Interpreting synchronicity

I've had a long history with synchronicity. In fact, it's often made me feel the universe is looking after me, in small ways and larger ways. I fondly remember the day in 1988 that I had a craving for a pudding pop, and on the walk to the grocery store, I was wishing they'd sell them individually. As I walked into the store, a woman literally came up to me and said, "Would you like a pudding pop?" She was giving away samples, individual pudding pops, exactly what I'd been craving. Thank you, universe!

In 1994, I was trying to buy a house. The mortgage broker I was working with had run all the numbers and told me that the price range I wanted wasn't going to be possible at my current salary, even with my mother co-signing. (My mother had very little money, but she also had very little debt, so her willingness to cosign bumped my price range a little bit.) I was making $26,500 at the time, I think. The broker told me to call her back when I was making $30,000 a year. I was frustrated, but remained optimistic and determined. A few hours later, my manager (who knew nothing of this conversation or my efforts to buy a house) called me into his office and told me I was being promoted. Ordinarily the pay raise would take me to $28K, but due to the company merger, the pay scales were going up. I would be the first one in my pay scale to be making $30K. I called my mortgage broker a few minutes later, and bought a house a few months later. That was the happiest kind of synchronicity.

Since Sandy died, I've experienced synchronicity frequently. Some of that has to be Sandy's intervention, and I assume some is more global. But perhaps because I so desperately want Sandy to return, I'm not sure how to interpret some of the messages I'm receiving.

A few months ago, in a visitation dream, a server emphasized the numbers on the bill I was about to pay. $5.49. For months, I've watched to see where those numbers appear, wondering why they'd been so important in the dream. Earlier this week, I finally just Googled 549. One of the things that came up was an XKCD comic. Sandy loved XKCD. It was strip 549 that came up - in it, a woman says, "Why did you let me think you were dead?" Then, I watched Captain America, which has been on my library hold list for months; in it, we find out at the end that he didn't die, after all. Yesterday, I picked up the New Yorker I've been reading (from November 2010; I'm way behind) - and in the story, a dog is hit by a car and dies, except it turns out he'd only been knocked unconscious and is apparently fine, after all.

Ceanothus will be in bloom soon. Maybe
she'll return for that. I'll be paying close
attention to the ceanothus plants she
particularly loved around town.

So, okay, I can recognize a pattern. But what does it mean? Is Sandy not actually dead? I know that she isn't lying dormant in a crashed plane, wasn't just knocked unconscious by a car, isn't on a desert island. I was with her as she was dying - there was no way anyone could have substituted a different body or something wild like that. So the obvious interpretation isn't it.

What, then, was I supposed to do with this information? I've been feeling like maybe I'm missing some instruction, that if I could just learn enough physics or meditate intently enough, I could get her back. But this morning, I realized that one thing all three of these messages had in common was that no one had to do anything, really, to get each of them back. They just had to pay attention when they returned. I can do that.

I've concluded that there are at least three possible messages here:
1) She's coming back, physically. (That's the one I want, of course, and rather improbable.)
2) She's already here, as I've known, and that's what being not dead means in this context. I just need to continue to pay attention to know that she's still sentient and present and Sandy.
3) She doesn't know she's dead. (There have been plenty of occasions on which she's said things in visitation dreams or during other communication that has led me to wonder whether she really understands that she died. She didn't have the same beliefs I did about what happens to our energy when we die; as far as I know, she believed we just cease to exist. Clearly, she hasn't ceased to exist, so it may not seem possible to her that she actually died.)

I don't know exactly what these messages mean, but I felt a huge burden lift when I recognized the pattern that implied I'm not responsible for making anything happen; I just need to be ready to notice it when it does.