Based on the previous post you all probably realize I believe in things that are a little….different. This post will follow that theme. This will probably be a rather long post. A three parter in fact. The Story. The Poem. The “Dream”.
Aunt Tam…. If you are reading this I am going to color code it so you don’t have to read all of it if you don’t want to. The first section (red) is about the day I found out Justin had died. The second section (blue) is about when Mom and I got to Michigan and the poem I wrote and read at Justin’s funeral. The third section (green) is about the day leading up to and including the “dream.” I understand if you don’t want to read the red and blue sections….but please, please, please read the green section. Please.
**
My Mom has two best friends that she has known since she was in first (or so) grade… my Aunt Tammy and my Aunt Lorie. Aunt Tammy has two boys….my cousins…Justin and Jordan. My cousin Justin died in March of 2009. He had a drug problem and it killed him.
I will never ever forget the day I found out Justin had died. I had my advancement exam for Second Class Petty Officer that morning. I had to be there pretty much at the butt crack of dawn. I had forgotten something at work so I went early to grab it before heading over to the testing site. I was walking out of the hanger and crossing the flight line to get to the parking lot when my phone went off in my pocket. No one calls me that early unless I am late for something or something is wrong….so I looked around real quick…no one was around to see me pull my phone out on the flight line…so I did.
The screen said “Momma”. I didn’t think anything was wrong when I saw that. She knew I had my exam that morning and I figured she was calling to wish me good luck. I answered the phone. “Hey, Momma.”
She had that ‘trying not to cry even though I have been crying for a while’ voice. “Hey, Baby.”
My heart hit my throat. I stopped walking. I knew I had to go take a three hour long test for work in fifteen minutes. I said, “Mom… I have my advancement exam this morning.”
“Oh, Baby. I am sorry. I forgot.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m okay.”
“Is Daddy okay?”
“Daddy’s fine. He is okay. We are both okay.”
“Okay… Whatever is wrong is gonna have to wait a couple of hours. I gotta go do this, okay?”
“Okay. I’m so sorry. I forgot.”
“It’s okay. I will call you back in a bit. Love you, Momma. Smoochies.”
“Love you too, me seed. Smoochies.”
(Disclaimer: Please don’t think I didn’t care about why my Mom was crying or about anyone else in my life other than my parents…. I did. But I needed to be able to get through the test that I had to take for work and I knew that if she was okay and my Dad was okay I could at least get through the next three hours.)
I went to my car. I went to the exam site. I walked in and sat down. My brain was spinning. My “boss lady” was one of the exam proctors. I told her that my Mom had called to give me bad news and I told her to wait to tell me so I could take the exam and that I was going to call her back after. “Boss Lady” told me to let her know what happened after I had called.
I took the exam. I read every question and I answered the first half with actual legit answers. The answers are labeled with numbers but when I tell the story I like to label them with letters instead. The second half of the exam I was pretty much done. I needed to know what was going on and I was not about to sit in that room and figure shit out for three hours. Nope. So the second half went like this….
:::Read the question and the possible answers::: I don’t want to BE here…. :::fill in bubble B:::
:::Read the question and the possible answers::: I want to SEE my family…:::fill in bubble C:::
:::Read the question and the possible answers::: I don’t give A flying fuck about this test right now… :::fill in bubble A:::
And so on…
Finished it. Handed it in. Went into the hall and called my Mom as I walked outside to the car.
“Okay, Momma. I am done. What happened?”
“It’s Justin, Baby.”
“It’s Justin? It’s Justin what?”
Her voice cracked. “Baby……he just took too much.”
I lost my damn mind. I don’t remember anything between that and when I went back in to tell the “Boss Lady”. I don’t remember what else was said or how long we talked. I remember her saying the word ‘much’ and the next thing I can recall is opening the door to the exam room and marching in all wild eyed like I owned the place.
“Boss Lady” saw me come flying in and put her hand up and pointed to the hall. That is when I thought, “Oh yeah, dummy….people are still in the middle of their exams.”
We went into the hall and she asked me what happened.
“My cousin died. He died. He is dead.”
She was quiet for a few seconds and then she asked me a question. At the time I didn’t really understand the question but later I learned about emergency leave and how it works and I really appreciated her for what she did for me.
She said, “I am going to ask you a question. But before I ask it I want you to know the answer is, ‘yes’. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“When you were growing up….did you live with your cousin?”
“Yes.”
“Go home, Robinson.”
(Now…in theory that wasn’t a fib. My Mom and I spent so much time in Michigan when I was little because my grandparents were sick that in theory I did pretty much live there.)
So I went to Michigan for Justin’s funeral.
**
I don’t remember much about the trip other that the evening spent in the basement and the actual funeral.
There was an evening that my Mom, my Aunt Tammy, Joey Pants, myself and a load of other people (sorry…other than the three I mentioned I don’t remember specifics) were in Aunt Tammy’s basement talking about the service and memories and whatnot. I was curled up on the couch and I was scribbling in a notebook…. I really wasn’t participating in the conversation and someone asked me what I was writing.
“A poem.”
“Can we hear it?”
“When it is done.”
So I kept working on it. I told everyone it was finished and they asked me to read it. So I did….
Dear Justin
During the past few days we’ve often wondered why
All we have are memories to help the time pass by.
We love you and we miss you, we aren’t sure why you went.
We’ve thought about the good times, all the times we spent.
We wish we could have helped you before it was too late
To be the Justin that we knew before that twist of fate.
We wish we had you with us to laugh with and to hug.
We wish we could have pulled you out of the deep hole that you dug.
You had your life ahead of you, your family is brand new.
It isn’t fair your moments with them were short and far too few.
We will always remember the good times but we can’t forget the bad.
We have our sorrow, we have our grief and some of us are mad.
But we will all forgive you, as hard as that may be
And we know you are watching over us, all our lives you’ll see.
So Justin, goodbye for now, our hearts will one day mend
When we see our son, brother, nephew, cousin, daddy, love and friend.
I got done reading it and was met with total silence. Someone said, “You have to read that at the funeral.”
I do not like public speaking. I can sit in a group and talk with five people and be fine but if the same five people are sitting and I am standing in a ‘official’ setting…. Game over. So when I said I would do it without hesitation I wondered what the hell I was doing.
The funeral was rough. Standing room only. I sat with Julie and Mom went with Aunt Tam. I remember snippets of it. I remember saying goodbye and seeing him in the casket in his jersey. I remember being semi-composed for most of it. I remember watching the memorial video and when it got to a picture of me, Justin and Jordan on Halloween I lost my mind and don’t remember anything after that until someone said something about someone writing a poem and then my feet were moving toward the podium.
I got to the podium….turned around and looked out at the sea of humanity that was packed into that room. So many people were in the same boat I was….utter wrecks. An utter wreck standing in front of hundreds of people that are also utter wrecks is so much easier than one nervous person in front of five people.
I had to swallow back the tears the whole time I was reading. I wasn’t nervous but I still stared at the paper so I didn’t mess up…. Until the last line. The last line I looked at the front row. I looked at my Aunt Tammy and Uncle Randy. I looked at Jordan. I looked at Tina and Megan and Morgan and Heather and Michelle and Britt and Afton and and and and and and and and and….. I looked at Miss Aubrey and Ashley. Then I just looked out at everyone.
And then I stepped away from the podium. And then I bawled.
And a day or so later….I went back to Texas.
**
I got back to Texas…resumed my Navy life and tried to make sense of what had happened.
The following is exactly what I wrote the morning after it happened….
(Disclamer…. I have tried this quite a few times since and it doesn’t always work. So please don’t try it and be upset if it doesn’t happen.)
5/20/09
Yesterday I bought a book about strengthening psychic abilities. I read a chapter on dreams and out of body experiences. In it, it said you can program what you dream about by thinking a thought until you fall asleep. Justin died a little over two months ago and I haven’t dreamed about him and I really wanted to. So I did the body relaxation thing and repeated, “I want to dream about Justin and Roxy and remember it”. (I threw Roxy in there to make sure I could still see her.) Anyway, I had a combo of a dream and an OBE (out of body experience).
I went from being in bed to standing in the middle of a meadow in about two seconds. I was completely aware that I was in bed though and I could still see the outlines of my furniture and the light from the window glint off the TV but I was definitely in a meadow next to a lake with a mountain next to it. It was a sunny day and the temperature was perfect.
Someone said, “Hey” and I turned around to see Justin standing beside me smiling. He looked young, a lot like his senior pictures and he had on a basketball jersey. He said, “Come on” and suddenly we were on the mountain on the edge of a cliff. He launched himself off the cliff and I screamed and reached out for him but to my surprise he was hovering in midair a few feet away.
“You can fly.” I said in awe.
“We all can.”
“Who?”
“The angels. Come on, you’re dreaming, you can fly too. Let’s go.”
I was hesitant but he took off like a rocket and I didn’t want to lose him so I jumped. I fell a few feet before something invisible caught me and I flew after him. We went across mountains covered in the greenest grass I have ever seen and I saw daffodils and dandelions everywhere.
“This is so cool!” I yelled at him.
“Check this out.” He did a nose dive into the lake.
I figured I was already flying around so I might as well get wet so I plunged in after him. The water wasn’t warm or cold, it was just there. I could see perfectly as if I had goggles on. Justin was ahead of me and so I went faster to catch up. (I realized then that I wasn’t swimming…I was sort of gliding through the water.) There were bright plants and water flowers and hundreds of fish. I was getting worried because I didn’t know how much longer I could hold my breath and I breathed in through my nose. I felt the water go into my nostrils and for a brief moment I thought, “Well, shit. I’m drowning” but then I realized that even though it was water I was inhaling I could still breathe fine. I laughed and a goldfish shot into my mouth and I coughed (I was vaguely aware at that point that my sleeping self had a tickle in the back of her throat which I found amusing…a goldfish was the tickle in my dream.) I went from being in the lake to being in a building in the blink of an eye. Justin motioned for me to be quiet when he looked around the corner. He came back in and told me ‘they’ were in there and I had to sneak out. (In the dream I knew who ‘they’ were but now I am not so sure. I think it was other people I care about that died.) I asked him why and he said they would want me to stay if they saw me and he knew I had to go back. We snuck past the door and I peeked in and saw a bunch of people in chairs and on couches playing games and watching TV. There were a few dogs on the floor and one looked like Bo and one looked like Dolly. I saw a white tail and thought of Rowdie too. The Dolly dog looked up and saw me and her tail wagged but Justin told her to stay. She did so she must have known I was just visiting.
We went back outside and we stood by the lake chatting for a few moments about nothing I can really remember and then my mouth started to feel funny like bubbles filling it up. I groaned and spit a mouthful of rocks and pebbles into my hand. As it was filling up again I said that it meant I needed to go.
Justin nodded and gave me a quick hug and said, “Make sure my Mom knows I’m okay.”
I nodded and spit more rocks out then turned to where I could see myself sleeping and walked to my bed and woke up.
I stayed in bed for a few moments with my eyes open and then rolled over and went back to sleep. I loved every minute of the dream and I am so happy that I remember it with such detail. I’ve been thinking hard about who was in the room we snuck past. I remember people but right before I place a name to them they disappear. I saw young and old people in the room. I think I saw Roxy’s red hair and I am pretty sure I saw Nikki. I remember seeing an old man in a recliner that I want to say was Granddaddy but I’m not positive. I’m pretty sure it was though.
I think heaven exists… and I think I was lucky enough to visit for a moment.
Oh…and the rock thing isn’t really that strange for me. Some people dream about their teeth falling out…my mouth fills with rocks to the point of annoyance.
**
That is the end of what I wrote about the “dream”.
I don’t really know how to end this post…… I would end it with my usual sign off but that seems inappropriate for this post….
If you know someone that you think or know has a drug problem. Get in their face about it. Get them help even if it pisses them off. Seriously.
Love to my Ebs.
Justin….. Just Unite Someone Through Intervention Now
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