This is the post where quite a few of you will realize I am bat shit crazy. It's cool, I've come to terms with my oddness and weird connections with things. You see, my mom and I always had this weird connection with one another. But before I get into that, maybe I should explain some of my beliefs so that maybe it'll make more sense.
Those of you who know me know I abhor organized religion. The second you try to organize something and you put a group of people in the room and start dictating who gets to connect with God, it becomes stupid and everyone involved becomes a uniform zombie, repeating what they are told and losing any potential for a real connection. I have never liked having to go through someone else to reach God and I think it's more of a human ego-trip telling you that you need to have that kind of order than representing any kind of truth. Ultimately, I don't feel like organized religion is that far off. There are certain truths among all religions, certain things that just feel right and make your hair stand on end when you connect with them, and that's where the ultimate truth lies. I don't think this is the only life you lead but part of a bigger journey. I don't think God has any control over what your journey looks like and is not able to stop awful things from happening, but instead puts certain people in your life to help you navigate through when you need it. Certain souls that you constantly seek out and connect with regardless of what life you are in. My mom was one of those souls for me.
When I was a child she had this instinctual physical/emotional connection with me that when I was not ok, or in imminent danger, she just knew it. She would start to panic and sweat. Her heart would race and she would become an irrational mama bear, determined to get to me and protect me even if she was not there. Probably the freakiest occurrence of this was one time when I was in 4th grade and horseback riding. It was my friend Holly's (see my original post's comment section and our stalkerish obsession with getting to a barn at the detriment of actual connect to anything that was not a horse) moms' turn to drive, so my mom was sitting at home prepared to yell at me for traipsing my poo-covered boots into the house and order me immediately into the shower, rinsing what I thought was the most beautiful smell of barn off of me.
She wasn't off-base in being paranoid about my riding. You see, "I wanna go fast." I may have been the Ricky Bobby of little horseback riders. I wanted the biggest, tallest, fastest, most aggressive horses. If they threw me, it was sport and I sure as shit was not about to let them win. I wanted the ex-race horses who I could coast through courses with, jumping so gracefully over fences I felt like I was flying. It was the only place I felt truly free and untouchable. This die-hard obsession with horses turned my mom's stomach every time I got on one. That day something new popped up with it.
The lesson wasn't doing anything particularly dangerous or new. None of the skills we were practicing was something I hadn't already been doing for years but for whatever reason I just got scared. This NEVER happened to me. I had done the posting trot fine, practiced my two-point with utter precision and now she wanted me to canter through the ring, changing leads by doing a figure-eight in the middle. "No. I don't want to."
"You know how to do this Jackie, just do your figure-eight and change-leads, you'll be fine," the 20-something year old instructor demanded, irritated that a 9 year old was being defiant.
"No." At this point I am crying. I am scared to death. I am sitting on Canary one of my favorite horses and one that loves to go fast and I can't make myself do it. I am crying because I am scared. I am crying because I am disappointed in myself for having no idea why I can't do something I had already been doing for 4 years. I am crying because Holly can do it and I feel like I am a loser. She makes me sit in the center of the ring the rest of the lesson, not allowed to get off the horse or untack. It was awful.
I am silent the car ride home. I don't even think I say goodbye to the Justmans (yep I was a bratty little kid who couldn't see past my failure at that moment to have manners). I get into the house and don't even have my coat off when my mom grabs me full on in a bear hug, preventing any kind of movement.
"I knew you were ok. For awhile I thought you wouldn't be but somewhere I just felt you be ok." She's crying. I'm confused and thinking, did Mrs. Justman call to tell her I was a pussy. Goddamnit, that's embarrassing.
"Mom?" She just kisses me and tells me to go shower because I smell, which I happily do because she's creeping the shit out of me. When I get back downstairs and prepare to eat the mass-quantity of speghetti she has made, I tell her about the lesson and the disappointment I had in myself.
She turns stark white (a feet that you all should be in awe of at this moment because anyone who knows my mom and I knows that whenever we held our breaths, we looked dead, we are/were that pale).
"What?" I look at her thinking for sure she must be sick because she's giving me that creepy look like maybe I ought to be grabbing a pot from under the stove ready to catch any projectile vomit.
"In the middle of your lesson I just felt sick. I felt like you were going to be really hurt and I couldn't get to you. I almost called the barn. I even called your dad to ask him what to do. And then all of a sudden, all that fear went away, I just had this peace that for whatever reason you were going to be ok."
"What?" I'm creeped out. My mom was apparently a creeper and was connected to me in a way I couldn't understand as a 9 year old. Does this mean whenever I do shit and she's not around she knows? Crap, I need to work on my trouble-making game because otherwise I'm fucked.
"I guess I must have started to feel ok when you went and sat in the middle of the ring." It made sense. Sitting in the middle of the ring is something I had never done, and after that day, never did again. I am way too obnoxiously competitive to not do something on a horse just because I was scared. In fact, that is usually a motivator for me because it means I can dominate something.
I wasn't connected to her in the same fashion, or at least I wasn't cognoscente of it. Now,I did join her on the crazy train shortly into my freshman year of college, but instead of having these crazy awake moments, I had terrifying dreams.
Shortly after my mom's second wedding and the first month of college, I woke up in the middle of the night. I felt like a fat man had been motor boating my face with his ass cheeks and I couldn't breath. I was crying and crying hard. The kind of crying that's gross because you have snot dripping down your face that makes bubbles as you desperately try to mouth breathe. It's 2 in the morning and I just woke up. My mom had died in my dream. She had died and I didn't see it coming. I was inconsolable. In my dream I became a non-productive lump and my soul died with her despite my still actually being alive. I knew I was being irrational and crazy but I needed to hear her voice. To have her tell me she's ok and it's all ok. But, it was 2 in the morning and I sounded like a crazy child. I was 18 and WAY too grown up for this. So instead, I sat up, wide-awake counting down until it would be a reasonable time to call her. Starting at 6am, I called every 15 minutes until I got her ass to answer the phone. I tell her all about my dream and how I know it was just a dream but that one day when she dies, I won't survive it.
She's somewhat sympathetically laughing at me, "oh sweet pea (yes that's what she called me and if I hear any of you say it to me now that you know it, I'm gonna punch you in the baby maker), I'm ok. That would scare the shit of me too but I'm ok." A little over a month later she was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer and proceeded to go under multiple surgeries, chemo and radiation.
I wish my connection to her mortality ended there. Almost 3 years ago I was living in Arizona and attempting to correct one of the largest idiot moves I had ever made, when I had a dream my mom's cancer was back. I didn't think twice about it because she had just gotten great blood results back and clearly I was just being an irrational momma's girl. I used this as an excuse to take take off of work to fly back to Colorado and look for a place to live and a job. My mom and I both secretly laughed about how her non-existent cancer was a great excuse because what kind of boss would say, "No you can't fly back to see your sick mom." I am an asshole of epic proportions. Almost a month later, her cancer back back a second time having spread to her liver.
After two rounds of cancer, her and I both spent most of our time in a perpetual state of crazy. Needless to say I am pretty sure anyone who met me for the first time viewed me as cold and uncaring as quiet frankly, I was in permanent countdown mode until her next test results and in the interim, attempting to spend as much time with her as possible and could have cared less whether or not anyone else was ok with that or if I was stepping on others toes. I had bigger things to care about.
In December 2010, the week of Christmas, I awoke at 2 in the morning. I had one of the most realistic and intense dreams I had ever had in my life. I was back in my best friend Christie's childhood house. Christie and I were standing in front of their wet bar, reflecting on the craziness of our lives and drinking (because who does one without the other) when we both heard her mom's legendary whistle, the joyous little whistle that she needs her attention an in all likelihood you were about to get something good. Little sidebar/back story, her mom had died only a couple of years before.
Christie turned white but then grew excited, chasing after the sound of the whistle, trying to find her mom. All you could hear was Carol laughing. There rooms were set up almost like a reverse donut, the ring being the rooms and the center being the walls. Carol did hot laps around stopping in each room to laugh or whistle. Christie became increasingly frustrated and after circling a couple of times decided she was going to sit on the living room couch and wait because Carol had to go back through again.
But she didn't. I just stood by watching this spectacle unfold, dumbfounded Carol was playing such ridiculous games. She didn't make it to the couch to go talk to her daughter. She approached me. She pushed my hair out of my face and before she could say anything I looked at her and chastised her with, "What are you doing? She needs you. She's been waiting for you. Go to her."
"She's not ready yet," she said gently. "And that's not why I'm here."
My heart sank. I knew why she was there. I didn't want her to say it. "It's time to gear up cookie."
"What?"
"It's time to gear up cookie. I am coming for your mom. You'll need all your strength for the both of you."
I woke up crying. I knew what it meant. I knew my mom's cancer was back even though all the test results said otherwise. I knew the battle was over.
I called my mom the next day. I lied through my teeth; she knew all about the predictive dreams I had about her. So I lied because if I lied maybe it wouldn't come true. "That's great. That is such a relief. I get the cat-scan results back next week. That's great Carol said that you wouldn't need her," (Carol had long ago reassured me that if my mom didn't win her battle with cancer, she would be there, always, and always represent my mom, she was my second mom and my mom's best friend), "That gives me such hope." I am an ass hole of epic proportions.
Needless to say on December 31, 2010, my mom found out her cancer was back. This time back in her liver, on her spine and in some lymph nodes between her heart and lungs. They were inoperable and all they could hope to do was shrink them for a few years and she would have to do chemo every few years. But after having weekly chemo for close to 3 months, the tumor grew in-spite-of treatment. "Jackie I am so sorry. I am so sorry I am leaving you."
I couldn't hear the words I already knew in my heart and knew for months before the reality kicked it. "I know you want me to fight but I can't win. I'd rather spend time with you and the family and just be together than be profoundly sick." Two months after this conversation she would pass.
The night she was actively dying, I was staying in a hotel. You see my lease was up and I was frantically trying to move everything into storage as she wasn't doing well and I needed to have everything out of the house by the time the lease was up so that I could get to her and just be with her. Her and I had a plan. I was going to be with her. I wanted to be with her. I needed to be with her. I needed to tell her thank-you for being my guide, my mother, and my best friend. She needed me there to tell her I'd be ok and I'd look out for my brother and that no matter what I would keep talking to her, keep seeking out our connection. That night in the hotel, I woke up again at 2 in the morning, panicked, desperate, scared, paralyzed by the mass quantity of emotions I was feeling. I thought I was being irrational because I was always irrational when it came to anything relating to my mom. I knew I just needed to finish up moving that morning and I'd be on a plane by late afternoon and seeing her the next day and I just needed to push down the irrational thoughts of just burning down my house and belongings and getting out there because it would happen and I would see her.
I wouldn't. She was actively dying that night. By 8:55 in the morning she passed away in her bed among hospice workers, a childhood friend and my step-dad. I was packing up boxes at the house and my phone told me I had an email. I opened it only to find a message from my step-dad informing me my mom had passed. My world came to an end. I missed it.
I am not a big believer in psychics, mostly because I think they are often scam-artists who pray on the weak. Before any of her cancer had popped up, I was visiting her out in California, enjoying my summer before I started college. We went for laughs to see a psychic who proceeded to say something that stuck with us both forever. This very large pacific-islander man looked up at us and even before he started the reading or we could state what we wanted said, "Oh, you two have fun chasing each other around in your lives. Your souls follow each other on each journey. Though, this is the first time you got to be the mom. How did it work out this time?" He was staring at my mom, then he turned his gaze on me, "Do you think she learned from you? Did she meet your expectations? " We were both equally creeped out, particularly as he followed up to tell us what an old soul I am and how my mom was a new young soul, hence why things often hit her much harder than they hit me. How usually I am her mother and this life must have been the test round to see if she was ready to venture out on her own. I don't know that he was far off.
What I learned from our connection, more than anything is those gut instincts, those visions or dreams where things feel so real, it's because they are. Call it god, call in premonitions, call it whatever makes you comfortable enough to allow yourself to acknowledge their magnitude and respond accordingly. Listen to them. Don't ignore them and convince yourself you are just being crazy. The universe is telling you to wake up, to gear up, and to prepare so you don't miss a single moment.
Oh, and yes I realize at this moment I am a wee bit bat crazy, but don't hate the player, hate the game ;)
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