Major

When I was seven, my mom brought home a puppy.  He was Border Collie and Blue Healer.  After rolling around several names, they decided on Major.  Major was a puppy when he got a piece of straw in his eye, which blinded him in that eye.  This made him very skittish.  Brushing up against him on his right side would likely get you bit. 

When I was nine, I was diagnosed with leukemia.  Major never left my side.  At one point, I got extremely sick from one of the blood transfusions.  I lost so much weight, that I lost all of my muscle tone.  I was so weak, I couldn’t even open my eyes, let alone walk.  I had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, but I was so weak I could not get back into bed.  I didn’t want to wake up Mom or Dad because they had not been getting any sleep.  I had never stayed a minute alone in the hospital, night or day.  And I had been in the hospital a lot.  So I curled up on the floor in front of the heater after pulling a blanket off the bed.  Major curled up next to me. 

I left home at the end of my junior year, and was homeless.  While I was gone, my parents had to put him to sleep.  I never got a chance to say good-bye.  About three years later, I had a dream.  I dreamt that I was on my way to a nursery to pick up some plants (I have always love plants).  I glanced in my rear-view mirror, and major was lying in the back seat.  I stopped the car, which was near a large field of wild flowers.  Major and I walked until sundown.  Then, we drove back to my house, where I had an old barn.  He said that he had just come back to say good-bye, but he had to go.  He said he loved me and would always be with me.  Then, he walked into the barn, and as the sun went down I heard a wolf howl.  I went into the barn and looked in one of the stalls.  There was a bunch of bones lying in the dirt. 

When I was a kid, Major would come check on everyone in the family, making rounds the entire night.  He would climb up on the bed and lay across my feet.  If I so much as moved a tiny bit, he would get off, so I always stayed as still as possible.  Occasionally, I feel that old familiar weight across my legs, especially during troubled times. 

God made all creatures and all creatures have souls.  God just made Major an extra special soul.  He provides me with great comfort when I need him most – God and Major. 

Screams in the Night

When I was nine, I stayed the summer with some friends of my parents.  The friends, who I will call Donna and Hank, had an 18 month old daughter, named Fawna.  They had recently moved into some quarters on Fort Irwin.  They told me that before they had moved in a husband and wife lived there.  He used to beat her a lot.  Rumor was that he would tie her long blond hair to doorknobs and beat her.  One night, he killed her.  Then, he walked out and killed himself.  He shot himself in the head in the yard.  When I went to stay with them, there was still traces of blood in the yard.  Once in a while we would find a blond hair on a door knob.  Sometimes, in the middle of the night we would hear screaming, and there was no one around.  I slept on the floor in the baby's room.  I was so scared, I huddled up in a ball n the corner of the room.  A couple of times, I even wet myself, because I was too afraid to get up and go to the bathroom.  Over the course of the summer, Hank seemed to become possessed.  He began to drink more and more.  He became increasingly violent.  Three days before I went home, Hank beat up his wife really badly, and went to the stockade.  My parents stopped talking to them after they came to get me, but I can still hear those shrill screams in the middle of the night sometimes. 

The First Time I "Read" Someone

            I was shocked the first time I ever read someone else.  By reading, I mean looking at the person and seeing, as though I were watching a movie, events occurring in that person’s life.  I was at a bar and grill waiting for a couple of teachers to join me.  A man came over and began to hit on me.  I told him I was married and that I was not interested.  However, he kept talking to me. 

            Suddenly, I started feeling a little fuzzy, like I had been drinking, but was not quite drunk.  (I had not been drinking).  I said, “I know you are recently divorced.  You are a fireman and your wife did not like the fact that you were always on call.  You walked in on her and her doctor having sex in your bed.”

            He looked at me and went pale.  His jaw dropped.  He asked me how I knew that.  I told him I just knew. 

            My friends joined me at that time and he went back to the bar.  When we were ready to leave, he came after me and was asking me several questions about how I knew what was going on.  Since I had never experienced that before, I couldn’t answer him.  The words just came out of my mouth.  They ran through my head and I said them.  Now, I am used to the feeling, and I know when my spirit guides are going to talk to me, because I can feel them.  I am used to knowing things and sharing them with people around me.  But that day, I was as shocked as the man at the bar. 

Dream Premonition

                It seems that about half of what I see comes through in dreams.  I had a warning or premonition about my husband’s great-grandfather. 

            My great-grandfather in law was in his 90s.  He was still pretty spry for his age.  He was a tall, willowy man.  He and I were the outcasts during my husband’s family get togethers.  We would sit on the couch and he would tell stories about all the things he had seen, which was phenomenal.  He was born in the era of horse and buggy and through his lifetime saw people land on the moon.  He was alive during WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam.  He had so many stories, and they were amazing.  So I would sit on the couch and listen to him talk.  His false teeth did not fit well, so as he talked, they would click together. 

            I dreamt one night that I was at another family gathering.  My husband’s family was being particularly mean to me.  Then, the old man began to clutch his stomach and cried out.  We took him to the emergency room.  The dream played out as though I were actually experiencing all of this, full color, full sound. 

            The next morning my mother-in-law called.  Before I handed the phone over to my husband, I told her that she needed to tell her grandmother that Grandpa was going to be sick.  I told her that he would have something wrong with his stomach.  She was quiet for a minute, then told me that he had just been rushed to the hospital because of stomach pains and they were doing tests on his intestines and colon. 

My Grandpa, My Hero

             There is a smell I had always associated with my grandfather.  He always sat by the fireplace, he smoked camel cigarettes, and he was outside as much as he could possibly be.  It is a comforting smell.  I have smelled him several times since he has been dead.  Every time, it seems as though I have been protected from something.

            This one particular day, I was driving a state car to talk to a guy about some taxes.  I was talking to my mom on the phone as I drove.  A truck was in front of me with a load of firewood that went up to the cab of the truck.  As we exited off the ramp, a piece of wood flew out of the truck.  The wood came straight at the car.  It was about an inch away from the driver’s side windshield, coming straight at my face.  At the last minute, the piece of wood turned and it went up, over the top of the car.  It never touched the car.  Then, I smelled Grandpa.

            As the wood came at the windshield, I said “Oh &^%$.”  My mother said those would have been awful last words.  I told her that Grandpa saved my life. 

            Another time Grandpa saved me was when I was driving to work.  I had to make a left turn onto 95^th Street and Lackman Road in Lenexa, Kansas.  The light turned green.  I waited a second, and then started to make the turn.  My car suddenly quit.  Two seconds later a huge truck ran the light.  He would have T-boned me on the driver’s side.  I smelled Grandpa.  My car started right up, and I have never had another problem with my car dying. 

            Perhaps I should just let him drive from now on.