This is Home, Part 43 - Psychic ability

This is part 43 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



Psychic ability

Some members of Mom's family have had psychic ability to one extent or another. It doesn't work on everything.

Mom, herself, was psychic. She and Aunt Gertrude had made a pact when younger and unmarried that whichever one died first would try to come back to tell the other if there was a Heaven and the things they believed were true. A few months after Aunt Gertie died, this happened.

One morning, Mom was standing in front of the dresser with the partly marble top that belongs to Stephen now. She said she was combing her hair and thinking about what she was going to fix for breakfast when Aunt Gertie appeared, behind her in the mirror. Aunt Gertie was smiling.

Mom said she was so shocked, she just stood there and stared at her. When she finally turned around, Aunt Gertie was gone.

Aunt Gertie died in Colorado from pneumonia, when I was a new baby.

Mom's sister Edith also had psychic ability. She could make a table move. Daddy and Uncle Doc asked her to come one time when a horse had got wrapped in a barbed wire fence. He was cut and bleeding a lot while still fighting to get away. Aunt Edith placed her hands on the horse and the bleeding stopped. He let himself be cut out of the fence.

Other members of the family with psychic ability that I know of so far are Jean, Stephen, David and me. But that came much later than the sale of the farm.

These psychic incidents are only for family. Mom used to say, "Don't tell anyone that." So, I'm trusting you not to tell.

There is another incident. When Uncle Elliott died on the way home, no one could find him. It sounded to me as though he had been missing for days, maybe a week. Finally, in desperation, a psychic in Macon was consulted. She described where he had fallen. Thanks to her, they found him. Mom didn't want this repeated, either.

This is Home, Part 40 - Dead Man's Hollow, fishing in the creek, bread on the water

This is part 40 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



Dead Man's Hollow

There was a friend or relative visiting Daddy and Uncle Doc one night. All four men were sitting around the kitchen stove talking and laughing. They were talking about things that had happened a long time ago.

Some of the stories were ghost ones -- at least scary ones. Mom wanted me to go to bed so I wouldn't have bad dreams. Of course, I didn't. It was interesting.

They mentioned Dead Man's Hollow and that it was called that because a dead man had been found there. I found out that it was at the back of our woods, beside Irvin's property. The man was a stranger.

Fishing in the creek

There was a creek that crossed the road a short distance past the hay field with the snakes. There was an old-fashioned bridge made of heavy boards that were bolted down. The boards weren't tight and they rumbled as the bridge was driven over. It had decorative iron sides. There was a little shack setting on the right side just past the bridge. The road turned sharply left right after the bridge.

Uncle Doc used to go fishing there and he got really large fish sometimes. The coal company had bought quite a bit of land toward Jacksonville, but they hadn't come near the road.

They were stripping the land for coal. Someone found out the creek would no longer be good for fishing, as the sulfur would kill them. So, the whole neighborhood turned out to catch fish one night. There were people all over the banks.

I don't remember if or how many fish they caught. All I remember is that Jean, Mom, and I were being eaten alive by mosquitoes. There were a lot of trees around, so the ground was probably damp. And, of course, there was the creek. Everyone was slapping at the mosquitoes, except Uncle Doc. They didn't bite him. Mom said it was probably because of the medicine he was taking.

Mom, Daddy, Jean and I started walking toward home. Jean was too little to walk. Daddy tried to carry her, but she only wanted Mom. So, we walked home through the pastures. I held Daddy's hand all the way and walked. It was one of Missouri's beautiful moonlight nights.

The fish did all die in the creek.

Bread on the water

I used to help Uncle Doc feed the fish bread in our pond by the garden with the apple tree. He kept pointing out how big some of them were getting and what good eating they would make. However, he never tried to catch them, even though they got quite large. He just fed them.

This is Home, Part 37 - Elliott, Grandpa and Aunt Edith, Grandpa and the Salesman, Aunt Edith

This is part 37 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



Elliott

Mary Ellen, Bea and Katie's father died when Katie was little more than a baby. He walked to Huntsville to get a haircut and he didn't return home. A sheriff's posse tried to find him, Daddy and Uncle Doc looked for him and some organization like the Boy Scouts tried to find him. The neighbors also looked for him.

This was Elliott. Finally, he was found on ground that had been covered several times. He was lying under a bush beside a stream. There were candy bars in his pockets for his children. He had had a heart attack.

Daddy and Uncle Doc were the only members left of a large family.

Grandpa and Aunt Edith

Grandpa moved in with Aunt Edith to help her with the children and the farm. Finally, the farm was sold and Aunt Edith and the children moved to Huntsville. She started taking care of elderly ladies in her two-story home.

Grandpa and the Salesman

Grandpa came to stay with us awhile to visit.

There was a route through our area similar to the Fuller Brush Co. I usually know the name of the company, but it escapes me now.

Anyway, the salesman was a man probably in his middle thirties. He had polio when he was younger and walked with heavy metal braces on his legs and black dress boots. I think he may also have used a metal cane.

The man sold vanilla and spices, aluminum cookware, and other home products. He cooked a single layer cake on top of the stove to show Mom how easy it was in his cooking pan. She didn't buy them, but she always bought several things from him.

Grandpa and the salesman talked when he came out. Grandpa found out he was single and lived with his mother in Cairo. Also, they had a room they wanted to rent. Grandpa decided to rent it. He told Mom he would like to be close to everything, like the barbershop, and that he would run into a lot of people to talk to there. He said he would enjoy walking around the village. He said Cairo had just about anything he would need, although it was a small place.

Mom was trying to get him to stay with us, but he liked to be independent.

Aunt Edith

Aunt Edith said she would never marry and bring someone in to boss her children. She stayed single until the children were grown and married.

She bought or leased a three-story building (very large) in Huntsville and had a nursing home. I wonder if it was originally a nursing home. This was probably while I was in college. I don't know.

I admire her for making it on her own and taking good care of her children.

Later, Bea worked in the nursing home sometimes and so did Mary Ellen.

This is Home, Part 25 - President Roosevelt, the war ends, the men come home

This is part 25 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



President Roosevelt

President Roosevelt had led the country almost through World War II. He is the only president in history who was elected for four terms. I read that in each of those elections, he carried 31 states out of 48. He was loved in the United States and the world.

Just a few days before graduation, we were listening to the radio and heard that President Roosevelt had died. This was on April 12th. I remember telling Daddy, Uncle Doc and Charley that he had died. They were bringing the horses and wagon back from working. For the first time, I saw tears in Uncle Doc's eyes.

President Roosevelt's friends and neighbors plus thousands of others stood weeping at Warm Springs as the funeral train left for Washington, D.C. It took around twenty three hours to get there. (I hope I remembered this correctly.) His casket had been placed on something that raised it so it could be seen out of the windows. At night, the lights in the train were dimmed and the car with his casket was brightly lit. It was also brightly lit during the day. His casket could be seen for miles. The tracks were lined on both sides all the way through the countryside with thousands of people weeping. No matter what the hour there were grandparents, mothers and fathers, often holding children. Mrs. Roosevelt sat watching the continuing tribute to her husband.

On the trip from Washington to Hyde Park, N.Y., the situation was the same.

His daughter, Anna, remembers sitting on the floor and watching from her window all the people who loved him. He was buried in his rose garden at his home in Hyde Park.

There is a famous picture of a black man in a uniform crying and playing "Going Home" on his accordion. I don't know where it was taken.

When President Roosevelt died, it was similar to when President Kennedy died. The whole world mourned and everyone remembers where they were when they heard.

Newspapers published a daily list of servicemen who had died for their country. The day after Roosevelt's death, some newspapers put at the head of their casualty list Roosevelt, Franklin D., Commander-in-Chief.

The war ends

The atomic bomb had been a closely guarded secret. President Truman got the shock of his life when he was told.

First, we had the formal surrender of Germany. V-E day -- Victory in Europe -- was May 8, 1945, but I think the formal surrender was somewhat later. President Roosevelt had told someone that the war in Europe would be over by the end of May.

After calling for the Japanese surrender and receiving their refusal, Truman ordered the first atomic bomb dropped on Japan. They still refused and kept fighting. After a second atomic bomb was dropped, they wanted to stop fighting. The formal surrender was signed on September 2, 1945 (V-J Day) on board the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. World War II was over.

The men come home

Lawrence (Mary Ellen's husband) came home. So did Bob Bolton (Bea's husband). Denver Williams came home with a bride, Caroline, from the South. So we acquired a Catholic girl in a community that was Baptist. Most of the servicemen came home, except for a military force which we maintained overseas.

The jobs that had been filled by their wives were given back to the soldiers. That sounds strange today, but in those days, women were usually housewives. However, some of them liked working and missed their jobs.

Dream - I drive back to Nevada, then through town behind things, a woman's voice worries that the military might object, I see dead patients and the skins of faces in the windows of a hospital, I go inside but people try to capture me, I go out with my car following, and a woman also, and my car and I get into a fight with people sent after us

On Monday, June 21, 2010, around 9:30-11:30 PM, I dreamed I went back to Fallon, Nevada. It was late at night. I was driving the dark blue 1987 Oldsmobile. I went just outside of town along behind it, and then started going down an alley thickly paved with dust and gravel, going west, running parallel to the main road through town. I went all the way back to the end. It seemed I had done it before, maybe on an earlier trip. Early on someone was commenting on it, someone outside the car, who I somehow clearly heard, maybe a woman, worrying about it, about whether the military might be upset about it. I discounted it some, mainly on the basis that I probably wouldn't be noticed.

At the west end of town there was a big building, one story probably. It seemed to be a hospital as well as other things. The dream seemed to replay that segment a few times. Finally I was driving along it looking at huge windows facing the alley, lined with patients in beds, tilted up some to face the window. I was slowly driving along looking at them, then their faces were near the window, and as I went along looking at them I suddenly realized they were all dead. Then I went by a series of smaller windows, though still picture window size, that had a series of almost flat, collapsed, almost featureless pale leather skins, and I realized it was the skin of faces of people. The voice had still been worrying, but was not as loud, though it still seemed close.

At the end of the building I went inside, as I had done before in some earlier replays. I think the car may have come in too, a little ways, but then I was on foot and going down a corridor, lined with pictures, watercolors perhaps. An occasional person went by, dressed in hospital/laboratory white.

Then there was a bit of a commotion. I had been noticed. Some military officer, maybe a general, was after me, wanted me captured. I quickly retreated, going back and turning at the end to go down the other short corridors, winding. I came across my car, which was somewhat smaller, and it followed me. A woman, maybe in her thirties, started tagging along, at a distance.

I got outside, and the car was still following along, hovering in the air. I didn't have time to get in it. I got a ways out, going along some gravel roads, without buildings, not very far. Then I got into a fight with people who had either been following me or whom I had come across here, maybe partly both. The woman was worrying about things, about the fight. I was fighting one of them and a little ways off the car was fighting the other. The car was much smaller now, maybe six feet long. It got on top the person and was beating at him with its front wheels. He was on his back on the ground and seemed to be getting the worst of it, though he tried to fight back. One time when it seemed he was beaten he suddenly started throwing a lot of hard punches at the car's front, seeming to cause some damage, though I couldn't see it from the angle I was looking as a disembodied presence. My physical body was busy fighting with the other person, successfully so it seemed. My attention was almost entirely on the car and the fight there. The car itself was a little flexible, like a cartoon car. It started fighting back hard then, coming down on the man over and over with its wheels, punching him with them.

The car finally got off him. The woman was worried about the man and went to him, saying that they needed to get him to the hospital. He had been through such things before and come out alright. Then she poked at his chest while he lay there still, and the chest went in some with the sound of breaking glass, but came back out. She paused, staring at it, and said, "Well, maybe not this bad...."


Note: Late that night, maybe around 1:30 AM, June 22, 2010 (I originally wrote 13:30 AM, which would be incorrect; it must have been 1:30 or 12:30), when my mother got up off the couch she knocked her glass off the little table and it fell on the floor and shattered, with the sound of breaking glass, similar in sound probably to what was in my dream, though my dream happened first.

Dream - I go to a bookstore in a small town and meet an author, then go back again when his book is out, but they are having a mystery game and I have trouble finding the book, and then a man rides through the sky on a bicycle with a parasol, and floats down on an inflatable mattress beside a woman

On Monday, June 21, 2010, around 9:30-11:30 PM, I dreamed I went to a little bookstore in a small town outside of Phoenix, maybe Wickenburg, though it felt like it was more to the north rather than northeast. I was at the counter talking to someone, telling the person about a book I had bought by one author, and then another book by another author, I think Robert Heinlein. I was holding the books in my hands, first one then the other, then a person to the side suddenly perked up and said it was him. I was surprised he was there, and glad to meet him [in real life he has been dead for quite a while, but I didn't think of it in the dream]. He had another book that was going to be out soon, "The Green [something or other]" I think, and I was going to come back then and get it.

Then it was a few days later, and I was going to go to the radiator shop. My father had already left. He looked a lot younger, like he was in his early forties. My mother looked younger too, by a similar amount. I decided to stop by the bookstore first, and drove out to the little town. I got there before 8:00 AM, maybe around 7:45. I parked in the street beside it, alongside the sidewalk, parallel parking. I thought it was too early, that it probably wasn't open yet, and I would have to wait awhile. I thought about sleeping a little in the car, and worried some about being told to leave by a policeman if I did that, or even sat too long in my car. Then I looked over at the window of the store, peering at it, and saw its hours, and it was open already after all, or seemed to be.

I got out and went in and looked around. It was different than it had been, with a lot more rooms, and a lot less books. They were doing some kind of game now too, evidently for the special occasion of the book coming out, though it was evidently something they did periodically anyway. It was some kind of mystery story thing, where the participants were supposed to solve a crime. A series of fake murders were going to happen among the guests, or apparent guests. I wandered around through the various rooms, sometimes going outside too. Some of the rooms had books along one side, others didn't have much in the way of books, sometimes some back in cabinets or on little tables, or small open shelves, or displays of other things. Sometimes another body was found, sometimes inside and sometimes outside. There was some worry too over whether it was a real murder or whether the person was just pretending. I know there was talk about waiting for the sheriff to come, but it might have been part of the game, even if it was the real sheriff.

The place had an upstairs now too, with more rooms to look through. In one room, I'm not sure if it was upstairs or downstairs, one of the owners was cooking something in a kitchen area that was set along one wall. I think I talked to her a bit. In one of the rooms I looked through, a small room, I saw some children talking to each other. They paused when I opened the door. I also found some in a closet that had a floor a couple or so feet higher than the floor of the room.

This was taking a long time, and I worried about getting back to the radiator shop, that I would be needed for something and not be there. It got later and later, getting into the afternoon. I was having trouble finding the book, and wondered if they had actually gotten any copies of it yet.

At one point, late in the afternoon I think, I stepped out on the wooden railing of a balcony that overlooked the first floor, actually floating up to it as I reached my legs up to it, and floated just over it and then stepped off, floating over the balcony and down to the first floor, and I think even then to the outside, to some landscaping against the building. I was happy and amused. I wanted to impress the people around me, and it felt enjoyable to float like that, but they were initially concerned about it, afraid I was going to go over the balcony and fall and get hurt.

I might have gone back inside then, but I'm not sure. It seems I wandered around a bit outside then, but it's possible I went back in later. The outside was not as it had been earlier, even earlier that day. There was a lot more room around the building, which was a lot bigger than it had been. I'm not sure I ever found a copy of the book, though it seems I might have.

It got later, getting toward night. A person went up in the sky, sailing with fireworks going off around him, right next to him, and riding a bicycle and carrying a parasol I think. Then he was coming down very slowly, to cheers from the watching crowd. The man, who had originally been dressed, was now laying on his back naked on an inflatable mattress, a smiling naked women beside him, completely revealed, turned slightly to the side, her legs up slightly. The man was also smiling, like the woman. They almost seemed like animated ink drawings at this point. They drifted in the air on the inflatable mattress, like a leaf, the crowd cheering. They finally got to the ground, and I think then wrapped something at least partly around themselves, still smiling, the crowd still cheering.

I had been watching it with someone, a small group of people actually. We had been commenting on it. It was almost dark now. We left, on bicycles I think, and went toward the edge of town, which was not far away. There was a railroad yard there, with some tanker cars. Someone was also there, maybe more then one person, and it felt more sinister now, like they were plotting against us, planning to get us. I think they ran though, not wanting to confront us directly.

Dream - I almost die and find I can't talk anymore, but when the paramedics come I try to get them to look at my grandmother

On Wednesday, October 27, 2010, around 4:30-7:00 PM, I dreamed of almost dying. After some time spent somewhere doing something, generally associated with my house but sometimes somewhere else, I went to a place that was something like my house and something like my sister's, but much larger than either of them. It was a one story house with huge open rooms, with a railing that enclosed a central area that was apparently a lower part of the house, below ground level. I started talking to my sister, who was at a small glass table, round I think, near the railing, arguing a bit with her. My mother was perhaps ten feet or so off. My sister said something and I said something back, in a low voice, irritated, saying "What do you care what other people think," and then something else attached to it, maybe ten or so words. Then she said something, and I leaned over on the table, my arms and elbows on it, my head low, and was saying, approximately, in a low voice, almost a hiss, "You know, the thing I was saying before, the first part of it, 'What ...'"

I was trying to say "'What do you care what other people think?' was said by Richard Feynman to someone associated with the space shuttle disaster, during the investigation about it," but I found I couldn't. After the "What", which I had difficulty getting out, and trailed off after the "W", into a kind of breathy sound, the following words I couldn't get the consonants out for. I tried to say "do" and some of the other words, but they were all breathy sounds. My mouth was formed to say them, but they just came out as slightly different breathy slow rushes of air. My head was almost on the table. I was trying to explain the problem then too, but still couldn't say anything, just the breathy rushes of air through a mouth that was formed for the words but couldn't say any consonants, or even any vowels really. My sister was staring at me, frowning a little.

Then I was on the floor, slid off the table and slowly settled on the floor, laying there. I got turned over to face up. I may have done it or maybe other people did, I'm not sure. I looked up and saw my sister and some of her friends, bent down a little, staring down at me. Everything had changed to gray, they were dark gray figures on a lighter gray background, still clearly seen though looking 2-dimensional and flat. I reached my arms out straight up into the air, trying to grasp something and somehow pull myself up, though nothing was there, and the arms, pale and gray-colored, stretched out an enormous distance, maybe six feet, fading a little toward the end of them, even becoming a little transparent.

I was picked up and moved to a different room. The rooms were mostly open, though, frequently with room-sized openings between them. I was taken to a couch I think, or maybe a very large soft chair, which was at right angles to a couch where my grandmother lay on her side, facing out, legs bent a little. Behind her on the couch was a huge mound of clothes, along behind her and up beyond her head, loose clothes that were just thrown there, and more over them, it was a huge mound that went up onto the back of the couch, and all along behind her and past her head, occupying the couch area there. As it went along her and beyond her and around the top of her head, it formed a cliff that partly overhung her head and body, and I was worried about her, that it might fall onto her.

I couldn't get it straight in my mind for a while whether she was dead or alive, and after going back and forth in my mind about it I finally decided she was alive, that she had been dead for a while but came back to life, and should have some medical attention. The paramedics had been called for me, and were coming, and I think even arrived at some point, and though they were gathered around me weren't doing much. One or more people were talking on phones, maybe one of them too, though I think my sister was also on her cell phone. I kept trying to tell them about my grandmother, that they should do something because the clothes might fall on her, and also that she should be looked at, have her checked medically, that they should tell the medical people about her, but I couldn't say anything. I finally felt better enough that I was able to move over to her, crawl over from one piece of furniture to another, and partly hold her. I was starting to be able to make more definite sounds now, instead of just breathy noises, but still couldn't form words.

Dream - After a final fight with some monsters, I fly away, dying, over the great water

On Saturday, September 11, 2010, around 6:30-9:30 PM, I had a dream in which my mother removed most of the furniture in the living room, and tried to throw a lot of things away. I was upset by it. At some point neighbors tried to get into the house.

Then, later, I floated in the air. I dived out over a cliff behind the house, and flew to the ground, several times. Somewhere beyond the cliff was a lake, but most of the area was just desert.

Inside the house, I met a guru, some kind of monk. He asked about the flying and I explained it to him, and how it got harder to stay up the longer I tried to do it. He had a constant smile, and nodded and said I was very advanced. I demonstrated flying some, pulling my legs up, one more than the other and then finally both, and hovered around in the air.

My family and others were at home. I wanted to demonstrate it to them, and went out back and ran and jumped off the cliff, while they were concernedly running after me. I flew off and went low and landed in the desert. It was night now. It was just getting toward night as I leaped off the cliff.

I went quickly forward then, going sideways from the area of the house, laying on my stomach, my hands, enlarged, digging deep into the desert floor like claws, rapidly pulling me forward. The furrows I made were glowing pale. Other things seemed to have a pale glow, too. My legs weren't doing much, but seemed muscular. I wondered to myself if I had done anything to them, injured them in some way.

Some strange creatures tried to get me, including something like a large owl, and something vaguely wolf-like. They all had a strange, pale glow about them. I managed to get away, though some of the things clung to me for a while, their jaws or bills hanging on, before I got loose. I managed to fly away a bit.

It was day now. A neighbor woman captured me, and tried to hurt me. She had a plastic baby, and tried to make it seem like I was trying to attack her, and trying to hurt the baby, to get me in trouble with the police, who she had apparently called or planned to call, or have someone overhearing her yell call. She put me in chains with a friend, who she had already captured I think, and tried to shove us out the window, but she and her friend were also with chains around them, part of our chains, and she couldn't get rid of us. We got away, wiggled out of the chains and out the window, which we were already half through.

She got me again, and tried to kill me, planting fly bot larva in a cut she made on me. I got the rod she cut me with and poked her in her arm, tearing a huge chunk out of the inside of her upper arm, and then poked her through the arm again. The end of the short rod had splayed metal, cutting a big hole, but making it hard to push through. She kept trying to push me over the low wall of the large balcony room. I was mostly on the floor, pushing up at her, and poked her hard in the lower stomach with the rod, but she kept at it. Most people would have stopped by now, backed away, but, surprisingly, she didn't act like she was much affected. I pushed harder, pushing the rod deeply in, hating to do it, afraid I was really hurting her, maybe even enough to kill her. Initially she kept fighting me, like what I had done still wasn't enough to matter. I didn't see how that could be, and how she managed to keep on going like that. It was really worrisome, and I hated to do any more, and was afraid that I might have to. She finally stopped and backed off, and went away behind some things, still talking and complaining. She was saying now that the rod went in really deep, with a little bit of awe, sounding like she might be considering calling a doctor, then she cried out that she peed her pants, and started raging against me. I could dimly see some other women, friends of hers, at the edges of the room, looking toward her, dismayed looks on their faces. They had been too intimidated to join in the fight, but I figured they might now come to her aid, and maybe get her medical attention.

I escaped, over the balcony, floating through the air to a lower doorway. It was getting late now, almost night. I disguised myself some, and met with some friends, out in the open, away from things. After some discussion, I decided to try to find out some information about the woman from her friends, what had happened to her I guess. I went over to a group of them, but they started to realize who we were. Someone called out that they had seen us before, "Isn't that..." We had to run away.

A man chased us, ran after us, a bad man, but we got away. We were inside a building now, I think, a very large one, perhaps the one from before, I'm not sure. We went toward the front. We met some nurses, and warned them about the man. It turned out they had met him before, and knew about him. We went to the nurses station, but the man was already there. He was their boss. We got into a fight with him. He was on a dark desk facing us with several strong bad guys pressed hard against his back, some turned to the front and others turned to the back. He was arrogant, sure of his victory. I threw something at him. It seemed to go right through him and at least partway through the men behind him, but with only a temporary effect. I fought with him and things were not looking good, and there was a bit of a struggle. The man behind him took out a pen to try to stab us with, but the boss bent the man's arm around toward the floor, to show us his power and that he didn't care for anyone. He or a man directed by him grabbed another man in the groin, from behind, the white-gloved cartoony hand coming around like some awful face with eyes.

I somehow managed to run away, the others too. We met a nurse and warned her. I went into a series of ghostly metal partitions, reaching almost to the ceiling, open at the bottom, like some strange bathroom stall dividers, except that they had some odd projections at the edges. They were evidently part of a filing system. They didn't quite reach the wall at the back, but almost, with not really enough room to squeeze through. I started going underneath them, trying to hide there.

The bad man came, and his arm stretched forward toward me, elongating tremendously, while he talked. I pulled on it, dragging it after me, then left it and ran, hoping he would be trapped there for a while. Getting away for now, I talked with some other people. The police had been called. I was in an area that was a big room where children played and ate, and were taught things, while their parents were elsewhere, eating or shopping. The room was still full of kids.

I talked to the people some more. The man wasn't around, they didn't know where he was, but the situation was not good. He had spying devices, apparently including cameras. He knew or could know where I was. I was with a roomful of kids now, it wouldn't be good to have him follow me here. I went over to the window, on the other side of the room, and went out it, and along the side of the building, clinging to it and things on it, using my power to float to help keep me there. We were on the first story, but the ground was a little lower than the floor, and fell away from it, with landscaping, including objects.

I got around to the front and went back in. Most of the people were gone now, it was almost deserted. I went back to the room the children were in and it was empty.

I went back to the front, and was walking along an area that seemed to be something like the radiator shop, the part with the test tanks, where they worked on the radiators, when suddenly the man tried to get in through a low window. He burst through it, the front half of him through and on the floor. He was triumphantly talking to me, but in an almost desperate sort of way, like he had achieved his victory with great effort and great cost. He had a large white cloth bag that he dumped open in front of me, hurling the contents my way as he did so.

Some strange animals came out, along with a dense assortment of bugs, that looked like tiny red crabs and pale shrimp, and maybe a few other things, along with a lot of thin red liquid. They landed on the floor a few feet in front of him, and several feet from me. I was holding a bunch of metal cables, that I had flailed at him earlier, back at the tall metal dividers. I started smashing at the bugs with them. The animals, small in size but fiercely growling, generally red with large pale eyes, slunk off. The man said that the bugs and animals had all been infected with a strange parasitic disease, that he wanted to infect us all with, something that he had to go all the way to Africa to get. He wanted to kill us all. A small Asian monk came in from my left and bent over to look at the bugs. I was smashing them with a cable, and warned him not to touch them, and told him he had to kill them. He backed off and then started hitting them with something.

As I smashed the bugs, some drops of red liquid got on me, and on him too. I hoped I was not going to get infected. I had to wash it off soon. I finally left, to let the monk carry on with it. The bad man was still there on the floor, halfway in the building. I wondered if he had already been infected, that he had gotten that way while collecting the animals and bugs. As I went back along the front part of the building, the direction the monk came from, the building was mainly empty, but I saw an occasional nurse. Large pillars were in place every little bit, and a reception desk was back by the wall, facing the general area of the entrance.

Suddenly other, larger animals tried to attack me. He must have secretly left them here earlier, to wait for me, before he broke through the window. Some of them actually bit me. Some of them had their strange pale eyes protruding and blending back into their red fur, like strange cooked egg whites, soft cooked.

I tried to warn a nurse to get away and warn people, but though she seemed to be struggling with an animal herself, she looked toward me and grinned evilly. She was working for him, I realized.

The animals were after me. I turned toward the front, heading for a window. I put my hand forward. It was hard to see, like things were getting enveloped in a pale fog. I found the window pane. It was thin plastic, and already had a broken place in the middle, where the plastic was split by something. I stuck my hand through it, pushing through. The broken area was only 5 to 8 inches. The animals were on all sides, barking and growling and snapping at me. My brain felt in a bit of a fog, too. I pushed at the plastic pane, crashed into it, forcing my body through it, splitting it open a lot more, squeezing through it.

I went out into the night, and soared out over the vast stone steps. The place seemed to be empty. There were a few cars out on the roads, away from the building, but not many. There was a vast sloping landscaped area, separated by white stucco walls, and parking lots, that still seemed to have a lot of cars in them. I went out high over everything, into the cool night, gradually getting lower as I went. I was heading toward the side of an overpass now, with water rushing under it, and crashing against the overpass with white foam. I was too low, I would hit the overpass, maybe even go into the water at its base. I remembered telling the guru monk earlier, about how I tended to get lower as I went, and him smiling at me, his constant smile, with a knowing look, and I inhaled deeply, seeming to become more buoyant as I did so, and that and with the will of my mind rose upward, and over the top of the overpass.

I soared out high over the landscape below, which became filled with channels of rushing, foaming water, separated by walls, a whole network of it. I was feeling bad, sick. I looked down sadly at it, and at the vast expanse of water beyond, that they ran roughly parallel to, though at various tilts along the way. I heard a voice in the air, from somewhere, high above and a little behind me, gently reminding me about depression. I wasn't sure who the voice was, but it seemed to be afraid that I would give up and throw myself into the rushing waters. I had intended to get to the UN and warn them, I think, but sadly thought that I might not be able to make it now.

I looked out at the last part of the rushing channels of water, and the great water beyond them, wondering where a safe place to land might be, and whether I would be forced to come down into the water, either the water channels or the great water beyond them, a lake or inlet of the ocean, because I wouldn't be able to go any further, or whether I would make it past them, to some place off to the side, to the right, and beyond.

Dream - My mother and grandmother fade out and I realize they are dead, and I look into two mirrors and try to will them to appear

On Friday, March 4, 2011, around 6:30-9:00 AM, I dreamed that I was in a living room somewhere. My grandmother, my mother's mother, was on one couch and my mother was on another. They were in the middle of the room at right angles to each other. I think my grandmother was lying down and my mother was partly lying down. I was leaning some over the back of one of the couches I think, talking to my mother. I think there was a stuffed armchair near me, maybe behind me. We were discussing my grandmother some, among other things.

Then it seemed my grandmother started to fade some, and I came to realize, if I hadn't before, that she was really dead, that she wasn't there, and she came not to be. My mother started to fade some too, her head and shoulders lingering longer, her head turned toward me and looking up at me, a sad and somewhat pleading look on her face, and she faded mostly out then, just a faint shadowy image left, like my grandmother's fainter, mostly gone, shadowy image.

Some other people started to come into the room. I was upset and left, going out into the hall. I seemed to be in something like a hotel. There were two large vertical mirrors on the wall, next to each other, touching. I went toward them and got very close, looking at them, trying to will my mother or grandmother to appear in them. I got so close my head was almost touching them.

Then a door to another apartment opened, maybe six feet to my left, and two or three people came out, at least one of them a child. They looked toward me, puzzled and concerned, and the man asked what I was doing. Two or three other people came out from doors on the other side, also seeming concerned about what I was doing. They were all either relatives of me in some way or were people who knew me at least some, who at least knew who I was. I moved closer to the mirror, touching my bent head to it, resting my head on it, almost trying to hide there, but it didn't work. The people didn't go away, and kept looking at me.

I pulled back from the mirror a little and turned my head to the left a little and said, "I was ... mirror gazing." They looked at me like I was a little crazy, sometimes shaking their heads. They turned away, then, going on about their business, though some of them sometimes turned and looked back at me.


The dream was a lot longer, with more before and after this, but I don't remember it.

Dream - Beating the Devil, maybe

On the night of Wednesday-Thursday, August 19-20, 2009, I dreamed I was in a large dark house, probably two or three stories, squarish. It was night. It was a huge house, but simply made, with a fairly stark interior, probably concrete or tile floors, and sparse furniture. It was similar to houses in some other dreams. Some other people were there, probably less than ten in all. Perhaps some were family members, but probably most were not.

I went from a room at one corner to deeper into the house, but a few other people came and got me, wanted me to see something, some kind of strange old book I think, maybe with a little dark box of some kind, perhaps eight to ten inches across. It was about something that had happened in the past, maybe 100 years ago. Somebody had either sold his soul or gotten in so deep into evil magic that it was hard to get out. Near the end of his life, which evidently occurred when he was middle-aged, he was having some regrets and didn't want to go to Hell, but the Devil was coming to get him.

He went toward the front door, through the dark living room. Someone who was apparently the Devil, though he looked like a man, was there, and took him outside, to a large square room with open walls, like a picnic area. It was some distance away, but it's hard to say how much, it might have been a few hundred feet or it might have been much more. It had low walls and a roof held up by pillars. The walls were of ornamental brick along the top, which might have been three feet or so, with either stucco under that or more brick or even stones cemented together. The pillars were probably of brick, and were set at wide intervals along the walls.

The Devil spent a long time on a cell phone, talking to someone. The man wandered around the area. There was some thought of trying to escape, climbing over the wall when the Devil wasn't looking, but the man didn't; it didn't seem likely to work in the end.

There was a broad lake to one side, pale brown, dead. Eventually the Devil took the man and was flying out over the lake. It was me living it, though, I had become the man, or was in his body. The change had happened earlier, back at the picnic area probably.

Then it was my grandmother flying me, but a disembodied voice, maybe two or even three, was saying to me that it wasn't really her, that it was really the Devil, and to poke out her eyes. It seemed it was important to inflict as much damage as possible, that it hurt the Devil somehow. As they told me to poke out her eyes, I had a vision of my thumbs going in and black goo squishing out, and I recoiled from it. I didn't want to do it, it might somehow really be her, and even if it wasn't I didn't want to do it. I felt that the Devil was trying to trick me, too, that he was trying to tempt me into doing something terrible.

A little later, we landed on a narrow spit of land sticking out on the other side of the lake, where it divided into two other lakes. Before we landed, it was no longer my grandmother but the Devil again. He went off a few feet and was talking to someone on his cell phone again. He came back and I somehow managed to shove him into the sand up to his neck. The voices were saying again to hurt him, to do various things to his head. The Devil kept on talking, to someone off somewhere far away that I couldn't see I guess. I hit and/or kicked him a few times, though I didn't do what was suggested. The Devil ignored me and kept on talking. I kicked his head off, which had momentarily shrunk quite a bit. It went a few feet off and returned to normal size. I went and stomped on it, smashing maybe half of it to dust, then started to try to smash the rest, but I turned around and the head had grown back, looking slightly younger, still talking.

The Devil then took me back to the picnic area. He went back to talking on his cell phone, wandering around a bit. It seemed the man tried to sneak out then, going under a pale net curtain, on the side away from the lake. The scene seemed to be condensed a bit, like it was more something in memory, and I was some varying distance from it, watching it.

After a while the Devil noticed that he was gone, but the man, some distance away now, said that since he out gotten out that the Devil didn't really have him anymore. Apparently there was something in the rules about things like that. The Devil seemed to accept it, but objected that he was still dead, and couldn't go back to his body, and apparently not to Heaven either, which was off somewhere in the direction of but alongside and past the lake.

The man went back to the house. There was some ritual that could be performed with the book, or a book, that could free him from his connection to Hell. He would evidently be alive, at least for a while, once he got inside the house, but the ritual had to be performed to solidify it, to make it permanent, though I had the feeling it wouldn't be a terribly long life extension, just a brief one.

Then I was back in the present day, and got caught up in it. The Devil came and got me; apparently just being associated with it had drawn him. I was taken to the picnic area for a while, then he flew me out over the water. I think he tried briefly to fool me with my grandmother, and even my mother, but it wasn't working and he didn't try very hard. Then we were at the spit of land for a little while, and then he flew me back. He wandered around the picnic area, then, talking on his cell phone.

I finally sneaked out under the curtain, and was a little ways off, perhaps eight or ten feet, when he noticed. He came and told me I couldn't do that. I went around the corner of the picnic area, getting on the side toward the house, and getting perhaps half the distance from the picnic area that I had been. I told him that since I had gotten out, then I was no longer under his control. The situation was the same as before; I couldn't go to Heaven and the Devil couldn't take me, but I wasn't really alive either.

The Devil took me back to the house, while explaining about the book and what had to be done. He seemed to be trying to be genuinely helpful. I think he was hoping that he would still be able to get me after I died, that though I might be temporarily saved from him, he could eventually degrade me enough that he could come again and take me when I was dying.

I went back in the house and told the people there about what had to be done. Not as many people were there as before, but some may have been in other parts of the house. Probably most of the ones left were women, young women I think. There was some talk of trying to get a priest to do it, but it was felt that there wasn't time, so the ceremony was somewhat nervously begun. I was lowered to the floor, or mostly so, my head and shoulders were held up a little, and a man began nervously reading from the book. It was in another language, Latin perhaps. As he read, the atmosphere seemed to change a little, with drifts of fog inside the dark house and unseen, but felt, presences. It seemed to be vaguely like an exorcism, but more of a dark ritual, one that was in some sense drawing spirits. Whether they were good or evil or something else, I couldn't yet say.


The dream seemed to end around there. It had a lot more earlier, but I don't remember it anymore. I had been listening to the radio that night, to the Coast to Coast AM show, which was on both before and after the dream. The show had something about lucid dreaming, and also something about spirits and maybe astral projection. Though I missed most of it, probably some of it got incorporated in the dream.

"Until we meet again"

On Wednesday, December 9, 2009, after the dream about being James Bond and being given a picture of a rose to give to my mother, I went down to the living room to check on her, a little after 11 AM. I found her wrapped up in a blanket, sitting on the couch, sleeping. When I asked if she was alright, she woke up and said yes, and said she had a song going through her mind, that she heard the song on the TV as part of a collection for a commercial or infomercial. I was astounded as I had heard songs in the dream, the last one of which had still been going on in my head. She really liked the song on TV until she remembered that she had heard it when she was in school, that it was sung by a singing group that sung several songs there. It was the last song, and they were really good, and the audience had clapped and she or someone had spoken to them, telling them how good they were and maybe asking them to stay longer, but they had to go on, they had other places to visit. Later she was saying that maybe this was the last one, she thought, and they were going home, to another state, maybe Ohio.

The next day the teacher came, really solemn, and told them the bus had been hit by a train, and the man and the woman had been killed, several people had been killed. My mother turned the TV off after she remembered that, where she had heard the song from, it made her too sad to think of it. She sung several verses of it for me, but couldn't think of the last one. A little later she remembered it and sung it and it went something like this (I forgot the middle part), "May your days be filled with bright tomorrows ... until we meet again."

Dreams and visions of my mother

My mother went into the hospital on Thursday, November 4, 2010, and died late on Monday, November 8, 2010.

Before that time, sometimes months before, I had had premonitions of her death. I had been having dreams for a long time, years, reflecting my concerns about her declining health. These could be attributed to what I could plainly see, without having to call them predictive. Some dreams though, including one a few days before her death, are harder to explain.

There was a time after her death, a week or so, when I had much fewer dreams than normal, and the ones I had of her sometimes seemed more like visions, particularly since I wasn't always asleep when they happened. I also had feelings of her being there at times. Most of the time, though, I felt an emptiness, and numbness, that was very profound. It didn't help either, that my own health at the time was not very good.

In the second week, I seemed to be having more dreams, some with my mother, though she tended to play minor parts. It wasn't until after the second week that I began to have a lot more dreams, including ones in which my mother played major parts. These dreams frequently referred to her death, though she was apparently alive in them, or at least acted so. Sometimes she appeared younger, and sometimes not, and sometimes she didn't look so good, like the dream was showing her actual body, dead but animated. Sometimes my grandmother, her mother, also appeared in the dreams. I had had many dreams about my grandmother in the past, but she rarely talked in them. Now, she talked a lot.

Below are a list of the visions, dreams, premonitions, etc., though I can't claim to have included all of them. The dreams still continue, too, though now she usually appears as a more normal figure in them, without references to her death. Most of the dreams and other items have been shortened quite a bit here, to better fit within the long list.



A few months before my mother died, perhaps early September, though I think it might have been late August, I was thinking about what I might get her for Christmas, when the feeling came, that it didn't matter, that when the time came it wouldn't be something that mattered. It was a feeling that the question itself wouldn't have any meaning. There was a bit of an empty feeling with it. I tried to reject it, push it away, because it implied that my mother wouldn't be there.



At around 6:30 AM on Labor Day, Monday, September 6, 2010, I walked down to the living room to check on my mother. I found her sitting on the floor near the hallway, facing away from me. She had tried to step around the partly folded towel she had put down weeks ago for the cat to lay on, and tripped and fell. Her left wrist was injured, and had a bump on the upper part of it on the side toward her body. It was fairly good sized, perhaps a third of the way across.

Earlier, I had been on the computer, and listening to the radio. Perhaps a little less than ten minutes or so before, the Internet connection had been lost. I thought that my mother might have for some reason wanted to call Sharon, and picked up the phone, causing the connection to be lost. I thought I should go down and tell her that it was alright to call, if she didn't already know, since the connection was lost and I wasn't on the phone any more. However, I went ahead and read some of what I had been reading I think, maybe all of it, and then continued listening to the radio, because I wanted to hear what they were saying. I started to get increasingly nervous though, wondering if perhaps she had fallen. When the radio came to a break, I went down to check on her.

When I saw her there, sitting on the floor, her back to me, I said something to her, and she turned around and showed me her wrist, I thought to myself, "Oh, Mommy, what have you done?" I said something to her, talking softly, but trying to be upbeat.

However, I had a bad feeling about this, and thought of my grandmother falling and breaking her wrist a few days before she died. My mother had fallen before a few times, and severely hurt, maybe breaking, one wrist or the other, but she had always recovered. Now, for some reason, it felt different, like this was it, this was the one that would do it. I had already had a bad feeling about her putting the towel down for the cat, back when she did it, but there was nothing that could have been done. Any attempt to take it away or argue with her about it would not have worked out well, and I understood that she was trying to do something nice for the cat, that she loved.

It was almost like something now, though, of retrieving a distant, half-remembered memory, of what the fall and injured wrist meant. I was disturbed by this and tried not to think too much about it, tried to believe that everything would work out alright, like before. (I have this account recorded in a file, and while going through the file I happened to add some to this entry on Monday, Labor Day, September 5, 2011. It was a strange coincidence, Labor Days a year apart, though they didn't occur on the same day.)


Before the fall, things had felt a little odd that weekend. I worked on getting my email in better shape, reading some of it and moving some to folders for a possible later time. Looking back, it almost felt like I was marking time, waiting for something. By Sunday I had gotten a feeling that something was going to happen Sunday. I had no idea what, or if it would involve us at all. It turned out, of course, that it happened early on Monday, but exact dates can be hard to come by with these feelings.

Saturday afternoon, the Saturday before the fall on Monday, I had a long dream that seems closely associated with what happened. In the dream I had reached up to a light high on the wall outside where I worked, intending to demonstrate to the management people that it needing fixing, pulling at the two cords hanging from it, like before, hoping to make it act up like before when I did that. Before, it had started making popping and sputtering noises and glowing red and hotter around the base, and crumbs of red glowing concrete block were going off it and a larger glowing triangular chunk two or three inches across was flying off. Now it didn't do much, though, making only a little noise. But then the face of an end of a concrete block came off, glowing on the bottom and halfway along its length, and fell toward me. I was wearing long, heavy, black neoprene rubber radiator shop gloves for some reason, and raised my left hand up to fend the glowing piece off, and it hit the side of my hand, and my arm, and it seemed to hit my side too, and I fell down, and it was even partly laying on me for a few seconds. Everyone gathered around me, and they got it away from me and were standing around me bent over looking down at me. An ambulance was called and I was taken to the hospital.

This matches what happened in real life fairly closely, though it happened to my mother instead of me, and although I was burned while she was injured in a different way, we both fell, and both our left hands were hurt, and our left forearms, hers from where it had gotten hurt around a week ago, and both our sides were injured, hers from something that happened a week or so ago, and it was her right side whereas it was my left side in the dream. We both went to the hospital too, though my sister took her, instead of an ambulance.

It also had the feature of me waiting too long, in the dream waiting a few seconds while trying to get something I was working on finished, before going to see someone who was leaving and then finding him already gone. In real life I was reading what was on the computer and listening to the radio before checking on her. I also had had the feeling that she might have fallen, and an increasing sense of urgency, in the minutes before finally checking on her.

The dream also had the interesting feature of metal things being concealed inside stuff, to both spy on us and for other reasons, and when I tried to put the hands of a woman in a carriage under a scanner, that would see through what she was carrying, she resisted but when I finally managed to do it, I saw that her hands and at least half or so of her forearms had black metal in them instead of bones, that someone had for some reason replaced at least that much of her bones with metal. This could be seen as highlighting the part of my mother's body that she came to have a problem with in the fall, and might also be a reference to the hidden splint that they put on her, as well as to the x-rays she undoubtedly had at the hospital.

I also had an incident that Saturday night, where a bulb in the ceiling fan over the kitchen table made a popping sound behind me and burned out. The fan has two chains hanging down from it, for the fan and the lights, matching the two cords for the light in the dream, the light that also made popping sounds. The dream happened Saturday afternoon, before the bulb burned out that night.



I had a long dream Saturday, October 30, 2010, in the 3:00-3:30 AM area, a little over a week before she died, in which my mother came to my bedroom, looking a little younger. She lay down beside me and didn't say anything. Something seemed wrong, she seemed bothered by something. I looked at her face in the dim light. Her face looked a little puffy and her eyes were mostly rolled back at different angles, with dark red inside the lids and some around the eyes, on the edges of the eyeballs, and she had a bit of a grimace. I asked what was wrong and tried to comfort her. When I looked at her again, her eyes had changed to completely dark, a glistening dark with a reddish tint, almost completely a black color though. She talked a little bit I think, and finally got up and stood in front of the curtain, looking toward it. Her face was more normal now. She seemed upset about something though, maybe even with me some, though her face was mostly expressionless.

The dream has many things that matched what happened in real life. When she died, the light in the hospital room was relatively dim. She was laying in bed, and her face was swelled some. She had also had some problems with her eyes when she went to the hospital, with an infection, though they had apparently fixed that before she died. The darkness of her eyes in the dream, though, and their pointing up, seems to portend more than that. As for going over to the curtain in the dream, well, "curtains" is sometimes used as a euphemism for death.



On Tuesday, November 2, 2010, Election Day, my sister took my mother to vote. I went at a later time, then picked up my mother at my sister's house. I offered to take her to Burger King and get some supper to take home. I told her we had to stop off at the house briefly. As I drove toward the house, she reminded me about going to Burger King. I said again that I was just stopping for a little while at the house, then we would go. She said she wanted to make sure I wasn't trying to get out of giving her her treat. I took her to the bank, to get some money out. I told her on the way where we were, what we were going toward and going by. After the bank, I drove toward the Burger King, again telling her about where we where, while we talked about things. After the Burger King I drove toward home, and we continued as before, talking, with me telling her where we were, and where we were going.

As we went, I came to feel more and more that things were ending, that this would somehow be the last time things would be this way. It reminded me of when I had taken my grandmother home, decades ago, after celebrating her ninetieth birthday. I had kept looking at her and thinking that things were about to change, that this would be the last time things would be this way. The next day, in the morning, my grandmother fell and injured her back, and was taken to the hospital, and spent a long time getting well enough to go home. Then, at home, after getting better for a while, my grandmother fell and broke her wrist, and died two or three days later. It felt now like it had felt then, when I was taking my grandmother home.

Though I did not know it at the time, my mother had less than a week to live.



Late Friday, November 5, 2010, at night, the day after my mother went to the hospital, I was at home, and got a strange feeling of peace, that it was over. I tried to resist that, didn't want to accept it, got very upset about it, telling her, mostly in my mind, to stay, to hang in there, not to go away, to come back, over and over.

I had not been feeling well. My ankle had bled all over the floor, just before they came and took her to the hospital. I got a call from my youngest sister, though, to come down to the hospital, and I did, and I talked to my mother for a long time, and she laughed a lot. I am very glad I went. I was very shaky on the way home though, and an hour after I got back my ankle started bleeding all over the floor again.



On Monday night, November 8, 2010, I got a call from my oldest sister, saying that my mother was expected to die, and that I should go to the hospital, and then, while I was getting ready to go, my brother called and said her organs were failing and they were going to shut her off. This came as a surprise. She had seemed to be doing well while I was there Friday. I had not gone back, afraid that my ankle would start bleeding again, but I talked to my youngest sister on the phone Saturday, and she said that she was doing really well and was expected to be moved out of Intensive Care on Sunday. When I called my sister on Sunday, though, she said that my mother hadn't been having a good day. Now, on Monday night, I hurried down to the hospital, and got to spend some time with her, though she wasn't conscious. A lot of family members were there too, though I was given a couple of times to be alone with her. She died that night, a few hours after I arrived.



On Wednesday, November 10, 2010, probably around 4:00 AM, give or take an hour or two, I felt a presence in the house, and also heard something. It didn't feel like it was in the room. It seemed to be in the front part of the house initially, then at the far end of the hallway, then at this end of the hallway, a few feet from the computer room, where I was. The little dogs didn't seem bothered by it. I had been sleeping at the computer with the radio on, but wasn't asleep at the time, or didn't seem to be.



On Wednesday, November 10, 2010, probably around 2:00 to 4:00 AM, as I was sitting by the computer, with the radio on, trying to sleep, I drifted and went into a halfway dream state. I hadn't slept for a long time. I had been writing a book for National Novel Writing Month, and I went into a version of the character I was writing about, who now looked more like me, and my mother was with me, in place of his mother. She was much younger, maybe in her early forties. It was dark, and we were separated by a few feet, going down a street, bent over some, moving sneakily but fairly quickly. She was a little ahead, but not much. We sometimes talked to each other in low tones. I think it was mostly a residential area, but with perhaps a few businesses. It was filled with old buildings, with I guess you would call a cobblestone street. It repeated itself a time or two. We were on an adventure, going stealthily into an area where we might find someone I think, in one of the buildings further on. It was brief, but enjoyable.



On Friday, November 12, 2010, around 3:00-6:30 AM, more or less, I was sleeping at the computer with the radio on. I dreamed that my mother, looking very young, in her twenties, and with a very small waist, kept coming up to me, rushing up to me, as I sat there by the computer. She was in heavy black and white, like the old pictures of her, except that it was heavier, with a dark outline around her. She seemed very dynamic, walking swiftly up to me, bent forward slightly, her arms bent, but moving back and forth some as she walked, coming toward me with an intent look, like she was on a mission, her face smiling a little, but also looking intent. It happened over and over, one right after the other. It seemed more like a vision, instead of a dream, and matched the physical situation I was in, sitting there in the chair, my head down, my eyes closed.



At my mother's funeral, on Friday, November 12, 2010, I went down the aisle and looked at her in her coffin. As I looked at her, for a moment, for an instant, another version of her seemed to recede several feet away from me, away from the body in the coffin, through the side and the open lid of the coffin, a version of her that was alive and several years younger, partly sitting up, looking toward me with her mouth open slightly, a slight smile on her face, almost of slightly uncertain expectation. She was looking toward me, seeming very comfortable herself, but looking a little unsure of my reaction, of what my reaction to her might be. I drew back, blinking and shaking my head I think, turning away from her. I looked back a few times, but the vision was gone now. It seemed astoundingly real, though, in the brief instant of its happening.

I thought about it many times in the days and weeks and months that followed. It seemed very real at the time it happened, but very brief. I wondered about it, and wondered whether it was real or just a trick of the mind, but at the moment it happened I was greatly affected by it, and had to leave the area of the coffin for a while.



On Wednesday, November 17, 2010, around 3:00-6:00 AM, I dreamed I was driving from mid-to-northern Arizona, back home. Some other people were with me. It was daytime. I was on a divided highway partly cut through hills. Roadwork was going on. My mother was with us, looking younger, maybe in her late forties. She was alive and alert, but somewhat shrunken down, her hips and especially her legs, with her legs shorter and tiny feet. We were taking her back for her funeral, but were experiencing delays due to the road work. I think my grandmother might have been with us.



Apparently on Thursday, November 18, 2010 in a sleep period ending at 9:30 AM, I dreamed my mother fixed sandwiches for me, Jimmy Dean type stuff. I got six Chapsticks, and reminded her to put them on the sandwiches....



Apparently on Thursday, November 18, 2010, in a sleep period ending at 12:30 PM, I dreamed that my mother was trying to fix something that she was calling shrimp or something like that, that she had bought at the store. We had had it before sometimes, in my history as it was in the dream. It wasn't really shrimp, but looked like a little person, maybe three feet tall, with wispy trailing strips like antennas, coming from the sides of the forehead and maybe shoulders or sides. I was talking to her about it, and started saying that it looked like a person, how much it looked like a person. She was saying not to say that. I kept on doing it. I was finally saying that it was a person, that it was really a fairy, or maybe more likely a pixie, or maybe an elf....



On Monday, November 22, 2010, around 5:30-9:30 AM, I had an extremely real-feeling dream in which my mother came back, suddenly appeared laying on the rug in a hotel room, as I was talking to my little sister. My mother looked a little irritated, and perhaps a little confused. I was somewhat surprised to see her, and a little confused myself. I told my sister she was here, then went to her and lifted her to her feet, tilting her up. She felt perfectly solid, perfectly real, perfectly three-dimensional. It didn't feel like a dream at all, it felt like she was really there. She seemed around sixty. She was wearing clothes that she used to wear, an old faded blue-purple blouse with flower designs on it and a dark skirt. I was glad to see her, but a little confused because I thought we had just buried her, how could she be back?

We talked about various small things, going into the room beyond the fireplace. She seemed to be getting younger, closer to fifty. My sister went with us, also talking to us. We talked some about the get-together party that had occurred, and maybe about how they would be surprised to find that she was back. I said, in responding to something, "and the autopsy they did and the cut up pieces that they buried."

My mother looked at me briefly, looking a little disturbed, and then said, "Yeah." (In real life no autopsy occurred.)

She seemed to be a little younger, under fifty now. She talked about going on an airplane to another state, one a few states over, to the east. My sister was going to take her to the airport. It seemed she had to leave pretty soon.

She went into the bathroom and changed into overalls, like a farmer might wear. In real life she would never wear such things, but it was probably a reference to the farm where she grew up.

My mother and sister talked for a while, and continued talking, and I said, suddenly feeling that I should give a warning, though it seemed a bit like a party pooper, that "You never know how long these things will last, it might be two hours, or an hour," while privately hoping that my warnings were groundless, that she would be here much longer, days or months or indefinitely, as the dream quickly faded into being awake, and she was gone.

The dream occurred on the 47th anniversary of the day John F. Kennedy was shot.



I was extremely cold at times in the couple of weeks after my mother's death. Especially earlier, closer to the time of her death, and in the days afterward, concentrated more in the first week, where I had on a coat and a blanket and couldn't get warm no matter what. I was shaking with the cold, even one time in the late afternoon, sitting by the TV. The heat wasn't on back then, which I'm sure didn't help, but it seemed more than that, as I felt colder than I should, given the actual temperature (this IS the Valley of the Sun). Around a week and a half after her death, I put the plate back in the ductwork in the attic, which blocked off the cold air and helped noticeably, but I shouldn't have been that cold, especially in the late afternoon, especially since I could feel the warmth, the heat, all wrapped up like that, but it still couldn't help.

Ghosts are frequently associated with cold spots. Art Bell, the radio talk show host, had experiences with being cold after his wife, Ramona, died. He has since remarried, but after his earlier wife died he was getting cold a lot, and one time he was even sitting in the shower with the hot water on and still couldn't get warm.



Sometimes in the days and weeks after my mother died, as I wandered around the living room, it seemed that I could reach out my arms and hug her, hug a space in the air where she was. Sometimes I wondered about it, and thought to test it, and tried to turn and hug another area, but it didn't feel that she was there, it felt empty, and that she was in the other place.



On Friday, November 26, 2010, around 4:00-6:00 AM (the day after Thanksgiving), I had a long dream, in which I was very tired, and driving. Then at home, I saw my mother again, and she sometimes seemed connected to what was happening to her body in the grave. We walked around to the back of the house, talking. The cat that she liked was alive again too, and she took it into the house with her, through a door that didn't exist in real life....



On Saturday, November 27, 2010, around 6:30-9:30 AM, I had a dream in which I ate some strange food, then went to my grandmother's house in Arizona, then went walking and found her. Then my mother came, and we went walking toward our house, with me carrying my grandmother, but I somehow got lost and we went through a block with lots of rooms that seemed to be a medical place. Then somehow I was in a race in the 1970 Cadillac. Then I went home and found that my mother and grandmother and youngest sister were there with some kids, but there were two sets of mothers and grandmothers, almost identical, but with one set looking worse than the other.



On Saturday, November 27, 2010, maybe in the 10:00-10:30 AM area, I was in the computer room, drifting but not asleep. I had a half-vision of my mother and grandmother off to the left side of me, a few feet away, in the room, coming toward me some, but I don't think they ever got closer than a couple of feet. They were standing there looking at me, apparently talking about me sometimes, concerned about me, though I didn't hear what they said and I'm not sure I actually saw them speak, though it seems I did a little.



On Friday, December 10, 2010, around 10:30-11:40 AM, I dreamed that I was in what seemed to be a living room, perhaps in my house. My mother was in there, laying on the couch, partly toward me. I was standing on the floor by the couch, leaning over to her, and shadowy figures were moving around nearby, but most of the area was a gray fog. The housekeeper was there, cleaning the house, though I heard her more then saw her. I could only see her a little bit, a dark figure in the fog. She spoke a little though, briefly, sounding distant. I asked my mother why the housekeeper was there cleaning the house, and she said something like, "Oh, she just was," and seemed happy about it, in a distracted way....



On Wednesday, December 15, 2010, around 10:00 AM-2:00 PM, I dreamed that I was in my bedroom. My oldest sister was a few feet away. We were talking, and she had a big smile on her face. I heard the tinkling of the bells my mother used to call me with, small ceramic bells with a handle on top. I heard them twice, a few seconds apart, faint but clear and sharp in tone, nearby, like maybe in the hallway just outside the room, and my mother was there, coming in through the open door, looking maybe around fifty, maybe less, in her faded violet-purple flowered blouse and a dark skirt I think. She was just partly seen, partly faded out, almost like an impression she was there, but I still felt like she was solid, at least the part that was visible, less so the parts that weren't. I was looking at her to the side, to the right, without turning my head much, and she came in, a presence or partial presence, partly seen, but definitely there.



On Wednesday, December 15, 2010, around 10:00 AM-2:00 PM, I dreamed I was with my mother at an old school, looking for books in a room full of old books, then a storm came....



On Friday, January 14, 2011, around 5:30-7:00 AM, I dreamed that I was thinking that my mother was dead, was remembering and thinking that it was too bad, that she wasn't here to tell something to I think, then thinking suddenly that it was found to be a mistake, and that she was alive, and I was glad that it had been a mistake and she was alive again.



On Friday, January 14, 2011, around 7:30-9:15 PM, I dreamed my mother and my brother and I, and one or two other family members, probably my sisters, went to a place outside of town somewhere. It seemed like a very small town, a settlement. We stopped at a place with a Old West appearance, a store with a large flat lot in front, unpaved, scattered with fine light brown gravel. It was daytime. Everyone seemed much younger. The girls were still children, and sometimes my brother seemed to be around ten or twelve, though sometimes he seemed to be older, in his teens. I'm not sure what we were driving. It seems we might have originally been in more than one car.

We were in the store for a while. I don't remember exactly what it was, but I think it was kind of a restaurant/tourist store/convenience mart type of thing. I think my father might have been there too, or in the area, or had been there, or was coming there. I'm not sure I actually saw him.

It was getting time to leave, and we got in the car and drove off, with my mother driving. She was talking, and I was talking sometimes too. The girls were also talking, mostly carrying on their own conversations, sometimes only one-way. I turned back as we drove out of the lot, away from the somewhat tall sidewalk that ran along the front of the building, with the tall, thin, square wooden pillars that lined it, and thought I saw my brother back there, looking toward us, seemingly around ten years old. I didn't see him in the car, looking toward the back seat on the driver's side. After a few seconds I said to my mother that I thought we left him back there. She questioned what I was saying, repeating it, then said to me, reassuringly, that he was here, and I turned and looked at the back seat on the passenger side and he was there.

We drove for quite a while, though it didn't seem too long in the dream. It was late at night, and we were driving in the mountains, on a road that might have been unpaved, though it was flat and in good condition. We were in the 1973 Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser station wagon now, blue with a white top. We stopped at some stores on the left, a series of perhaps three or more stores connected to each other, almost like a small mall. My mother went in, and the girls went into the store but not very far, going in and looking at the stuff in the bins and on display and then coming back out, going back and forth. My youngest sister was talking and giggling. My mother came back and we started off in the car again, with my mother driving like before.

My mother drove slowly forward in the dark, away from the stores. A few other buildings were scattered back a little ways from the road, but not too many. The road mostly went through a cutaway section of the mountains here. Directly ahead of us were two or more huge speed bumps that had been put in. I remembered going here long ago. The speed bumps were like large half-cylinders made of dirt, laying across the road, smooth and perfectly shaped. At first there just seemed to be two of them, separated by perhaps twenty feet or so. They were big enough that it looked difficult to get over them. My mother slowed to a crawl, slowly going over it and down the other side. I thought the car might scrape but it didn't. Initially they seemed to be perhaps 15 or so inches high, but they got higher as we approached them. As we went toward the second one, which had been the same size as the first one earlier, was now quite a bit taller, perhaps two or three feet. We managed to get over it. It was so large it was like going over a small hill, with the car somehow able to clear it, with maybe only a minimal amount of scraping.

We headed toward another one then, slightly farther apart than the other two. It was huge, maybe four or five feet high. Ahead, another car was coming, moving faster then we were, though still not very fast, maybe less then 20 miles an hour. I thought it would get a surprise when it got to the bumps if it didn't slow down more, and thought it might have to slow abruptly as it got to them. It might be local, though, and familiar with them, and somehow knew what it was doing.

I didn't see how we could get over this bump, though, it was so huge, and began cringing and partly turning away, even sometimes briefly closing my eyes. I was talking about it, worrying about it. My mother was talking back to me, reassuringly, slowly and tired sounding, her head tilted back some as she slowly drove toward it. We started to go up it, the front of the car tilting up in the air. We headed toward the top of it, and I could see over it, and it looked like we were going to make it after all.

Dream - My mother and the cat that came back

The first week after my mother died, I didn't have many dreams. Of those that I had, not many were about her, and those seemed more like visions, particularly since I wasn't always asleep. In the second week I started to have more dreams, and more dreams with her in them, then after that I began to have a lot of dreams about her.

I had a long dream early in the morning on Friday, November 26, 2010, the day after Thanksgiving, over two weeks after her death. In a small part of that much larger dream, my mother and I walked around the house to the back, talking. The house was partly like it was in real life, and partly different.

At the back of the house, a few feet around the southwest corner, were a few concrete steps going up the side of the house with a small railing beside them, with a door at the top a couple of feet up. The steps and the door don't exist in real life.

As she went up the steps, a sleek, clean, black and white cat, evidently the one that had just died, but looking so healthy it was hard to identify, came up to her from the yard somewhere. She took it into her arms, talking to it, and went inside holding it, through the door that doesn't exist.

The cat that came back

We used to have a black and white cat called Popper. It belonged to my sister, and used to stay in her room, though we also let it go outside. One day it disappeared, and we didn't see it for a long time, a lot of years.

It came back one day, though, when it was old. It was skinny and wanted to be fed a lot, but it always stayed skinny. My sister was living somewhere else now, a house nearby. My mother brought the cat into our house and kept it there. Even on those few occasions when it got out, it was happy to come back in. My mother really liked it now, and talked about how it had come back after all these years. The cat would sit on the couch beside her, and sometimes climb into her lap, especially when it wanted more food. She would stroke it and talk to it, and say, "Isn't this a beautiful cat, Stephen? Isn't he beautiful?"

Eventually it came to be that I was the one that usually fed it. We had various flavors of Friskies cat food for it, and I would get a can and walk through the living room to where it had its dish. The cat was frequently on the couch or my mother's lap, but sometimes it was wandering around meowing. I made sure it saw that I had the can of cat food. When it realized that, its eyes would get big and lock onto it, and it would soon start moving toward me as I went toward the food dish.

As the months passed, it began to eat less at a time, and then start wanting food a little later, seeming to forget that it still had a lot left. I would get a can and put a little more down, and the cat would eat some more for a while before wandering off.

We also have two little dogs, an old Pekingese and a young chihuahua mix, which stay in the kitchen, kept there by gates, when they're not out in the back yard. Sometimes the cat would go in the kitchen when they were in the back yard, and drink their water, and lay where they laid, apparently its way of saying that this, too, belongs to me. If the dogs got back in, it would quickly run to one of the gates and leap up on it, then over it.

One time I was fixing food for the dogs, before I let them back in. We feed them both dry and canned food, and I was putting down some canned beef Mighty Dog into one of the dishes, when the cat went over and started eating it. It ate and ate, really happy, and I couldn't convince it to stop. I finally let the dogs in, which caused the cat to leave the kitchen, and I gave the dogs a little cat food to make up for what was eaten. I figured it evened things out.

Thursday, November 4, 2010, my mother went into the hospital for what turned out to be the last time. Though she improved for a couple of days, her health then rapidly declined, and she died late on Monday, November 8, 2010.

I tried to explain to Popper that she died and wouldn't be back, and said I was sorry, and that she loved him. He seemed to understand somehow. He stayed away from the couch, though, and as far as I know never got back on it. He spent a lot of time in other rooms mostly, hiding, though sometimes he hid in areas of the living room. He still liked to get in the kitchen where the dogs were kept, sometimes drinking their water. One time the chihuahua mix got back in while the cat was still drinking the water, and the dog stared at the cat in disbelief, going from one side to the other, sometimes barking. Popper ignored the dog, and kept on drinking.

Popper ate much less though, and eventually stopped eating altogether, even when I held an open can of cat food in front of him. He got skinnier and skinnier. Sometimes I could hear him cry out, though usually he was quiet. When I talked to him, he would turn his head toward me and look at me. He seemed to have a permanent expression of amusement on his face, but that may have been in part because he was so skinny now, drawing his face into a smile.

One day he lay down with the upper half of his body across a towel that my mother had briefly used to warm her legs with, shortly before she went into the hospital. It had gotten on the floor and I hadn't really felt like picking it up yet. Popper stayed there for hours. One time I accidentally bumped him, and he lifted his head and looked at me, frowning a bit, looking worried. Then he lay back down, gradually resuming his expression of amusement.

He didn't move after that. As the day progressed, I suspected that he had at some point died, drifted slowly off into death. Late in the afternoon I talked to my sister on the phone. She came over and looked at him, and when she touched him she found he was cold, and when she lifted him a bit he was already stiff. It was Friday, November 19, 2010, a little over two weeks since my mother had gone into the hospital, and eleven days after she died.

My sister wrapped him up in the towel and took him away, to be cremated. At the door she paused and we talked for a while. She started crying and talked about how there had been so much death, and she hoped this was the end of it. Besides my mother and the cat, an old Boston terrier had died earlier that year. The chihuahua had been a replacement for it.

There's still a dish on the floor with some Cat Chow in it. Popper ate mostly canned food, in a separate dish that was just a paper plate, but sometimes ate some dry food, particularly if we were slow with the canned food. Whatever canned food was left there, the chihuahua ate at least part of it when it got out into the living room, and if any remained I gave it to the cats outside.

The chihuahua still sometimes gets into the living room, still looking for the canned cat food. It's not there now, but the dish of Cat Chow still is. It's off a ways from where the canned food was, and the dog apparently hasn't noticed it. The food is old and dusty now, and someday I'll throw it out, but I can't bring myself to do it yet.

What I said at my mother's funeral

My mother passed away late on Monday, November 8, 2010, at the age of 79. Her funeral was on Friday, November 12, 2010.

My brother gave the eulogy. A day or two before I had been asked if I wanted to say anything, too. Some other people were also going to talk, and I could say something if I wanted to. I said no. I was really tired and feeling kind of shaky, and didn't feel like I could. And although I didn't know it at the time, I was only a few weeks away from going in the hospital myself. Over the course of the day I thought about it, though, and decided that I really had to say something. I felt it was my duty, that I was the only one who could say the things I was thinking about. I had to do it. I went ahead and wrote it down in a rough draft on the computer, then printed it out. I went over it some more on the way to the funeral and while I was there, making a few minor changes, just in my head, not writing anything down.

When it came time for the speeches, my brother went up and talked, then a few other relatives, then I volunteered to be next. I went up and got on the platform, and stood at the dais and adjusted the very ineffective microphone to point up toward me. I looked out at the crowd, scanning my eyes over them. I recognized a lot of people, but most of them were strangers. It didn't bother me that I had to speak before all of them, though there was a time when it would have. Now I just felt that I had to give the speech as best I could, and try to speak loudly enough so that everyone heard me. It was a fairly long speech, but I think I succeeded for the most part in what I was trying to do. Several more people spoke after me, not all of them relatives. I couldn't hear most of what was said, because of the poor microphone and my hearing problem. Evidently the other people were having a lot more success in hearing than I was, as evidenced by their reactions. I know I was heard, at least for the most part, because of reactions to what I was saying during the speech, and because of things that were said to me afterward, in one case about a specific thing I said, and in another case word was relayed to me that someone had said that I should be a professional writer.

This is what I said, recreated from the written notes and adding in the changes, as best as I can remember them:


Hi, I'm Stephen. I'm her first child.

A long time ago, in Moberly, Missouri, back when I was little, probably five or six, I was laying in bed, with my mother leaning over and talking to me. It was sometime during the day. We were talking about various things at first, but the discussion went to me growing up, getting older, and then getting married and leaving her. I protested, saying I would never leave her. She said that I may not think that now, but I would feel different when I got older. I still insisted I would never leave her.

I did end up spending some time in Nevada, but I came home often, usually every two weeks, and I also spent a lot of time on the phone with her. When I was home, she used to show me tapes of the Guiding Light soap opera, catch me up on it as much as she could, the ones that I had time to see. Sometimes I got to spend some extra time home with her, and see it directly, and watch the O.J. Simpson trial, too.


At that long ago time in Moberly, when I was little, in what was probably the same conversation, it had moved on, and came to a different topic. She said that people grow old and die, everyone does, even she would get old and die some day.

"No," I said, objecting to it.

"It would be a long time," she assured me. "It wouldn't happen for a long time."

I still objected, even as she left me then, looking saddened. I knew, of course, that she was right, that everyone grows old and dies, but I didn't want to accept it happening to her



In my life, I have had some things happen in groups of ten years, or a little more. The time I owned the radiator shop was around eleven years. The time I spent in Nevada was around ten and a half. The time since I came home from Nevada, until now, when she died, has been about twelve years. I would gladly add on another ten, and another ten after that, move it ahead indefinitely. It never seems to be enough.


We talked about the ten year thing sometimes. One time perhaps a few years ago, perhaps less, she said she didn't have that long to wait, for me to start doing something else.


One time, perhaps a week or week and a half before she went into the hospital, she was talking about something she had specified to be given to someone after she was gone. I said we had plenty of time to talk about that later. She said "No, we don't." After all those years, I was still objecting.


Now, though, the thing I objected to so long ago, and still objected to, and dreaded all those years, has finally happened. That unimaginable and unacceptable time, and we must go into the future without her.



She had a lot of health problems this year, but was still trying to get better.

One time, a few weeks ago, she found enough strength to fix some scrambled eggs. She made me a scrambled egg sandwich, and handed it out to me over the doggie gate in the kitchen. After I ate it, she asked me, happily and expectantly, if I liked it. I assured her that I did. And I in fact did.

She also gave some of the eggs to the two little dogs, something she used to do a lot.


She tried to be especially cheerful in the couple of weeks or so near the end. She said she knew how much I was doing for her, and how much Sharon was doing for her and, talking to me, thanked us individually. Sharon wasn't there at the time. I'm sure my mother expected me to convey the message, which I did.


She tried to be happy with what I brought her to eat, though when she didn't like it she said so, often saying it tasted funny or she didn't know why it tasted like that, while still saying it in a nice way. Her tastes seemed to be affected somewhat by her illness. But when she did like the food she made a special effort to smile, and thank me, and say how much she enjoyed it.


We had some enjoyable talks over the years, including recently, but not enough of them. Looking back, not nearly enough.



Several years ago she was trying to put together another book to give to people, like the last one about her early life. This one was going to include a lot of copies of pictures of relatives from the old days, and copies of newspaper articles and copies of parts of old books that had information about relatives in them, and I'm sure a lot of other stuff.

It was a big project, finding everything and making the copies. I helped her out sometimes, but she was doing most of it herself.

She was also trying to draw a large layout of the buildings on the old farm, as part of the project. She spent a lot of time working on it, trying to remember how many buildings there were, and what they were used for and where they were. She was never quite able to remember everything, though she remembered most of it.

Then health problems intervened, and time passed. She said one time that she no longer remembered how the buildings were, and was mad about it, that too much time had passed and she had forgotten.

She never got the project finished. Too many health problems got in the way, and it became too much for her to do.


It eventually came to be that she also forgot the stories of her life, that she had written for the earlier book. She said she knew she had written them, but didn't remember it anymore, and though she enjoyed reading them, it was like reading about someone else.

However, in time, the memories came back, and when I would talk about them she would know what I was talking about, and remembered them.

Even a few days before she went in the hospital she remembered them.

And when I visited her in the hospital, I talked about them a lot with her, and she would remember them, at least the ones from the old farm. She sometimes had some trouble with some memories from after that.

The ones from the old farm, though, she seemed to remember very well, even supplying some details.

When I reminded her about her feet hanging through the ceiling, when she was little, she said that they had told her not to do it, but she went up there and was looking at it between the boards, and was wondering what it would feel like to have her feet hanging through.

I reminded her of the horse taking her around and around the building, and she remembered that.

I reminded her about playing hide and seek, and not being able to find someone, eventually supplying the detail, I think, that a person was up in a tree. After I repeated it a few times, she turned toward me, like she had been lost in thought about something else, and said "Oh that was Bea! We couldn't find her, then we heard laughing, and we looked around and I finally saw her up in the tree. Bea was a rascal."

I reminded her about the two story log cabin. that she wanted to get into, and she said, "And I still do!"

She laughed a lot that night, talking with me.



I remember when I was very little, and we lived at the second farm, I used to sit on the floor and put puzzles together, and she would sit there too and help me.

She used to talk about that over the years, even recently, about how I would sit there with a puzzle piece and move it this way and that, and finally get it in. She said the puzzles had so many pieces, and I was so little, and I was so smart.


She used to play with me with other things, too.

There was a big metal top that had to be pumped with a twisted metal rod that came out the top, to make it spin. It made a strange humming sound when it spun.

There was a small wooden mailbox, with holes of different shapes in it, for wood pieces of different shapes to go through.

And a squarish board with little holes all over it, and little pegs to go in them and create pictures.

And a tiny wooden workbench with things to pound into it.

And various kinds of blocks.

And many other things.

And she used to sit there and play with me when she had time, both at the farm and when we later moved to Moberly.

I enjoyed it very much.


Later, when I was in school, she sometimes helped me out with my school work. She was also a den mother at school for a while. She also made Easter egg hunts for us, and treasure hunts. She would leave little strips of paper with clues on them, leading to the next strip of paper and finally to the prize.

She did so many nice things for me over the years.



One time, I'm not sure how old I was, perhaps around twelve, things had gotten more tense lately in the house. People were cross with each other. We were talking, and I had to go somewhere, probably to school. As I left, she gave me something, probably my lunch. She was standing in the doorway, and we were still talking, in half-arguing kinds of voices, though we weren't really arguing, and as I turned away then to leave, several feet away from her now, she said "You could at least say thank you."

I paused, and realized that she was right. I had used to do it, had used to thank people, but had somehow gotten away from it. I turned back toward her and said, "Thank you." And after that, I made a particular effort to be sure and thank her for things. She became happier, and brightened up a lot, and thanked me too when I did something for her.


I can't thank her enough for all she has done, and for being there with me. I will miss her very much.

Maudie M. Morgan, 1931-2010