This is the only spooky Christmas story I have. As it’s a bummer I will understand if you don’t read it.
Background: I’ve had two fathers. There was my “biodad” who contributed the DNA to make me. I loved him, but we had a troubled relationship. And there was my step dad Tom, the father of my heart. Tom was a gift from the Universe for both my mom and me. He was the love of her life, and for me the only parent who gave me unconditional love, who made me believe that maybe the world wasn’t such a crapper after all. A gift, and not one that every person gets in their life. I feel incredibly lucky to have known him.
In December 1992 I gathered some of my loved ones together for our annual Christmas dinner: my two BFFs and ex-roommates, Lynn and Carl (now married to one another for 43 years), my mom, and Tom. These were nice gatherings, everyone enjoyed everyone’s company, and I really got into putting on a big show by cooking a special meal.
So right in the middle of all this—it may have been during after dinner chat, before the obscene dessert, I can’t be sure anymore—when everyone was telling stories and laughing, the world—or at least my part of it—came to a standstill. I’ve tried to describe this sensation before and that’s as close as I can come to it. I was sitting there in that room, but I was outside of it, too. I could see everyone talking, but I couldn’t hear them anymore. Though I saw all this movement, inside of me everything had gone completely still, the kind of silence and stillness I’ve never felt before or since. I heard a voice, not just in my head but in my soul, if that makes any sense at all. My impression is that it was deep, but I can’t be sure anymore and I can’t be sure whether it was male or female, but it was a voice of great conviction. It said, “This is the last Christmas you will all spend together like this.” With those words came the utter conviction that one of us would die before the next Christmas. I didn’t know who, but I suspected it was one of my parents. Then it was like the bubble burst and I was back in the room just as before, only trying hard to pretend nothing had happened, to deny what had happened, because I didn’t want to spoil the evening and because I knew everyone would just try to convince me I’d imagined it when I knew I hadn’t.
This experience was not created by too much wine at dinner. In fact, after that experience I was cold sober. As much as I put it down to excess imagination or bad brain chemistry or alcohol or whatever, I also had a deep conviction that it wasn’t any of those things. I didn’t tell anyone—I felt foolish just contemplating it. But I had this sense of the clock ticking, of waiting. That sense only grew over the months.
I felt desperate in that waiting place, helpless, unable to do anything, and still I had that reluctance to talk about it because of the fear of looking foolish. I began reading up on spiritual matters and found that the experience I’d had was not unknown. It had happened to other people. This wasn’t especially comforting (except to know I wasn’t alone) because these types of experiences tended to be portentous. I’d had premonitions before—sometimes trivial, sometimes not—but just enough that my friends jokingly called me “Spooky.”
My parents decided to go to DC on vacation and I began to focus all my worry on that trip, sure something would happen to them back there. But they came through fine. I’d put so much energy into worrying about that trip that the knot in my stomach began to uncoil. Autumn arrived and I really began to feel silly. Here I’d been worrying myself sick for months over something that was probably the result of mixing my liquor and I finally relaxed enough to tell Lynn about the whole thing. We had a good laugh about it over dinner one night. Two days later, just after dinner, my father collapsed with an aortal aneurysm. Ironically, that isn’t what killed him. They repaired the aneurysm, but Tom’s heart—that wonderful, giving, loving heart—was so scarred and damaged by a lifetime of smoking that it just stopped beating. They revived him three times but in the end they couldn’t save him.
We got the word in the wee hours of the next morning. It was hard to take in at the time, but the nurse attending us all night in the waiting room—a big bear of a Jamaican man and one of the most compassionate souls I’ve ever met—said that if Tom had lived, his life would have been greatly diminished. He’d have been an invalid, and that would have been a living death to Tom, who had always been active. “Maybe his soul decided not to go through that,” said the nurse, “not to put you guys through that.” Oddly, these words gave some comfort in the weeks to follow, the months and years of learning to live with it.
On the drive home from the hospital I asked the Universe politely but firmly to never, ever, EVER send me a premonition again. What the hell good are they if you can’t do anything to change the events??? I was done with them and with the horrible waiting to see if they came true. I haven’t had one since. I don’t miss them.
