The Thin Veil...

When my brother was about 7, he began to talk about a ghost walking up and down the second story deck of our house. He said it was dressed in Civil War garb and it never paused, just paced back and forth....I was a year and a half younger and never saw it myself, but have always had an active imagination so it scared the bejeezus outta me.

But I didn't think much about it until later, when S. was in his teens.....he had a horrible dream where he saw a school bus plunge down an embankment and 'saw' there were no survivors...the very next day, a school bus in a different state had a horrible accident like this and the children died.

When he was 14 and I was 13, a mutual friend and neighbor was killed. When S. was 17 and out driving, he saw J. standing by his motorcycle in a red jacket that he used to wear everywhere, smiling at him. S. was driving over a bridge. He did a U-turn (it was deserted) but he didn't see anybody where J. or somebody, had just been...

In 1987, on the same night, BOTH of my grandmothers died just hours apart. (They weren't close). Both of them 'came' to both of us in our dreams......my dream was they came and sat on the edge of the bed and said good bye...Steve said his was similar. A few months after my maternal grandmother died, I had a long dream about her. When I woke up I was able to tell my mom all about her, people she was now with, and facts from her life I never knew. Things I had no way of knowing before.

When I had my first brain tumor it was an emergency operation, and my parents didn't call my brother until after the surgery. On the day of my operation, S. had a splitting migraine, which he had never had before, and he said he left work and stumbled home and flopped on the couch and slept for about 10 hrs. He dreamed of my operation. When my parents called he wasn't surprised to hear the news. Later on when we talked, he was able to tell me how many surgeons were in the OR, how many nurses I had, the number of my hospital room, where the tumor had been located, and whether or not they were able to get it all (they weren't). And, I 'heard' my surgeon say they hadn't gotten it all -- don't let anyone tell you that you can't be cognizant under anesthesia -- I have undergone 11 major operations now, and I have remembered things from 11 and 14 hour operations.......

When my beloved torti cat, Gogo, died, I was alone in the house crying the morning after. Excy and the other cats were outside. Gogo had a distinctive cry that sounded like "maww" -- people on the telephone assumed I had a kid trying to get my attention when they heard her -- I was in the BR when I heard her cry "maww" from the kitchen. She had been in all my dreams for 17 years. The night she died I never dreamed about her again.