Little Goodbyes

I've been getting braver about posting on here. For me, a lot of this stuff is kind of subtle and hard to prove. There are a few loose stories I'd like to tie up in here, just to get them down, share them and make sure I'm not really out of my tree.

The first incident to be recorded took place sometime around November or December. As I mentioned in a previous entry, I live in Wasilla and work in Anchorage. The two towns are about 50 or so miles apart. In the winter it takes me about an hour to get home if the conditions are average and there aren't any accidents and it's dark. (This will eventually play a part - promise.) As much as they call Alaska the Land of the Midnight Sun, it's only for three months out of the year - summer. During the winter, it's dark almost all the time.

On this particular evening I stopped at the Fred Meyers (Prolly Krogers for some of you) that is just a little way past my apartment. I forget what I needed, but I remember the time. It was 6pm. As I was getting out of the car, I felt a pressure on my left shoulder, as if it were coming from behind. It was like someone had put a couple of fingers on my shoulder and pushed down just enough to be felt. It was odd for me because I had no purse on my shoulder. I checked my jacket and shirt seams quickly, to see if any of them were sitting on that spot. None were. I brushed it off and figured my body was just being twingy from sitting at a desk all day and then sitting in the car for an hour to get home.

The next evening, I heard my cell phone buzz. As I was driving and the road conditions were less than stellar, I refused to answer until I pulled into my parking space at my apartment. I checked my screen. The phone call was from my ex-husband. My eyes teared up and I KNEW. I knew why he was calling me. We hadn't got along very well when we split up, so I didn't think he would have fulfilled this request for me, but he had. I called him back.

When he said hello, all I could do was ask, "When and from what?"

He informed me that at 6 pm the previous evening, his grandma had passed away. It was horrific, the way it went down, but she was doing something she enjoyed... And she was stubborn so even when the smoking began to affect her health, she wouldn't give it up. That stubbornness was one of the things that I loved about her. All I can figure is that she came to say goodbye. I don't know why. She didn't think very much of me, I know that.

After this I went to go talk to my co-worker, the gentleman I mentioned in the power plant story. We'll call him T. I told him that I had been noticing a lot of general weirdness, like seeing things that weren't really there, little things out of the corner of my eye. It was right about this time that he and I discussed the power plant guy. Anyway, T informed me that December and January (I forget if he included November in here or not) for his People was kind of like a long Halloween Spree. The spirits were out a lot more, basically. He didn't much care for looking outside after dark during this time, and I was in synch with him on that one! We spent a lot of time not looking outside, because, as I mentioned previously, winter in Alaska is mostly dark! Shadows moved in ways that shadows had no business moving. I could feel things moving around my legs, almost like a cat walking around my ankles. There was just a general sense of activity and oddness that pervaded. There was a fatality accident on the highway one night, on the outer in-bound lane. I was in out-bound, and sitting on the guard rail next to the right-hand lane I could see the dark outline of a huge bird. Let me tell you - I was freaked for the rest of the night.

At any rate, I did notice that as January drew to a close, the weirdness also began to fade with it.

A couple weeks after the incident with my ex's grandmother, there was another day when I felt that odd pressure on my shoulder. As the previous incident was still weighing on my mind, I brushed it off. *insert here my personal head slap* Two days later was a Saturday and I took my man's mother (hereafter called Mom) out for the day. We were doing some Christmas shopping, and I was just getting her out of the house in general. Her mother was suffering from pancreatic cancer and wasn't going to make it to Christmas, and Mom needed a distraction. A few weeks prior she had gotten back from a month long visit with her mother - the visit was begun shortly after the diagnosis for the cancer was given.

Mom and I were at Wal-Mart and I had to go use the ladies. When I came back out, Mom was clutching the phone to her ear with tears running down her cheeks. She had just gotten the call that her mother had finally passed after having been in a 48 hour coma - the kicker being that right about the time her mother went into a coma is when I felt that weird pressure on my shoulder. I hadn't known about the coma until Mom got off the phone and told me what was going on.

So, any thoughts or ideas?

I will say here that my mother does have Native American blood in her, though I'm not sure where exactly she gets it from, other than her mother's side of the family. Nor am I sure which Tribe. I offer this as a piece of information relative to what T told me, nothing more.