Premonitions

I spent many years of my young adulthood being haunted by Elizabeth Kubler Ross, the person who wrote On Death and Dying. She who coined the stages of grief: anger, denial, depression, bargaining and acceptance. I had not read her book, but I would find fliers for a workshop using her methods – amongst the eggplants, at the grocery store, across the street from the college where I was a student. Similar incidences - plural over months. It was more than coincidence.

For many years I had premonitions of peoples’ deaths. From a person I’d met only one time, to my grandfather.

After his death, I once dreamt a house under construction with plastic sheeting everywhere separating rooms. I found my grandfather there and asked what he was doing, he responded he was burning dinner, what did it look like he was doing. Then it dawned on him I was in “his” kitchen. He shooed me to the other side of some plastic sheeting and I found myself in a room under construction. My grandmother – very much alive at that time – popped into the dream and said – isn’t it wonderful. He’s building this for me. I could see my grandfather through the sheeting – I asked when, when is she moving in. He responded that time didn’t mean the same thing in that house as it did where I lived.

Six months later, almost to the day, while I held my grandmother in my arms quietly reciting the Hail Mary, she took a breath and her body exhaled and expelled her spirit which floated for a moment and then was gone. There is something solemn and holy about being with a person at the moment of death.

The last premonition was a friend, I hopped a plane, flew to the Midwest, showed up at his house. We had a lovely visit. We talked of perhaps making a life together. I returned home. Thirty days later his brother called to say he’d succumbed to influenza.

I do not miss the premonitions – especially as I grow older and approach the age when all my contemporaries are on the short list, and we are the elders because the elders have gone on before us. I am at that door now. All of the prior generation of my family, on all sides are gone, except my mother who is feeling old, and does not like it one bit. Her husband of more than 60 years, my dad, died on the last day of May 2019. I sat with him all night, talking and not talking as he shut down and quietly left the next morning. My mom did not want to grow old alone.

I have been in that place, where there is the light, and the Being Of Light and if you just walk toward the light…. I have been there after almost dying in a ravine in Mexico; lying in a pool of glass on the ceiling of the upside-down vehicle. I do not know what happens after one follows the light. I do know that at least momentarily, one gets to understand and know everything. That if one chooses not to follow the light, one only gets to remember that everything can be understood and known. The human brain isn’t large enough to remember everything, can remember only a glimpse.

I’m not afraid of being mortal, of being subject to death. Death is not hard, dying can be difficult. I do not look forward to some of the stages between becoming an elder and becoming an ancestor. Tiny bits of immortality are found in having children, I have none. Or leaving a legacy, I have contributed nothing of value to society. The Egyptians believed that if your name was not forgotten, you would live forever.

This 40 Days and 40 Writes project gave me a narrator, a voice, and the framework for a story my father and I dreamed up years ago. My father wanted the real characters behind the story to live on, to have immortality of sorts, so he could have immortality of sorts. So I wrote the story. I need to rewrite, flesh out, edit, spit-polish and shine it up, but thanks to the comments and encouragement – I’ve got direction. Should I be able to engage the interest of a publisher – the acknowledgment section will include Dippers Lent 2023 40 Days and 40 Writes. And while I’m dreaming – if Stephen Spielberg wants to buy the movie rights. I’m open to negotiation of terms. Should I accomplish these dreams, maybe I too will have an immortality – of sorts.

— Lkai