If you don't believe in this stuff, just move along. Come back tomorrow when I'll be talking about yarn or something normal. You wont miss much. Hey, and don't send out the guys with the funny buckling jackets to take me off to the rubber-room, deal?
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I firmly believe that if we shut the f#%k up long enough to listen, that we can hear people who are no longer on this plane. I've had these little chit chats with deceased folk since I was in my late teens, beginning with my grandfather. I have heard from "the other side" in the few days after a passing, and sometimes even a day or two before (if they were ill and "transitioning").
If you missed it, I already wrote a great deal about my friend Frank here. He passed away last Wednesday, and I found out about it Thursday morning.
That was Frank.
Now, I'm sorry for the craptastic photo. It's a snapshot of a snapshot taken at his memorial. There were decades worth of photos on display, but this one most looked like the era that, "was the Frank that I knew."
The only photo I had ever taken of Frank was when he was wearing Pocahontas pigtails during the neighborhood's Halloween Dog Parade. The pigtails really belonged to his dog, Layla...but she would have none of that.
Which also makes for a very Frank-like photo, especially if you knew him, but I thought you'd might like a non-costumed shot, hence the fuzzycrapPhoto above ;-)
There's Frank & Layla parading in front of us.
And here's the photo Frank took of me, MyFavoriteKid, and Riley.
Anyhow. I digress. Talking to dead people. Right.
The day after Frank died, he talked to me.
I have been struggling for days now with how to write this down. Aside from worrying that you'll think I'm insane, I also worry that I cannot capture Frank's voice (and what I heard was definitely Frank's voice). I can imitate him just fine audibly, and I did just that when I repeated this little conversation to his daughter (I nailed him so good I had her cracking up with laughter). But for days now, I have struggled with how to type like he talks. My own tone of voice I can capture. Not so sure about other people's sometimes.
This is the best I can do.
Round One, shortly after his dog had sat on my foot and looked up at me with that sad face.
Me: You there?
Frank: (making a sound that was a cross between Uh! and Oh! and Aw!...very guttural...and with a surfer-dude "accent")
Oh!! It's BEAUUUUUUUUUUTIFUL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Round Two, later that day, when I looked up and saw the oddest formation of sun and fog I have ever witnessed.
Me: Frank. What is it like.
Frank: (spoken with the energy and tone of voice one uses when they are riding the same rollercoaster for a second or third time, and they are telling/yelling something to you just as you are going up and over the top)
It's AWESOME, man!!! It's like being EVERYWHERE!!!
ALL at the SAME TIME!!!
....and NOWHERE!!!!!!!
That's all I got.
But 'nuff said.
A couple more photos from the memorial (which was a huge turnout of the most diverse crowd I have seen in one place in a good long while).
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Another time I am going to need to tell you about Frank's daughter.
I have a hunch there is a new friendship in the making :-)
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
in which i talk to dead people
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6 comments:
I don't really have a comment; I just wanted to say that I don't think you're crazy. I think there are a lot of mysteries out there in this great big old world of ours. Good for you for keeping your mind open.
Frank sounds like a cool guy. We don't know what happens after death so why couldn't he be talking to you? I love what he said!
What's going to happen to Layla?
--Pomegranate
I just wanted to add that I don't think you're crazy either.
My mother and grandmother don't hear from dead people (lol, that I know of anyway) but they have always had really strong premonitions about things. For instance, my grandmother picked my mother, my sister and me up from a friend's barbecue party and *insisted* we had to come and stay at her house that night. My mom humoured her and it was a good thing because our house burned that night. The firefighters told my mom that if my sister and I had been in the house we would have died from smoke inhalation (due to the configuration of bedrooms). The windows actually blew out of the house it got so hot.
So anyway, sounds reasonable to me.
:-)
I third the comments so far - I don't know anyone who's actually had conversations (apart from you, now!), but the women in my family seem to have a really strong sort of 6th sense.
My grandmother cancelled a holiday back to her ancestral home - what should've been a week into it, my grandfather had a massive stroke and lived through it because Nanny was home to call 911.
When I broke up with my fiancee I crept into my bedroom in a shared house and didn't tell *any*one for days...my mom rang on the 3rd day (we were only talking about once a week then, so not weird to not speak for a few days) and just asked how i was doing.
Annnd I've had this feeling that I should get in touch with a friend from uni for the past couple of days. Her reply today said 'good but my mom had a blood clot taken out of her brain last night, she's ok, was just logging on to email people...'
Yay for open minds (you catch lots of interesting things ;D)
Some years ago I was having a shoulder problem while on a spiritual retreat. After I cried some on the massage table the massage therapist suggested that I go ahead and talk to my father about my feelings, even though by then he'd been dead 25 years.
"Hunh?" I said.
"Just go out and sit under a tree in the quiet," she said, "and talk to him."
So, okay, I did just that.
He answered so fast that my first question was, "If this was so easy, how come you never showed up before?"
His reply: "You never asked."
Nowadays we talk often, and he frequently appears in my dreams when I need support -- and a few times he's shown up to give me information about his areas of expertise when he was alive.
So now, you're not crazy. Glad to hear there are more of us.
I read you all the time but hardly ever comment (maybe once).
I agree with you and I "see and talk to dead people" myself. You are right, if we would just shut up and out all the crap we insist on filling our minds with and just ... be - it's amazing what you hear.
My guardian angels have come to me several times, in person. And my dad is with me all the time - tickling my left arm to let me know in case I'm a little clueless.
He's shown himself to me once - when I was driving too fast on a small, dark country road. His face appeared in my windshield and he kindly told me to slow down, that there was no need to drive so fast. About a minute later I encountered a large herd of deer crossing the road; because I was driving a normal speed for the road I was able to slow down. If I had been speeding, I'd have plowed into the herd and who knows what would have happened to me.
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