I say psychic, you say psychotic
I suppose everyone has a book floating around inside their heads. Some have a burning desire to take pen to paper and journal the mundane happenings in their lives. To most it would be a boring read, to others a work of genius. I expect neither response for my efforts. I figure, I’ll write all this shit down so that later on when I can’t remember what I even had for breakfast, I will be able to reflect on my life like I was living it over again without leaving my chair…
I loved Zippy the monkey. He was a stuffed chimpanzee with the most adorable pliable face, hands feet and ears. I can still smell that new plastic smell. A sweet and pungent aroma that would burn your eyes if you got too close. None of this actually mattered to me, but in hind sight i guess my liver and pancreas sustained a genetic mutation in some manner. Zippy existed before Curious George or the Sock Monkey came on the scene. I don’t recall who gave him to me, or what ever became of him, but I think out of all the toys I ever had he was my most favorite. I would squish his little lips and pretend as though he were giving me a kiss without the fear of current horror stories involving angry chips chewing my face off.
Those were the good old days. Innocence and naïveté ruled. Claud Kirshner and Clowny, Howdy Doodie and of course Lamb Chop. The Lone Ranger and Tonto didn’t come with a warning about political correctness regarding Native Americans. We recognized Tonto as The Lone Rangers friend or as Tonto would say…” Kemosabe ” which I’ve come to discover has earned its way into the dictionary. T.V. was in black and white on a tiny screen with no surround sound, but still we managed to catch all our favorite shows of the era without the barrage of sexually explicit commercials selling anything from condoms to douches… I didn’t even know what a douche was until I was well into my twenties. Of course now I reserve the expletive for a certain select few who I find deserving of the phrase ” what a douchebag”, but I’m so much older and wiser now.
I think the most frightening thing I saw on T.V. was The Crawling Eye on Million Dollar Movie! This gave me nightmares for months. My uncles cure for my fright was desensitization by way of Boris Karloff as Frankenstein. This movie made the Crawling Eye seem like Clara Bell the Cow! My parents were none too happy to have me crawl into their bed for weeks on end. Needless to say, it was years until I was allowed to stay with my Aunt and Uncle again. I always preferred to stay with my maternal grandmother when it came to overnights. She was a big part of my life in many ways. She let me drink coffee, which by her version was milk and sugar with a few tablespoons of coffee added. I got to sleep on the couch cushions and watch Johnny Carson. I have vivid memories of summer time, the smell of the rain through the porch screens, the cool nights and the loud attic fan that lulled me to sleep only to be dreamily awakened by my grandmothers warm hand on my back checking to see if I was cold. She would place a small towel on my back to ensure I wasn’t too chilled. On New Years Eve I got to watch her eat Pickled Herring and turn the quarter around in the window screen to welcome the new year. She was a stable fixture in my life and although she died when she was well into her nineties there isn’t a day that goes by I don’t think of her in some way relative to my life now. She had a fraternal twin sister who was as meek as my grandmother was demonstrative. She was the total opposite of her sister. They didn’t have easy lives, but you would never know it unless they were in the mood to reminisce; like the story her mother told her about she and her sister. Her twin was quite a bit smaller than she was and keeping her warm was a problem, so they used to warm the oven, wrap her in blankets and put her in the oven to use it like an incubator.
I have been told they came to this country from Italy in 1902 on a ship called the Arica when they were two years old. My grandmother said she remembered the sailors giving her oranges to bring to her pregnant mother and shy sister. Grandma said her father came over first to secure a place to live, then sent for his wife and daughters. He had plans to open a grocery store but never did. One windy night as he stepped off of the train he was struck by a trolley car and killed. He never heard it coming because of the wind in his ears. He left his wife, my grandmother and her sister both age thirteen and three young sons behind to fend for themselves. They were survivors, they had no other choice but to be. I always remember my grandmother speaking Italian to her mother and asked her why she never taught my mother or myself to speak Italian. She explained that her mother wanted them to assimilate and not stand out as immigrants so they only spoke Italian between themselves at home. Unfortunately the only Italian I know are the curse words, but I speak those fluently.
My grandmother used to play hooky from school to help her mother iron and do laundry for the rich people in town. Her sister used to sew for them to make ends meet. My aunt taught me how to sew. I remember as a very young child she would hem my dresses. What I don’t remember was the time she grabbed a straight needle instead of a hemming pin and inadvertently stuck it into my leg. I reflect upon that scar on my calf and think of her fondly whenever I do. She was a kind sweet soul who always had Chiclets in her purse. She also had a habit of putting loose threads in her mouth so as not to let them accumulate on the floor. Apparently this habit of popping things into her mouth would not serve her well in her later years with failing eyesight, on Easter morning she saw a chocolate egg on the floor and hastily popped it into her mouth thinking one of her grandchildren dropped it there. Unbeknownst to her it was a small ball of poop which had escaped from a diaper. I can still remember the wriggled up expression she had when telling that story and I laugh out loud over it to this day.
My grandmother was a bit of a Tomboy by her own admission. She said there were many times the neighbor would call over to her mother to come get Normy who was hanging from the cherry tree. I recall the day they cut that tree down. It made me sad. Another memory gone, but stored in the recesses of my mind to be conjured up like it was only yesterday. The very tree my father ate cherries from until the day he found half a worm in one he had already swallowed.
My paternal grandfather died when I was three, but I can still remember him. He had big brown eyes and a genuine warmness and affection for both me and my sister. He would rock my sister in the carriage and I would take his cane and toss it over the porch in a jealous fit. My grandfather had suffered a stroke and was in and out of the county hospital. He would bring me those candy cigarettes, the kind you could blow sugar smoke out of. Kind of ironic since he was also dying of esophageal cancer, but hell, that’s how it was back then, even your Doctor smoked.
“Toby” was my grandfathers nick name. His given name was Anthony . He drove a cab/limousine for a living. He was a smoker and a drinker, but according to my grandmother he always brought home a paycheck. Their arrangement was that he was allowed to use his tip money for drinks at the local bar. After work he would drink up all of his tip money and then stagger home for dinner. One night, he brought home a buddy of his to find my grandmother out, but a pot of stew on the stove. He invited his friend to eat dinner. When my grandmother returned home she was greeted by high praise and compliments for how delicious her stew was. “Stew? What stew?” my grandmother said . “The stew you had on the stove, it was delicious”. My grandmother noticing the empty pot on the stove then realized the stew they were referring to was old scrap meat she was cooking for the dogs. She said she never had the heart to tell him what he had eaten but was sorry the dogs missed their dinner that night.
I remember my grandmother taking me by the hand, leading me up to his coffin and telling me he was just sleeping and that I could touch his hand. When I did, I felt how cold he was. His big warm brow eyes were sunken into his sockets, not at all like the gentle soul I remembered. He was still and quiet and I kept hoping he would breathe. I tried willing him to move. I knew that he was never coming back, even at that young age I recognized the finality of death and the mortality of physical body. It wasn’t until many years later that I was to understand the immortality of the soul. . .
When I was just a small child my grandmother took me over night to a house in town where she was employed as an aid for an elderly woman. The house was old, and creaky and it had a big old grandfather clock at the bottom of the stairs. One night she tucked me into this beautiful brass bed to sleep. The room was longer than it was wide and the heads of the two twin beds were pushed head to head lengthwise in the room against one wall. Sometime in the night I heard the chiming of the grandfather clock and opened my eyes to an ethereal blue light in the room. I heard music and laughter and there were people dancing in like Louie the V clothes with white wigs doing the minuet. I remember wishing they would go away and frightened by what I was seeing pulled the covers over my head until they went away. I don’t remember saying anything to anyone, but I never stayed there again!
I was in seventh grade when it happened again… My mother always picked me up at school if it was raining. So I waited by the west door of the school as I always did. No one came and it was pouring rain and getting later and later. As I stood there ever hopeful my mother would come for me, an ambulance went by. There was no siren, only some flashing lights. The intense feeling I got about that ambulance was as though someone I knew was in it. I would have bet money on it. I wanted to call out to it and I recall starting to run towards it when all of a sudden my Aunt Florence pulled into the schoolyard. She said that she was here to pick me up. I told her an ambulance had just gone by and that some one I knew was in it. I was adamant about the fact that someone in my family was in that ambulance. She then told me that my father had slipped in the yard and had broken his leg and was being taken to the hospital. Then she said, “Oh my God, you must be psychic”. The ambulance was carrying my father. I had no clue what she meant, I only knew what I knew. She looked frightened by what I had told her, which in turn frightened me. I had no idea why, just that what I had experienced wasn’t “normal”.
My father’s grandmother was a beautiful white haired Italian lady. Black dress, black shoes, black stocking rolled down below her knees, like she was always in a perpetual state of mourning. She was tended to by my Uncle’s Marine buddy who had no family and was kind of adopted by my family. I knew him as Uncle Charlie. A short round little man with a red ruddy completion and a heart of gold. He carried with him a small black change purse with shiny dimes in it. Every time he visited he would give my sister and me dimes for our piggy banks. Apparently it was his job to care for and to drive my Great grandmother wherever she needed or wanted to go. One time we all piled in the car and drove for what seemed like hours and hours. My father, mother, sister, Uncle Charlie and my Great grandmother out on this big adventure. It took a good part of the day to get where she needed to go. I kept asking where we were going, and who were we going to see. My query was met by the standard, you’ll see when we get there, which by my standards was still an unacceptable answer so I kept it up until they promised to buy me a pool if I shut up. We finally arrive at our destination, which turns out to be a cemetery! So I pipe in, “we drove all this way to see a grave?” My father gave me an indignant look, but my great grandmother just laughed. “Can we go get the pool now ?” “Yes Bella”, said my great grandmother.
She made the best chicken cachetory and home made ravioli. She used to roll out the dough on her kitchen table and stuff the ravioli with meat, or cheese. I vaguely remember watching her cut the ravioli into little squares with a special cutting wheel. I’d sit there in my Sunday best with my ankle socks and black patent leather Mary Janes, my thighs sticking to the plastic on the furniture in anticipation of of the buchal delight we were going to experience. I’d stare at the black and white tiny tile floor pattern and the tin ceilings in the sparsely decorated apartment. Sometimes I was allowed to feed the German Shepard in the upstairs apartment the left over chicken. The hallways echoed as my little feet clapped across more tiny black tiles as i danced my way across the hall to feed the dog. Then afterwards I would pretend I was a tap dancer and I would do my best Shirley Temple making as much noise as I possibly could until the neighbors complained.
I was a freshman in high school when she got sick. We went to the hospital to visit her in the ward. When she saw me she cried and flung back the sheets of her hospital bed to expose her leg stump which they had amputated below the knee. She wailed that she wouldn’t be able to dance at my wedding. That was all she ever talked about. Every birthday she celebrated she made a point of saying that she wouldn’t die until she got to dance at my wedding. Her disappointment and horror was overwhelming to me. “Look at what they did to me, just look”. I was paralyzed by her pain. It was as if I felt it myself. I hugged her and she wept on my shoulder and I knew I would never see her again.
I used to walk home from school everyday and I would take my time, think or sing to myself. This day was different, I felt an urgency to get home. As I approached my front door I sensed something was wrong. My father was sitting in his chair and he was crying. I have only seen my father cry once in his life and this was the day my great grandmother died. She developed a blood clot after the amputation and it went directly to her heart. I don’t remember crying. It was as if I expected it. I don’t even remember the wake, or the funeral. But the night after she was buried when I was in bed I received a visit. Everyone was asleep and the house was silent. I felt a presence in the room. I woke up to my great grandmother’s pixilated apparition on my bedroom wall. She was in the beautiful sky blue sequined dress she was buried in. Her white hair glowing like a heavenly light. The image was only from her torso up so I couldn’t see her feet, but she tells me she will still dance at my wedding. Then it faded. I never spoke of it. I never told anyone and although I never saw her at my wedding, I knew she was there as she had promised, dancing her ass off!
My Mother’s mother used to take my sister and me to church and then to the cemetery to visit our relatives. We would skip over the graves and collect partially wilted flowers from the old funeral sprays that we’re discarded in the corner of the cemetery. We would make little bouquets and tie them in the left over ribbons. Occasionally we would take them home. I remember one Sunday my father came in the door and saw we had set the table and placed some lovely flowers in a vase in the center of the table. At first he was all happy and saying how nice everything looked. He asked us how we came to get the flowers. We told him grandma had taken us to the cemetery and we brought some of the flowers home for the table. I do believe a heated discussion ensued between my father and his mother in law, so she took the flowers home for her table. I never saw any harm in what we did, but it creeped my father out.
My grandmother was a master of manipulation. She made you believe you were her favorite grandchild and oh how she loved to play us. It wasn’t until after she was dead we all found out that each one of us was deemed the favorite. She would preface any gift by saying “don’t tell Susan”, or “don’t tell Florence”.
At the interment we all collaborated and were shocked by just how much money she gave away to all of us on the QT. We were all sitting around the table talking about her life and how she lived it and my father said ” She was a tough old bird and if she knew how much this funeral cost she would turn over in her grave”. It was at that very moment the lights started to flicker. I said, “well, I guess she heard you!”
My grandmother had a premonition about her death. Two weeks before when we were gathered in the same place for the funeral of my sister’s husband. Grandma was in my fathers chair rocking and crying “I’m next, I know it, I’m next”. She died exactly two weeks to the date of my brother in laws death. Prior to this, she had everyone write their names and put post it notes on the stuff they wanted from her house. I asked if I could have her two living room chairs, so she had me put my name on them. After her death when my mother and Aunt were clearing out her house the chairs were moved out of there and into my house. One in the master bedroom, the other in the upstairs bedroom. That night while I was in bed all I could smell was the scent of the sachet she used to keep in her dresser drawer. I thought for sure the scent was on the chair, so I got out of bed and got on my hands and knees and started to sniff the upholstery on the chair. It didn’t have a smell at all. There I am sniffing and sniffing like an idiot until I realized it wasn’t coming from the chair at all, it was a “visit”. I believe she came to make sure I got the chairs. I got back into bed and this intense flowery smell whooshed past my nose, and it was gone. I thanked her for checking up on me. . . When I really knew she was making sure my cousin Susan didn’t get the chairs!
It was after this experience that I started to pay more attention. Grandma visited me once more while I was sitting in her other chair. I was still grieving and still missing her. I closed my eyes and asked her to come to me. I felt the warm touch of a hand on top of my left hand which I had resting on the arm of her chair. Tears filled my eyes and I thanked her once again for coming to me again.
That was many years ago, but I will carry that memory with me until the day my turn to comes to touch a loved one’s hand in comfort.
Things were unfolding for me psychically and I embraced every experience with gratitude and love for my ability to connect with spirit. Two weeks before my grandmothers death I was visited by my sisters husband who had passed. We were all aware that his death was imminent but nothing could have prepared me for what I experienced the morning of his death.
It was around 5 a.m. and i was awakened by a vision playing in my head like a movie. It was Sam all dressed in white. He wore a white suit, shoes, tam on top of his head. He sat up from his hospital bed and threw off his blankets. Then he got up and walked towards the window of the room into this warm and intensely bright light. His exact words were” Fuck this shit, I’m out of here!” Any one who knew Sam would know that was something he would say, but it was his voice I heard saying it. Later that morning around nine my sister called to tell us Sam had died somewhere around five a.m. She went on to describe how she was lying with him in the bed when all of a sudden the room brightened and she heard birds singing as he passed. She found it curious that the sound from the singing birds were in his room and not outside because the windows were closed.
My husband had lost his mother about seven years before his father passed. She passed from complications of peritonitis and his father from lung cancer. The day before his funeral I was asked to go to the cemetery to collect her ashes so that they could be buried together at a military cemetery in South Jersey. I retrieved a box which contained her remains and i strapped her into the front seat of my little red Saturn sports car. I struck up a conversation with her. I took her past her old house to show her the new siding because the last thing she said to me as they carried her to the ambulance on the way to the hospital was how the house looked like tobacco row. She had lamented over the fact that it was a shame that it might be the last time she would see the house and how sad she was that it was in such disrepair. So I figured I would point out that my father in law finally had the house sided, but too bad it was after she died. I told her I thought she might like to see it so i stopped in the driveway and unfastened her seatbelt and held her up to the window for a peek. Then I strapped her back in and drove to the funeral home. When we arrived in the parking lot I told her we were here and that tomorrow she would be with her husband again. It was then I heard her laugh and then she said, “God damn Greek, now I have to spend eternity between his legs?” This wasn’t the last communication I would have with her.
A few months after my father in law died we sold our house and moved into my in laws home. Things weren’t wonderful between my husband and me and I would often sit in silence while I was all alone and talk to my in laws about how sorry I was that things weren’t going well. I was on the back patio one afternoon and all I could smell was coffee and cigars. No one was around. No one was smoking, or brewing coffee, two of my father in laws favorite things. It was an unmistakable sign he was around. Later on that year it became more apparent my husband and I would be divorcing. This one very cold dark and gloomy March afternoon, he took the kids for the day to a boat show. I didn’t want to go. I just needed time to myself. I recall sitting on the stairs and starting up another conversation with my deceased mother in law. I told her how badly I felt that her son and I would be separating and that I hoped she understood and remembered our one time conversation when she told me if she weren’t so sick, she would have left my father in law a long time ago before she got too ill to do so. I told her I felt that if I stayed I was doomed to suffer the same fate as she.
Now, here is where I have to set the scene. My in laws had a set of lamps in their living room that we inherited which had like a night light at the base. They were three way lamps. First click was for the night light, the second was the center portion of the lamp and then the third click lit the main lightbulb. Now, I’d known my in laws almost twenty five years and the night lights on either one of those lamps NEVER worked for as long as I had known them. So, there I sat on the cold drafty stairs in the dim evening on that cold March day asking my mother in law to send me some kind of a sign that she understood what I had told her and if she was ok with it. My right hand to God I swear this to be true because it even freaked the shit out of me. . . I heard this click and the night light on one of the lamps came on by itself. After I regained my composure I thanked her for her answer. I got up off the stairs and walked over to the lamp. I clicked off the night light then tried to turn it back on, thinking maybe it would work now. It didn’t.
That house held such sadness for me. My father in law died in that house. In fact, the very spot where our bed was in the master bedroom where he died was always colder than any another spot in the entire house. In the master bath above the sink was a nine inch brown stain from his cigar smoke. As many times as I treated the spot with stain cover it would bleed right through and drip brown water spots onto the sink below. One morning as I was putting on my makeup in that mirror I saw a young Asian man with shoulder length straight black hair parted in the middle dressed in a white suit, and barefoot, sitting on top of the picnic table in the neighbors back yard. He was sitting on the table with his feet on the bench below. I thought that was odd so I turned to look out the window to get a better look and to my startled amazement, there was no one there. Now I knew that a Korean family lived there, but to my knowledge they had no children. It wasn’t until I took my son trick or treating that I discovered that what I had seen was the spirit of their dead son. She was a lovely lady who took a liking to my son. She would give him packets of Korean Ginseng tea to give to me. When he came trick or treating that Halloween she commented how she missed her son who had died back in Korea some years back of Leukemia. I never told her what I had witnessed and I was always sorry I didn’t.
People tend to be frightened by what they don’t understand and I found that out the hard way. It was Christmas morning and I was in the shower. Suddenly a voice said to me that someone was going to reveal a pregnancy today. We were to have dinner at my brother’s house that day. All of his friends as well as the rest of my family were going to be there too. When we arrived I took my sister in law aside and told her what had happened to me and that some one was going to announce that they’re pregnant today. She said o.k. and assured me it wasn’t her. Later on that afternoon my brothers best friends wife sits down next to me in the living room and whispers to me that it is she who is pregnant. I was so happy for her because I knew that they had been trying for years. A few hours later my husband said that my brother and his friends were all in the kitchen laughing and making fun of me and that it was pissing him off. He said, “that’s what happens when you tell people who don’t understand this kind of stuff.” I guess my feelings were a little hurt, but in the end it really didn’t matter because I didn’t need their validation or acceptance.
My brother in law Sam was a Beautician and he had a best friend named Raymond, also a Beautician whose mother was sick in the hospital. It was around this time I was into crystal ball gazing. So, there I am staring into my black obsidian crystal ball when all of a sudden this movie starts playing like it was projected onto the ball. It was a short clip about Raymond at the hair salon working on a client and getting a phone call, then he rushes out of the salon to the hospital. The phone call was about his mother having died. This was interrupted by my sister ringing my door bell. I forgot she was stopping by to pick up some shampoo I got for her. I asked if she heard anything about Raymond’s mom. She said no she hadn’t, and asked me why I asked. I told her what I was doing before she came over and that I believed that Raymond’s mother had just died. She picked up the phone and called to listen to her home messages. There was a message from one of her friends who also worked at Raymond’s salon who left a message confirming that Ray’s mom had died. This story made the rounds to the same group of people who laughed and scoffed at me only this time they weren’t laughing.
I dove deeper into the metaphysical. I had a hair client who was at my house at least twice weekly for months. One day I told her I was interested in photography but was always disappointed in the results of local photo labs. I expressed an interest in learning more about photography and she said that her electrologist had an ex husband who was a local photographer and she would ask her for his number and if he could help me. The next time she came she had his number and told me his soon to be ex wife said to call and he would look at my photos and tell me what I was doing wrong. After she left I called. As I spoke with him I was taking notes, jotting down information regarding aperture and f-stops, film choices and lighting. All the while I was doodling arrows and targets and feathers on arrows. He told me he was willing to exchange photographic knowledge for like an internship. He would show me how to pull negatives, crop wedding photos and would use me as his wedding assistant if I was interested. He said he would pay me $50 per wedding to load film backs and help set up group portraits. We set a date for me to bring my photographs by so he could critique my work. Interestingly enough, this would be the last time this hair client ever came to my house. As I said, she was in my chair at least once a week, her husband and three kids all came for haircuts on a regular basis, then suddenly they all dropped off the face of the earth.
When I walked in to the studio I was greeted by his studio manager. He told me Ed would be right with me and this “voice” from in back of the studio says “Mikey, get her a cup of coffee”. . . Mike left to go next door to get coffee and with that Ed came out from the back to meet me. The very first time I set eyes on this man I knew my life was about to change. I was unable to shake the feeling that I knew him lifetimes before. I was frightened by my feelings of how much I was drawn to this man. My first reaction was to flee, but my little voice said, “if you stay, just know that your life as you know it to be will change forever”.
As the weeks rolled by it was obvious he was in the middle of his own drama and going through a divorce. He would argue over the phone with her and I would sit there and stare uncomfortably at the ceiling counting the pencils he speared into the acoustic ceiling tiles out of boredom. All the while pretending not to hear.
After his divorce was final, he began to date what I referred to as the flavor of the week. As amusing as this all was, I was drawn into his dating fervor. We talked about his interests and beliefs. He’d ask me my opinion regarding his choice in companionship and without hesitation I expressed my disapproval. Too young, too fat, too much baggage, too needy… The list was as endless as his appetite for variety.
One day he was on the phone and I happened to look over his shoulder as I passed by the desk. He sat with a steno pad speaking to a prospective bride and as he spoke, he doodled arrows, arrow heads, targets and feathers. . . Well, that looked familiar and was extremely intriguing. When he hung up, I told him I couldn’t help but notice what he was doodling and explained that the very first time we had spoken over the phone, I drew the exact same thing, sight unseen. He said he did it all the time. That began the journey “my voice” had spoken about.
We spent countless hours talking about life after death, past life regression, reincarnation, being psychic, and the like. We explored remote viewing, which was great fun. One time our friend John, who was a videographer we worked with set up a test subject on Ed’s coffee table at his apartment. I in turn, would have to remote view and jot down all that I could about what it was he set up for me to view. When the exercise was over I had written down all of the impressions I had gotten. I had written that it was white, with like red buttons on it and the buttons had numbers on them. He grabbed me by the hand and said, you have to see this. . . As he opened the door to his apartment, there on the coffee table ,just as John had left it, was a white blender with red buttons with number on them. We were astonished by the amount of detail I was able to get. The next day at the studio, I asked him what he was looking for in the back of his closet on his hands and knees tearing through boxes. His jaw dropped and he said, “how did you know this?” “I was looking for a certain pair of shoes and I couldn’t find them!” I told him I was just honing my skills. We both laughed.
After that we visited every psychic store in New York and in New Jersey at the time. Exploring crystals and divination tools. I started to get nightmares about being stabbed in the back. Each time would be worse and worse and the pain was excruciating. I decided I would do a past life regression. I bought a tape and followed the instructions. What followed next was nothing short of extraordinary. During my regression, I saw myself as a male Blackfoot Indian. I was paddling down stream in my canoe when I heard something in the bushes behind me. As I turned to see what it was, I felt an arrow pierce my back. Before I died I was able to see who had killed me. I was startled to learn that it was Ed. The regression takes you through why this occurred. I was able to understand it as common practice among rival tribes. One wants what the other possesses and kills for it. In this case Ed wanted my wife and family and all he had to do was kill me and then take them as his own. The most remarkable thing about this entire regression was what followed later. Not only did my nightmares and pain cease, but I developed a birthmark, which was never present before in the shape of an arrow head in between my shoulder blades. I wrote all of this down and showed it to Ed. What I never knew, was that Ed is also part American Indian. We don’t doodle arrows any longer either. . .
Around the time of Sam’s death my sister was in a bad way and Ed wanted to help, so he got three tickets to see the Psychic Medium James Van Praagh. My sister so desperately wanted to connect with Sam. Ed told me that morning when he was getting out of the shower he started to speak to Sam, telling him to please come through for Jeanne. He said all of a sudden the entire bathroom was filled with the overwhelming smell of flowers. He described it as clawing. Later that afternoon my sister was disappointed that Sam didn’t come through for her, but we stood on line to get Van Praagh’s autograph anyway. When we made our way to the front of the line my sister handed him the tape she wanted signed, but he didn’t have a pen. Ed said “P”, wait, and tangled up in my hair was a sharpie marker. He untwists it from my hair and hands the marker to James Van Praagh to sign my sisters tape. After he was done we were turning to leave and he said, “Wait, don’t you want your pen back?” to which Ed replied, “No, you keep it, it was a gift”. We were convinced it was from Sam.
I/we that is Ed and me find dimes. I have a box of dimes I refer to as “heaven cents”. Over the years we have come to find them in the strangest places, like fleece jackets with no pockets, underwear, spray painted to the back of a closet, under pickles wrapped up in a sandwich. Just bizarre places. The connection to this occurrence always seems to happen during financial turmoil. When we stress about how we are going to pay the next bill somehow the universe always has something up it’s sleeve. These times are always prefaced by one of us finding a dime. Invariably we find these dimes in places we have just been that they would have been blatantly obvious, or so obscure you’d never ever expect to find one at that location. Either way, we always thank whoever sends them and are forever grateful for this connection. I mentioned earlier on that my Uncle Charlie used to have a dime purse, and although I can’t be 100% positive, I’m pretty sure he’s my connection. He was always a quiet unassuming man and he disappeared from my life as mysteriously as he entered it.
Doc was a close family friend. When I was divorcing he helped me financially as best he could. He gave me a job, but more than that he gave me his friendship. I remember one of the first conversations we ever had when I had just dyed my hair red. I asked him if my hair color was ok, or professional enough for the office. He said he really didn’t care if it was purple, just as long as I did my job. He befriended my son and inspired him to do things he wouldn’t normally do outside of his comfort zone. He was a gracious unassuming man who loved his family deeply. Always a positive light in my life, he could find the good in any bad. He was as positive as I was cynical and I supposed we complemented each other in a way. I knew he was gravely ill, but I couldn’t convince him to do something about it. We went to work as usual and I cancelled his appointments because he was asleep at his desk, he had me draw his blood because he was convinced he had TB. I kept telling him it was worse than that and to please get a chest Xray. He would cough until he turned blue and couldn’t breathe. Then one day he drove to the hospital to make rounds, hit a car in the parking lot and ended up on one of the floors but had no idea how he got there. He was admitted shortly thereafter and called me with the news. He told me he had Adenocarcinoma of the lung with mets to the brain. I asked him when he was starting treatment and he said there would be none. His Doctor tried to get him to take some kind of treatment so it would buy him some time to get his affairs in order, but he refused. That was the end of October. He left the hospital and had me take him to his office to clean it out. All of the charts got stored in his garage, patients were calling for appointments and we couldn’t make any. He had no strength to even tell me what he wanted to do. A week or so before he died he put himself into Hospice. I had to take another job at a call center and finish cleaning out his office. I made calls to all of his patients and told them what was happening and who he had referred his practice to. December 10 th I went to see him. He was dehydrated and unable to speak. As hard as he tried to communicate his words were jumbled. His lips were dry and cracked and it broke my heart to see him like this. I got a wash cloth and wet it and squeezed some water into his mouth. He was so thirsty he sucked the washcloth like he was on the desert for weeks without water. Then he blurts out… “That did the trick” and asked me if I got “a back and forth job”. “Yes” I said, I have to commute now. That was about all he could muster, but I was grateful for whatever words I could hear while he was still able to utter them. I hugged him and sobbed like a child in his arms. I told him I loved him, and he patted my head. . .
John passed peacefully the next day at around three in the afternoon. I was at work. My phone and computer stopped working briefly. I knew he was gone. His wife called me that evening to tell me he had passed. My dog Emily kept running up and down the stairs barking and crying for hours, my Christmas lights kept flashing. There was definitely a disturbance in the force. I was glad for him that his ordeal was over, but I was lost without my friend. Months down the road I was in my bedroom tying my sneakers and I started talking to dead people like I do on occasion. I called out to Doc and said that I haven’t felt him around in a while but if he was, just give me a sign. I heard this rustling on top of my giant armoire that had an artificial plant on top of it. With that, the plant that had been up there and undisturbed for over seven years just rolls off the top of the armoire onto the floor. I thanked him and laughed at the mess he made.
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