Raising the Bar on the Freak Scale

Okee-dokles, all of you who replied so positively to my freakshow post that I'm a bit less timid about sharing the other half of my ghostly experiences. I must warn you though: if my previous post didn't leave you a bit leery of my mental stability, this one just might!

So here it is...*ahem*...I've conversed with the deceased in my dreams. Five times to be exact. Three times it was family, twice it was friends who've passed. Given that today and tomorrow mark anniversaries of painful and trying moments in my family's life, I'll share two of my experiences.**

The first time I ever spoke with someone who passed, it was my dad. I don't remember how old I was, but I think it was in my early 20s. I dreamt I was driving down Townline Road with him in his old black truck, a 1979 Ford F150. It was originally maroon but in true redneck fashion he, my uncle and my grandpap painted it black with black tractor paint. Yeah. Mom and I christened it the Black Beauty at that point. What else could you call it without hurting the guy's feelings? He was damn proud of that truck. We lived in a small town, he worked blue collar jobs, but it was a farm truck if ever I saw one. The seats were shot: springs were poking through, the stuffing was falling out, there was a perpetual layer of grime on it. He bought a seat cover but it, too, tore where the springs were. The floor was always covered in dirt road dust. It was dirty, but it was his and far be it from us to make fun of it.

I digress. We were driving down the road and in between us was our dog, Buffy. Buffy, a white terrier-poodle mix, passed away when I was 10. I asked him what it was like, you know, being dead. He told me he was happy, that he had Boo (Buffy) with him, and that he saw Grandma and Grandpap too. Then I woke up. I woke up with a certainty that I had, in fact, spoken to my dad.

I've heard and read that the dead do visit us in our dreams because it's one medium our brains can't control. As children, our minds have no barriers - barriers that are built as time wears on, society tells us that ghosts don't exist, you can't see or communicate with people after they die. I don't believe that's true. I believe that if you keep your mind and eyes and hearts open that they'll come to you in any way they can. In my case, it happens to be in my sleep. Occasionally, I'll see an unexplainable flash of light or something move just outside my peripheral vision and when I look there's nothing there. I know that's probably my dad or Aunt Joann. Aunt Joann whole-heartedly believed in angels and given the life she lead, and the big ol' heart and spirit she had, she's most definitely earned her wings.

The other dream I had, I was at a picnic at some random park. I had both of my kids with me, as well as my husband. Off in the distance, I saw my grandma. I walked up to her and saw that she was crying. Someone asked her why she was crying, and as if I wasn't there, she said, "I'm never going to see my great-grandchildren grow up, I'll never get to meet them."

This hit home not only because I'd just had my second child, but three of my cousins had recently had kids too. She'd met her first few great-grandchildren, the ones who live up in New York. But us younger kids, we all had our kids 4+ years after grandma passed away. There are a lot of little pieces of her family running around that she never got to meet and although I knew that was a possibility growing up, I'd never thought about it until I had Beth.

So please don't think me a freakshow! I don't tell many people this side of my life because, quite honestly, it's weird and as if I don't have enough self-esteem issues, I don't need another reason to think people don't like me. Hell, it freaks me out when it happens!

Anybody want to bear their weirdness now? Please?

**If you're family and want to hear the other experiences, email me and I'd be glad to share them!

Kids should come equipped with cow bells

No nightmare, no scary story, no horror movie will ever frighten you as badly as being awoken by your child in the middle of the night in near-pitch black darkness. The best part? She doesn't announce her arrival until she's three inches from my face.

"Mama."

[pause]

"Mama."

[pause]

"Mama."

[longer pause]

"MAMA!"

me: "Holy shit! What?!?!"

Then I realize it's her and she's at the side of my bed with an unspoken request to sleep in between Rob and I. So with my heart beating a mile a minute, I pick her up, haul her across my body and plop her down in the middle.

This happens maybe once a week these days and I'm thankful that's all it is. Most parents would be annoyed that once a week, they got zero sleep. Me? It's the bomb. She used to do this every. single. night. Now that she's sleeping in her own room (well, for almost four months now) she sleeps through the night more often than not. Yay!

Of all her make-mommy-fall-out-of-bed-in-fright moments, nothing beats what happened this past Saturday. Friday and Saturday nights, it was hotter than hell's bells here and it didn't cool down much at night. We don't have central air in this apartment, so we rely on box fans and ceiling fans to keep cool. If it cools down at night, we open up all the windows and let the night air cool us. Great for the electric bill, total suckfest for us.

Anyway, we decided to camp out in the living room those two nights (okay, we camped out Sunday night too, but that's because Beth fell asleep on the couch with her pillow and I didn't have the heart to move her) with all fans on high. We have a really big sectional couch - about nine feet on the long end, six feet on the short end - so Rob slept on the long end and Beth and I shared the short end. I fell into a deep, deep sleep. I was in the middle of an already-scary dream and all of a sudden, in my dream, I heard crying. It was really out of place in the dream so I started looking (in my dream) for the origin of the crying. The crying got louder. Finally, my eyes pop open and I see a head holding a seemingly-large obect looking down at me, an orange and yellow glow around them.

I figured this was it. This is the big one (for those of you who've watched, it's from "Sanford & Son")! Then I regained my senses and realized it was Beth, standing behind the couch, holding the toilet paper, asking for help. She'd apparently woken and needed to go to the bathroom but couldn't handle the whole process by herself.

Damn kids need cow bells.