Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 31, 1991 TAG: 9103310023
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B/12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BRUCE TAYLOR SEEMAN LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium
There it was, in the gift section of T.J. Maxx: a display of four coffee mugs, each personalized with the signature of her husband - the one who died nine years ago.
"Who in the world would buy them?" Mahler recalls saying to a store clerk. But she did, of course, for $2.99 each. "I have one for each grandchild. It's incredible."
Mahler says the connection between the cups and her former mate is a sure thing. They're peacock blue, just like Mahler's kitchen decor. They bear his name: G. Mahler. And the handwriting is a perfect match, right down to the wavy signature lines under his name.
"George did those curlicues when he was showing off," Mahler said of her husband, a lawyer and retired Navy captain who died in 1982. "I'm sure they're his signature."
Employees at T.J. Maxx said corporate policy prohibited them from explaining how the mugs might have appeared on the shelves.
But Mahler, who was alerted to the mugs by friends who saw them in the store first, has a theory:
George Mahler, an avid catalogue shopper, probably ordered the mugs shortly before his death. His office may have returned the package once it arrived, prompting the manufacturer to sell them to a different distributor.
"I got a feeling . . . they got turned around and showed up nine years later," she said.
But Mahler said that explanation doesn't take much of the peculiarity out of finding her husband's name splashed across a store's shelf. And she counts it among two other unsettling incidents that occurred after her husband's passing:
Virginia Mahler had cherished a gold medallion that George Mahler gave her upon their engagement. It said: "If in need, contact me day or night, Love, George." The medallion vanished the day he died.
"Everybody says he took it with him," Virginia Mahler said.
And one day after George Mahler died, when Virginia Mahler mustered the courage to gather up his personal belongings, she went to clear out his law office. Three lights simultaneously went dark when she entered the room.
The latest event, she concedes, is the strangest. And she hopes it's the last.
"I hope he's gone to rest now," Mahler says. "I don't want any more of these weird things to happen."
by CNB