It is not unusual for me to see my
relatives that have passed on, beginning with my great-grandmother
who came to let me know she was leaving me the night she died. From
time to time I will reach out across the ether and demand that my
grandfather come to visit. I miss him most, plus he's got all my
critters rounded up with him on the other side.
My grandmother finally came through
several years after she passed, finally in a place she remembered, at
my grandfather's orange grove. She was looking for Pop and still a
tad confused, but she finally had realized she was dead. She was
waiting there for him to come get her, and my dog Kodi was with her,
keeping guard until Pop arrived. When Grandma died she was in the
early to mid stages of Alzeheimer's. She had more good days than bad,
but when she passed she was in an unfamiliar place and confused as to
why she was there. It took her sometime to shake off that confusion.
Nearly a month to the day before seeing
my sister, Grandma came to me again. She was young, looking like a
picture that was taken when she was about 20 – she was gorgeous –
and rolling around on my bed with our cat Phred. Grandma didn't
tolerate animals in her house, she'd only liked one of my cats who
was so smart she got Grandma to follow her to her food bowl and
understand she needed food. Grandma fed her because she was so smart.
Bomber, the cat, did the same thing to Pop less than an hour later
and when Grandma learned of it she laughed at Bomber's brilliance.
(No wonder the cat was fat.)
Grandma had come to tell me she'd found
Pop and that Cathy was ok, not to worry. I asked her why she was
playing with Phred since she didn't like animals. Grandma's response
was “I don't have to clean up after them over here.” And she
laughed. A wonderful laugh that we didn't hear often growing up, but
I had heard after Pop had a massive heart attack and Grandma had
slipped into an Alzheimer's fueled regression to their early
courtship. I laughed with her as she gave Phred once last pat before
popping back to Pop.
Seeing Cathy was more chaotic and a bit
confusing. Cathy was in a house, somewhat similar to the first house
she and Greg (my brother-in-law) had when they first moved in
together. It wasn't decorated like Cathy would have, it was spare, a
bit spartan in design and layout and felt very much like a rental
house and not a true home. The walls were white, floors a light tan
carpet, with boring linoleum in the ktichen and plain bathrooms. Not
a lot of windows, but the light was good. There just wasn't much
color and whenever I think of Cathy's homes they were always full of
color, life and plants; this place had none of that.
Cathy was sitting down in a chair, her
arms across her lower abdomen and rocking slowly forward, as if she
was having bad cramps. She had a wound she wouldn't let me see, told
me to not worry about it, and that I had to go by 6:00. It wasn't
clear at the time, but I kept feeling as if she meant early evening,
not morning.
She was working on cleaning the house
and was repainting when I arrived. Cathy was putting the finishing
touches on the place before she moved; she was prepping the house
for the next people. It didn't surprise me at all that she looked
like she did in college, not like she did the last time I'd seen her
– well, except for the tan and lack of glasses. I picked up a
roller to help her finish the bedroom walls she was working on. I
heard the crackly of the plastic paint cloth beneath our feet as we
worked and was a bit surprised at how fast we were done.
In a kitchen, I found my nieces and my
sister-in-law. At least that's who I though they were. They had to
make cupcakes for a bake sale and the girls were demanding that I
make them my famous muffins because they “hadn't had them when they
were alive”. That made me do a double take because I knew all three
of them were alive and healthy. Confused I suggested we work on the
cupcakes first. Sandy, my sister-in-law, insisted that I help with
the cupcakes, but said making muffins would mean I'd have to wash
more pans. Cathy interrupted to say I couldn't possible bake anything
as I had to go by 6 and that would be too many pans for me to be
washing in between to leave on time. The girls pouted,, and again I
felt a tad confused as they didn't exactly look like my nieces,
although they were clearly family. I never got to see Sandy's face,
just the back of her head and I had simply assumed it was Sandy I was
talking to as the voice was familiar.
I followed Cathy back to bedroom where
there was now an adjustable bed, one where the foot and head of the
bed could be moved. She sat in a chair next to the bed, her arms
across her lower abdomen again and she bent forward as if she had
really bad cramps. I could see blood coming from somewhere high up on
her thigh and insisted on looking at it. She refused saying it would
take me too long and mentioned again
that I'd have to go by 6. I continued to insist and she finally let
me look at it. But she controlled what I could see, so while I could
see the deep wound I couldn't really tell where on her body it was.
It was a bad cut, so I stitched it up (I was a vet tech in high
school, I was taught to stitch beautifully.) By the time I was done
stitching it up, it was well on it's way to being healed over.
My nephews and Greg stopped by, with
the nephews arriving later in one group. Greg wanted me to fix an
issue with their wireless network. Cathy insisted he not bother me,
that I wasn't there to work and had to leave by 6. While I identified
the male as Greg, again it didn't look exactly like him. The boys
stopped in to ask me to cook for them since Cathy was dead and
couldn't do it. Again Cathy told them to not ask me to work and that
I had to leave at 6.
I was a bit surprised to hear her
telling family to not make me work. That tends to be all I do when I
visit family. And when I went to see her in May before she died, I
baked and cooked every day I was there. She and I knew in May I would
never see her alive again, even if she didn't want to openly admit it
and I didn't want to say it because I know that the fight with cancer
is 70% spirit and I didn't want her to lose the will to fight. Even
if we didn't admit it, we knew.
After the boys left, Cathy told me to
lay down on the bed because she knew my back was bothering me and it
would make me feel better. (I slipped a disc and while I was visiting
had to do exercises that looked funny to help slip it back in place
after standing the wrong way.) Before I did though I insisted on
checking her wound again to make sure she hadn't popped any stitches
while she'd continued to putz around the house when the boys stopped
by.
She showed me the wound again, which
was now completely healed. I pulled the stitches out for her and she
was all smiles and laughter. Making jokes about our work for the
local vet (she passed out when watching a surgery, I got too involved
in what he was doing). I finally climbed onto the bed and laid down
on it. It was soft, comfy and my back felt the best it had in a few
years. It was heaven and I wanted to stay there for awhile.
Cathy climbed in next to me and started
playing with the controls, first putting the foot up at a comfortable
level, then putting the head up a bit. She started moving the
controls faster, making me laugh as my legs went straight up in the
air, then she folded me in half like in old cartoons. We were
laughing and playing around like we did when we were kids (and not
annoying each other – for once). She finally turned me into a
pretzel of sorts and reminded me again that I had to leave by 6. She
straightened the bed up and gave me a hug, whispering goodbye.
That's when I woke up. Right at 6:00
a.m. I was surprised. It was the first time I'd seen her since she
passed and none of my other visitors ever mentioned that I needed to
leave by a certain time. She had visited a cousin, but none of our
immediate family had seen her. I figured she had some things she was
working on and wasn't strong enough or ready to visit me yet, but
that she'd come when she was ready.
I called my mom to tell her I'd seen
Cathy and let mom know she was ok and moving on. I mentioned that I
never really got to see Sandy, I'd just assumed she was Sandy, and
that the girls didn't really seem to be my nieces although they were
clearly family. I told mom what the Big Guy told me when I told him
about seeing Cathy, and the girls who may have been my nieces.
He had suggested that they were babies Cathy had lost, which really
makes more sense as the girls looked more like Cathy than our
brother. It wasn't until after talking to my mom though that I
realized the woman I thought was Sandy was probably my sister
Christina. I never saw Christina, she only survived a few hours after
being born early in a facility without the equipment needed to keep
her weak lungs going. But it made sense, as Christina would have been
just a few years older than brother.
And the man I thought was Greg could
have actually been Greg's dad, Richard, who passed away a few years
ago. Greg's had a lot of loss in his life, having also lost his first
wife unexpectedly. He didn't deserve to lose my sister at the point
in their lives when the kids were grown and it would've soon been
just the two of them – for the first time.
Now that I have everyone from her visit
sorted out, I'm looking forward to seeing them all again. Hopefully
next time I see Cathyshe will be in her new place, hopefully with no
more wounds. It must have been a wound I created, or one that was
created by both of us that had to be healed by both of us before she
could move on. Either way, she's moving on and will find all that
have gone before her soon enough. I really hope she's moving into the
house that I helped create for her that had the aquarium that went
throughout the entire house. It really is a spectacular achievement,
that is reminscient of the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Pop put a lot of
work into that place and Dearie (our great-grandmother) had left her
a fresh loaf of homemade bread on the kitchen counter.
There's nothing better in this world,
and the next, then coming home to freshly made bread, unless it's
coming home to Dearie's homemade bread. I hope I get such a
homecoming when it's my turn.
