Premonition

I closed the door behind me as I said my last goodbyes to my brother. Pete was headed back to his Washington state home after visiting me for a week when I lived in Oklahoma. He rode his Kawasaki 900 cc motorcycle over fifteen hundred miles across half the country just to visit me. And we had a blast.

But now, I am uneasy. I leaned back against the door. Feelings of oppression, and thoughts I wanted to ignore, came to the surface of my mind. My thoughts took my breath away. My mind reached, and I somehow knew that I would never see my brother alive, again.
I remember my last words to him. “Be careful. My baby needs her uncle.”

A premonition or precognition implies some sort of foreknowledge of an event in a psychic or paranormal sense. However, this was the first time I had experienced a premonition about death.
Premonitions can be warnings or forebodings of impending crises, and they can be realistic or dreamlike. Well, that’s exactly what I was seeing, a dreamlike event that I could not explain. I didn’t know what to of my feelings. I was scared.

It wasn’t long, approximately a month later, that my premonition became reality. I felt the tragedy without know the tragedy. The premonition was palpable but without form. I felt my body tighten with apprehension. My blue eyes and easy-going smile transformed to a furrowed brow and tension-filled jaw. I felt something that I could not explain. My bounding heart clinched into itself. And, my mind cracked and battled thoughts of the worst that could happen.

“What is going on?” I asked myself. I didn’t want to believe the worst, but I did. Even my unborn child felt my tension. She moved, bounced, and kicked against my abdomen as if she knew something was wrong.

My husband, my friends, Lou and Jenny, all played cards o this nippy Labor Day weekend and showed no indication that they knew I was in dire straits. My instincts to me something terrible had happened. Soon, the strain in my body became unbearable, and I asked my husband to drive me home.

Something was wrong, and I wanted to be home when I figured out what “it” was.

When we walked in the door of our home, the phone rang. The city hospital called asking questions about my mother and father, and how they might be contacted. The hysteria erupted from within me. I begged the caller, “Why do you need to know?” “What has happened?”
With reluctance, the woman on the other end of the line told me that my brother was in an accident, and “they couldn’t save him.”

All the hysteria and tension in my body exploded. Tears streamed from my eyes and anguish ripped my soul. I couldn’t stop the convulsive sobs from rising in my throat.

My husband’s face showed his grief, too. His eyes brimmed with tears as he tried to comfort me where there was no comforting.

After learning of my brother’s death, I made travel plans to my parent’s home in Washington state. I needed to reach my parent’s home because I knew they would be devastated. They needed all the comfort and support that my broken heart could muster.

When the time came, I traveled by plane to Washington. During the flight, the steward saw my recurring tears as we crossed the country. This was my first experience with flying. Somehow, I managed to wend my way through transfers and gates. I arrived at my destination several hours after takeoff.

After flying so many hours and miles and worrying about my parents the whole length of the flight, I was exhausted and went to bed early. Surprisingly, I fell asleep immediately.

At some point during the night, I was awakened by a presence. I sat up in the bed to my brother standing at the foot. My heart stopped beating and I masked my fear enough to ask why he was there.

Pete’s response was clear. “I need to have mom let me go. I need her to know I am OK.”

My mind tried hard to disbelieve what I was seeing, a ghost, an apparition, an entity from the dead; but there he was.

I talked to Pete as if I believed he was there and wasn’t a dream. I told him that mom would not believe what I said. We didn’t have that kind of relationship.

However, Pete restated, “Mom will believe you because she needs to believe I am not suffering. She needs to know I am OK. Just tell her.”
My brother’s presence began to fade and drift away. I begged him not to go, that I had so many questions. He smiled at my longing voice. “You will be OK, too, sis.”

And I was OK. The experience of premonition, personal loss, and communication from Pete’s spirit changed me from skeptic to believer. I, now, believe in a parallel world that can bring peace to the brokenhearted.