the wedding services and flowers they offered, even though we hadn't asked. I could barely keep a straight face as I could hear Mildred saying 'Hint, hint Gary!' The little bugger.

After we had finished chatting and were leaving the church, I laughingly told Gary about what his mam had said.

'I know! I heard her as well!' Funny as.

We walked back to the tree using a different route, and whilst turning round to take a photo of something or other (as always, I had my trusty camera with me) I noticed the sky. There was the weirdest cloud formation. Here's a photo. We'd never seen anything like it before.