It has happened more than once. I knew that it was coming and it was dark even before the fatality hit. A couple of times in my life I have lost people who are extremely dear to me.
An ominous cloud that cannot be described until its shadows everything is a precursor in my life to a fatality of someone close to me.
June 14, 1997
The first time that I remember this happening was the day my mother died. I was outside tending my vegetable garden on a hot summer day. I was wearing shorts and a tank top, which was my usual attire for gardening.
We had peppers, peas, green beans, cucumber and corn. Working in the garden always smelled good with the freshly turned Earth and the Sun warming the green leaves and vegetables so that just walking through you can smell fresh tomatoes or fresh green beans.
With all these sensory details all of a sudden my whole arm went numb. I stumbled into the house where my husband was and told him I feel like I'm having a heart attack. I was 38 years old and did not have any heart conditions or even then no migraines or anything holding me back from a full and active lifestyle.
I believed that was the moment that my mother had made her decision to end her life. She had called me the day before and we spoke for hours on the phone and she never said anything about wanting to take her life. I will never forget the physical reaction I experienced back then. I had no idea what that could be.
At 2 or 3 in the morning when my husband came back to the bedroom, he'd been watching television and the police showed up at the door to let him know that my mother shot herself. He came to wake me up out of a sound sleep to tell me that.
That was the first instance where I felt something before it happened. The next time, I remember it as strongly, was with my son took an accidental overdose. I got a dream of a baby falling in a well. I called out in the dream to my ex-husband but he stood there and did not help me pull him out of the well. (we had divorced in 2001) I woke out of a sound sleep terrified.
I went to work that day and got a text message from my daughter-in-law around 8:00 am. She was in an ambulance with my son and they were on the way to the hospital.
We compared notes, my family and me, and my other two children said that they had dreams of something terrible happening that day as well.
We were lucky that time, my son survived and is doing very well. He had suffered for over a year with severe insomnia and other health issues that we ended up attributing as somehow related to the emotional state. I'm grateful that he did not end up a fatality like my mother.
Part of me is grateful that I get some kind of a warning to prepare me for hard things that are just too difficult to deal with in the moment. I always look back and reflect on those precursors and even though I feel the sense of dread it is then that I start to pray.
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