There have been so many times since he’s died, times in far away south of the US border places that I have totally expected to stumble upon him and bust him on how he faked his own death. He was just…gone, so quickly, and if it weren’t for the eerie voice in my head a week before he died, it would’ve been easier to accept. But, it just.kept.haunting me. Until last week.
I hadn’t seen Becky (this is what I’ll call her) in the past couple of years. Our kids grew up and moved on and her life shifted after her husband, my friend, died. On this seemingly uneventful day, I stepped out of my office and there she was walking down the hallway.. We both shrieked and hugged, and “oh my gosh it’s been so long!”ed, and then started to talk. Then we really started to talk. Deep. In the midst of her story of her son’s guilt about having a dream of his dad dying, of hearing her talk about how he has always felt like it was his fault, I felt the tears of similarity well up inside me.
“I have to tell you something,” I said, “and it’s going to sound weird.”
I went on to tell her about walking past their house a week before her husband, my friend, was killed tragically. How I was listening to him play his guitar and thought about the next time I would see him and a question I had for him. This is when the voice comes, “he’ll be dead by then”. At the time I thought it was coming from me and what the hell was I thinking?! I mean, who says things like that inside their head?! That’s horrible!!!
But it wasn’t from me…a week later when we got the news, I knew that for sure.
For eleven years I have carried that story and honestly, the guilt with me. In my mind, I thought maybe if I had called him the next day and told him about the crazy thing that ran through my head that somewhere in space it would’ve changed things and he would have laughed at me, and then not died.
To hear that his own son had a dream the night before his Dad left for that fateful trip gives me chills. The fact that he has struggled because of that for all these years breaks my heart. The idea of being able to release a similar burden from my shoulders standing in the hallway outside my office feels like the weight of the world off my shoulders. We hugged, we said goodbye and take care, and she walked away.
As I turned toward my door to go back inside, I swear I could hear him laughing at me. “It’s as it should be” came another voice, this one more familiar to me, and I felt the grief and the guilt slip away.
Forever the journey, Anne