(This is my mother, Annabelle, with HER mother...)Have you ever had a premonition? Oh, I know we’ve all had feelings now and then, like when your heart starts being unusually fast when an ambulance goes by when your TEEN is DRIVING somewhere in town. But I am talking about spooky feelings.
It was late in February on a snowy evening that I began to have one. I had been spending my nephew’s birthday with my sister and her family. They had tragically lost him a few weeks earlier and Sassy and I had gone back to spend what would have been his 17th birthday with the family.
We had an emotional few days, and on the night before I was to leave we gathered for the birthday dinner with loved ones. After dinner, while standing on a deck that he, his father and brother had recently finished building, we released 17 balloons filled with forget-me-not seeds and wishes of love and heartache into the crisp winter night.
That night, a storm blew in. It was a wicked nor’easter, and was predicted to dump quite a lot of snow along the eastern shore.
I was scheduled to leave the next morning, but had a nagging, nagging, horrible feeling that I wasn’t to go. It woke me up over and over during the night, and wouldn’t loosen it’s grip upon my fearful heart.
I’m not talking about a bad dream, or being afraid. I had a HORRIBLE, TERRIBLE feeling that I was NOT to drive the next day.
Well, I listened to that voice. I was stranded for a few days as the storm came in, caused quite a bit of chaos as people who were to picked up here and there were not- but as soon as the decision was made I felt a great weight lifted.
I have learned to listen to my feelings.
Once, when I was 25, my widowed mother came to visit me in California. We spent a fun-filled, crazy week shopping at every Goodwill and Thrift Shop in the greater San Diego area. We giggled, we laughed, we ate TONS of Mexican food, we raved over bargain purchases, and held each other for seven glorious days.
When we dropped her off at the airport for her flight back to Orlando, I watched in the car as her plane took off. Suddenly, I started sobbing. I cried my heart out, and my friend looked at me incredulously.
“What are you DOING?” he asked.
I continued to weep… and finally managed to say, “I have a horrible feeling that I’ll never see her again.” He laughed.
And less than two months later, my 48 year-old mother was dead.
Yeah. I tend to listen to those feelings.
