The day Charles died, I felt him at my left shoulder as I looked out onto the deck. I felt shudders through my body that I have never felt before.
This was back at our house on that Friday, just hours before I would find out about his suicide. I didn’t know he was dead yet. Still on the other side before you know. Blissfully naive. His dog felt it, too. That’s why Andy ran in circles that day. Both of us felt something and I swear if it was not for watching Andy go nuts, I would have thought I dreamed it all up.
Those hugs from heaven happened for a few months after. The first one scared the life out of me. I fell in love with those surreal moments I couldn’t explain or google an explanation for.
Randy got at least one sign I know of –a book he used to read Charles appeared out of nowhere on his bedside table. We both sat there stunned.
Then there was a dream I had when I saw the world through his eyes and he’s narrating to me as I approach the back deck in our Midlothian home and he’s telling me the path he used to leave the house and how he’d get back in. I never knew this. But I do now because I got a guided tour in my dream. He was weaving on the way home. His eyesight wobbly and blurry, his mind numb.
I felt Charles’ spirit was in some kind of in-between world and he was stuck there for a while. Like he was restless bundle of energy and had unfinished business to tidy up.
Then there was nothing. The signs stopped.
I desperately searched for them. Ached and grieved for them. But nothing.
Those signs were always random but welcome. It was like a phantom limb I finally got used to not having. When I start to tell myself these experiences didn’t happen, I stop myself. Whatever they were, they’re mine and I’m not letting my logical side destroy them.
I only see glimmers now. Nothing as definitive as before.
Is he now in some kind of final resting place? Is my boy at peace finally? Where did that in-between Charles go?
“Ima float and fly away,
up above it all like fuckitall,
High enough to touch God before I just fuckin’ fall…..
Before I fall on the floor with ya’ll
But I gotta go, gotta go, gotta go, gotta go
Can’t stop me, no, gotta go, gottugoupup, Bye Bye Geranimo.”
–Lyrics from “Run Free” by Charles Aubrey Rogers, Reezin’ the Revolutionary
I got a hug from heaven after Mom died and it’s a treasured memory indeed. I believe God knew I needed it desperately as she was my rock. She was diagnosed with a terminal form of cancer in August 1996 and died on September 15, 1996. In the spring of that year, the two of us went to a plant nursery, filled with spring fever. Among our haul, we bought some gerber daisies, even though neither of us had grown them before. In late July, we both had a good chuckle because not one of those daisies had produced a single flower or bud in either of our yards. On the day we got home from her funeral, I took our then 3 year old son for a walk in the yard. My mind was filled with Mom and sadness and I wondered how on earth I would cope. We walked around the corner and there in full bloom was a single beautiful red gerber daisy. I laughed and cried and knew Mom was OK and that I would be, too.
That is such a lovely story Leigh. Thank you for sharing it.
He went High enough to touch God and God kept Charles wouldn’t let him fall …….
Amen to that Amy✨
I mean Diane. 🤭
I thought of that song when things happen. Charkes captured eerie and beautiful so well