Signs Of Death

By Gloria Faye Brown Bates/aka Granny Gee

Spirits on the other side… do they give us messages? I am listening to Dr. Oz at the moment. He has the Long Island medium on his show. I haven’t decided whether I believe in her… though she does come across as credible.

I have been thinking about some of the things I personally have experienced that have been ‘unbelieveable, amazing’… things one wouldn’t believe unless they, themselves… saw, heard, or experienced them.

Some of those things I most likely will never tell… just because I know them to be true, but… trying to describe them would be difficult. How can one find words for something they aren’t sure can describe what they witnessed? Much less try to tell someone about it?

All my life I have ‘seen things’…. ‘heard things’… ‘experienced things’. Through time, I have come to accept them when they happen… because I know inside… they really are… real. That sounds strange to say especially if you have seen, heard… the things I know have happened in the past to me.

The one thing I ‘see’ that no one seems to see when I do is… what I call a soft, velvety gray coating on a person’s skin. When I see that ‘gray velvet’ as I call it… I feel afraid. You see… people die after I see that. I can’t bear to see it… I have to turn away.

I saw it on my little brother, Rick-Rick. I looked back when I glimpsed it the last evening I spent time with him… he died that night. I remember seeing it come on his skin while we sat in Wendy’s… I’d bought him supper… he couldn’t eat, he was very agitated. I saw ‘that strange way’ that I can’t find words to describe happen… the way his eyes did… that said ‘death’ to me.

I watched him with concern as he sat there continually, frantically trying to call his girlfriend… she wouldn’t answer her phone. He kept saying they were supposed to get married ‘tomorrow’. Rick-Rick got up, saying he was going outside to smoke a cigarette. I watched him through the glass… I was very concerned about him. Ricky loved to eat… Ricky couldn’t eat this time… I ‘knew’ something bad was wrong…

He was still dialing his cellphone… I have that cellphone in his chest… Ricky’s Chest… that hold his ashes. She never answered him. I got up after finishing my sandwich, walked outside to him. He was trying to disguise his feelings… make me think all was alright… when I knew it wasn’t.

Do you know… no matter that we ‘get these bad feelings’…. there’s nothing we can do alot of the time to try to protect someone. ‘What’ are we going to protect them from… when all we have to go on … are ‘feelings’.

How could I say Rick-Rick… ‘I see death on you’? I want you to get into a safe place, let death pass you by … not take you. I love you, my brother. I don’t want you to die.

All I could do was ‘what we were already going to do’… that was taking him to pick up a check from a lady he’d painted a room for. During that ride, I told Ricky that I loved him… I wanted everything to be alright for him.

The last time I saw Rick-Rick was through the crack of his bedroom door. He went inside to lay down… he had a headache. Before I left the house our mother died in, where he lived… I walked to his bedroom… I could see his feet … he was stretched out on his bed.

His upper half was hidden by the bedroom door… I looked through the crack to see that he laid with his face toward the wall… his head was lying on his folded arms. “Goodbye Rick-Rick, I love you”, I said. As I turned around to leave, I heard him say “I love you, too, Gloria”.

The gray velvet I saw on his skin… the strange thing I saw about his eyes that I can’t put into words… I just know it when I ‘see’ it. Death….. I was very worried for him… not knowing that before the next morning… my little brother would be dead.

There’s another kind of ‘death’ I ‘see’ on people… it’s like just before they die…. all of sudden one notices how ‘beautiful they become… it’s like the sun is shining on them’…. ‘they walk in a light that’s so bright’. Not only that…. ‘they seem to become younger’…….

I saw this on my aunt, my cousin, my son…. the ‘sunshine coming out on a cloudy day’. In my mind, I also, call this the ‘beautiful look’ when I talk to Skip about it.

I saw my cousin for the ‘last time’… she was ‘walking in a bright light’, she looked so beautiful… her long hair was golden blonde, her eyes so blue, even the gold rim of her glasses, her gold earrings had a ‘light’ on them. Sylvia wore a soft pink shirt… how beautiful she was. It was so unusual… my words don’t do it justice when I try to tell you. She was beautiful in a way I’d never seen her… she was always pretty… this was different …. in a good way.

My aunt… as she laid there on the hospital bed I couldn’t believe ‘how young’ she looked. She looked like my beautiful aunt when she was a much younger woman, she was always attractive. Forty years seemed to have dropped off her face. I looked at her in amazement as we talked. I saw her sit up in her bed when Skip and I were leaving… I saw only what I can describe in these words:

It seemed like she was a little girl sitting on a leaf that was floating in the clear water rapidly … she seemed to be looking around herself while holding on… with a puzzled expression on her face. It was like… somehow life was passing her by so fast… as if she had just become aware of it……..

Strange… but, this is the impression I got when I last turned to look at her, when we walked away. My mind goes back to this sometimes… I feel so sad. I loved my Aunt Frankie.

Tommy… the evening before he died… there was a ‘beautiful light’ around Tommy as he sat at the picnic table eating the sandwiches I had made for him with the cold cuts we’d purchased at Sam’s Club. His face lit up so beautifully as he ate, as he smiled. He kept saying ‘these are the best sandwiches I’ve ever eaten!’

I remember looking at him thinking I know they aren’t the best sandwiches! I’d fixed them for him before! When I told him, he just shook his head and said ‘mama, yes they are!’ He ate with such…. enjoyment. The beautiful light was around him… his smile like the sunshine coming out on a beautiful day… his eyes sparkling with light … Tommy light. I can see his face in my mind so clearly.

I turn my head to the side as ‘I look at him, his face’… I wonder what in the world made those sandwiches taste like the ‘best sandwiches he’d ever eaten?’ I feel a smile on my face as I had ‘then’… while I watched him eat… ‘in my mind’.

I ‘hear myself’ say, “Tommy, those aren’t the best sandwiches you’ve ever eaten!” Oh yes, they was… he quickly told me.

Gray velvet, strange way with eyes, youthful, more beautiful… that special light are only a few of the things that I’ve personally experienced … remembered when someone I loved, died soon after. I don’t want to see them anymore… it scares me… ‘now’.

These are things I don’t want to ‘see’ anymore… these are in my mind ….’signs of death’.

You might be interested in my post on my blog at :http://www.authors.com/profiles/blogs/why-didn-t-they-come-inside-where-did-they-go I wrote about seeing things that were strange… but, so true. They happened to me, so… I know them to be true for a fact.

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