Premonition

Have you ever felt a bit off, as if something were wrong and you just couldn't put your finger on it? A warning of sorts. A premonition. A portent of things to come. You know that something's going to happen, but you don't know what. You just know that it isn't going to be good.

One day, my friend and many times roommate Luke and I were immersed in our usual post-work decompression ritual of getting stoned. Neither one of us said a word, we just passed that big red bong of mine back and forth and to and fro. We were smoking in silence, melting into the couch, a simmering stoned. Generally, we tried to smoke ourselves into a near comatose state before we decided what to order for dinner.

I had been feeling a little strange that day; a bit off and the feeling had come on quite unexpectedly. It was a feeling of dread and impending doom, crushing me in it's embrace. It was a sense of foreboding, a sense of impending doom. Nothing seemed right, I couldn't put my finger on it, but I had the feeling that my world was about to be turned upside down.

The silence was suddenly shattered by the ringing of the telephone, a ringing which seemed to me so desperate and foreboding. Luke and I looked at each other and the look that he gave me was an odd one, as if he sensed it too. The sound was off, more likely, we were both just really stoned.

The phone was next to Luke and he reached for it.

"Don't answer the phone," I said forcefully and much louder than I had intended to. "Don't answer that phone."

The phone continued to ring.

"Why not?" Luke asked me.

And ring...

"I don't know why," I said, "But something's not right and whatever it is, it has something to do with that phone call, so don't answer it."

Luke looked at me as if I'd completely lost my mind.

And then I suddenly knew.

"Because my mother is on the phone and if you answer that phone, she's going to tell me that my father is dead and if you don't answer the phone, my father can't be dead yet, so don't answer the damn phone.

Ring, ring...

"You've completely lost your mind," he said. "No more pot for you, you're cut off. You can't possibly know that. Your mother isn't going to be on the phone and your father isn't dead. You're out of your mind and you're high."

Luke reached over and picked up the phone, "Hello?"

Luke's face froze.

"Hello, Mrs. M.," Luke managed to croak out and then I saw a strange look come over his face as he handed the phone to me. I pressed the phone to my ear and spoke into it.

"Mom?" I asked. My worry had found focus and was dialing in. "What's wrong?"

My mother explained that there had been an accident and that my father had passed away. Evidently, he had been in the hospital for a little while, but no one had thought it important enough to tell me. That made me feel so much better. My father had been heavily sedated and was fast asleep in his bed. Against hospital policy and doctor's orders, his nurse had left the sides of his bed down, left the room, closed the door and then gone to lunch.

My father had rolled over in his sleep and he fell out of his bed. His catheter was violently dislodged as this happened and he fell heavily to the cold, hard tile floor below.

He started to hemorrhage, bleeding out in those long eternal moments between seconds, frightened and alone. I'm sure it was a terrifying and lonely death.

My mother told me of the scene that she had found when she entered the room; the pool of blood that he was laying in, so much of it; a entire life's worth. She told me too, of the hand prints. The bloody hand prints that she had seen on the sheets and the bed, where my father had tried to pull himself up, fighting until the end, but he never had a chance; it was over too fast.

I asked my mother when it happened and the time frame that she gave me corresponded to the same time that I had started feeling strange. I began to wonder if I had known the moment that my father had passed away and I'm pretty sure that I did know, I just hadn't recognized it for what it was. Strangely enough, the last time that I had seen my father, I knew it would be the last, that I would never see my father again, not alive, anyway. I don't know how I knew, I just did, I was convinced of it then and I still am today. I was so convinced that I would never see him again, it was impossible to get me to believe otherwise and it turned out that I was right. I wish I hadn't been, but I was.

Have you ever experienced anything like that?

If you enjoyed this story, please give this one a chance:

In My Father's Footsteps

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They Call Me Bae

In My Father's Footsteps

Every little boy wishes to be just like his father. I've seen this in myself, with my own children and with every other little boy I've ever encountered. A father's habits are acquired by their sons, both consciously and unconsciously, and thus, these little quirks of personality are passed down through the generations. Sons learn to become their fathers both figuratively and literally. Be careful what you wish for may be borrowing an old cliché, but the truth rings through, and, like any other bargain made with Fate, you often find that you get more than you'd bargained for. Little did I know that when my grandfather died, it would echo down the years with a sense of déjà vu at the death of my own mother, and I found myself relying on the behavior and lessons learned from my father, for better or for worse, some twenty-five years earlier.

I don't remember much about my grandfather; he was already very old when I was born and sometimes I feel a little guilty that I can't remember him more, or better. The memories are small things really, more like vivid thoughts; there are no color to these memories. A gaunt and grizzled old man in a dark suit, standing in the doorway; a crown of gray hair and that enormous Roman nose. The ever present sparkle in my grandfather's eyes that spoke to me of youth and mischief, even though those eyes had grown weary, wrinkled and tired. What I remember most though, was when my father took me to say goodbye to my grandfather.

My grandfather, the patriarch of our family, had been in the hospital for some time and now he was quickly fading away. I hadn't known; it wasn't the sort of thing that adults tell a five year old boy. My father told me when it was time for a final goodbye and he took me to the hospital to see my grandfather one last time. To the eyes of a young boy, the old man seemed to have faded to almost invisibility. The tubes and wires coiled around his body like angry snakes, writhing, living beings. I took tentative steps toward the bed, trembling with, not fear, but perhaps nothing more than the infinite sadness of a young boy's heart, for I knew, as those too thin arms encircled me and pulled me close to him, his large, bony hands tousling my hair, I knew that this was the end. I remember all of the love that had the heart of that little boy bursting apart at the seams, as my grandfather spoke to me, telling me to be a good boy and a great man; he told me of all of the love in his heart, and then he told me goodbye.

As I left the room, there seemed to be a shadow hanging over my grandfather's bed, a sound that seemed to be almost a rustling of wings, half heard and haunting, it echoed through my mind as I closed the door. Moments later, my grandfather left the mortal prison his body had become; the betrayal of time chiseled so evidently upon his face. And I remember too, the realization of true loss, even at that age. I'm glad I was there, thankful to have had the opportunity to say goodbye.

The world turns, a carousel; years pass, life rises and falls. I had acquired all of the accoutrements of a family, a wife and two sons. Life was good, or so it seemed. The idyllic peace of a Sunday morning was shattered by the tortured shrieking of the telephone. My mother was in the hospital, the prognosis going from bad to worse; she wouldn't be leaving. The boys weren't told much, an adult shouldn't burden young children with these things, but as my mother started fading faster, the children were told and offered the opportunity to say goodbye to their grandmother. Of course they said yes. I remember standing in the hospital room with my sons, when I came to the realization that I was the same age as my father, and my oldest son, Anthony, the same age as myself when my grandfather died. I watched in almost disbelief, as history repeated itself and the scene continued to unfold.

Dominic, my youngest son, gave his grandmother a quick kiss and a hug before running out the door with tears in his eyes, whereas Anthony, at age five, was different. I looked up and I saw the tubes and the wires coiled around my mother's body, once again conjuring an image of angry, writhing snakes; her too thin arms encircling Anthony and pulling him closer. I watched as he held her bony, frail hand in both of his, and it seemed as if she had shrunk; Anthony's hands seemed to envelop hers. I watched as he gently patted her hand and reassured her that everything was going to be alright. I listened to my mother's voice, thin as a reed, as she whispered to him of her love, told him to be a good boy and a great man; how she didn't want to say goodbye. I was so proud watching my stoic little man, my heart bursting at the seams. When we left, he told me, with tears in his eyes, "I'll never see my grandmother again." And in that moment, I knew what he knew, and I knew that he had that same prescient knowledge of death that has haunted me through all of my days.

Despite the many similarities between the two scenes, they were each distinct in their own ways as well. My grandfather's death was caused by a stroke, my mother's was caused by lung cancer. My grandfather died in the hospital, whereas, my mother did indeed make it home once more. She passed away, in her own bed, three days after leaving the hospital, but it wasn't her, it was just the shell of her body; that was all that remained. In a sense, my mother never left the hospital at all; the person that came home just wasn't her. Yet it's only the similarities that seem to play through my memory.

I'm not sure if my father or I made the right choice. Was I condemned to suffer the same fate twenty-five years later? Have I condemned my children and grandchildren to the same fate as my father seems to have condemned me to? I feel that I am not fit to judge, but it would seem that even a history remembered is doomed to repeat itself. I always wanted to be just like my father, my sons want to be just like me. I'm afraid that we've all had our wishes granted, for better or for worse.