(Another from October, 2007, with edits)
Something very strange happened 39 years ago when my mother's mother died. When the family, including my mom and her siblings, were in the house after the funeral, there was a cane belonging to a deceased close relative of my grandmother, which had hung on the wall for several years undisturbed, that suddenly without warning or clear cause fell off the hook to the floor. My mom never forgot how everyone thought then, and since then, that grandmother's dead relative knocked it off the wall in grief. Spooky, huh?
When the drunk driver put me in a coma when I was 14, my mother’s mother appeared to me in a glowing white dress and told me not to be afraid; that I wouldn’t be there long, that I was going back because I had more work to do. Somehow I don’t think she meant the job I’m in right now, that I’m burned out from. Somehow I think she meant something more.
The day after mom learned that she was not going to be coming home from the hospital, she had a dream of her mother calling her, and in her dream she started to go to her mother. But then she heard the voice of her brother my uncle, who is still alive, calling her, and she stopped and followed his voice instead. When she woke up and talked to us about it, she said that she thought it was a confirmation that she was going to die soon and see her mother; but not right away, not right then. Sure enough as told in the previous blogs, instead of the 3-4 days she was supposed to die in, it was over 2 weeks. That was why she heard her brother's voice calling her back, the message that was given to her, so that she could spend more time with her family.
Two days after mom's funeral, a package of long florescent light tubes that I had bought to replace the old ones on the ceiling in the kitchen, which I had left leaning standing on end against the kitchen counter, suddenly fell over. They were packaged in plastic and did not shatter. But it was very unusual since they had been left securely in the corner between the counter and the wall and didn't seem prone to fall against the direction that they were leaning.
A short time later, maybe an hour, my cousin who had come to visit me, was asleep on the 2nd couch under the window and I was sitting on the main couch against the wall, watching a movie. Without warning, a long, rectangular framed painting that had hung on the wall for years without interruption, right above the back of the couch, suddenly fell off the wall and stopped on the top of the couch, fortunately not hitting me in the head. But it still scared the bejebus out of me. No lie, I jumped in my seat and shouted "Holy shit!" My cousin had woken up when I shouted, mumbling, "Huhhhhhhh?" but went right back to sleep, not paying any heed to what had happened. I looked at the fallen picture frame behind me, now leaning against the wall, and asked strangely, almost comically, "Yo ma, dat you?"
A few hours after that, I used the toilet in my mom's bedroom and left the seat up when I was done. After my visitors had gone home, I suddenly jumped in my desk chair when I heard the seat slam down on the porcelain from across the condo.
Damn spooky. So ma, what next? I guess she was leaving me a message not to leave the seat up, but if she was going to come back to pass on a message, did it have to be that?
But she did come back to pass on one more message at least…
Alarm clocks don't do well in waking me up early in the morning. When I was a teen still in school, my mom always had to call me after I'd been hitting the snooze for an hour, to wake me up. Unlike the alarm clock, her voice always woke me right up. Maybe because she didn't have a snooze button. Her voice always just woke me right up. When she lived with me later when I was an adult, I often had similar trouble waking up in the morn for work. I just don't do mornings well, and I'd need to set my alarm for an hour before I woke up, for that was how long it took hitting the snooze before I finally woke up fully.
One day soon after she died, I overslept. The alarm did not wake me. I have to leave home by 7:45am to get to work by 8. At 7:30, I heard my mother's voice loud and clear in my head, yelling "Ron, wake up!" and it woke me right up. I was about 15 minutes late for work but I would have been much later if my mom hadn't yelled into my head to wake my sleepy ass up. True story. Weird but true.
Last, but not least, this could be Master Card's next commercial:
-Bill for cruise mom took with her cousin a month or two before she died: One to two thousand (I am forever grateful to cousin Gail for going with her, and now Gail is with her again).
-Bill to insurance company for 2 years of cancer treatments, ER treatments, surgeries, and hospital stays: Around one hundred thousand dollars (?).
-Bill every month for her chemo sessions and oncologist co-pays: Two hundred dollars and more.
-Bill from hospital to insurance company for final ER, intensive care, and 2 weeks in hospice: Likely tens of thousands of dollars.
-Bill to me for funeral: About six thousand dollars.
-Little seven dollar stuffed puppy dog that mom used to have spread-pawed atop her chest staring innocently into her eyes as she sat back watching television that now sits permanently on her side of the couch watching TV with me:
Priceless.
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