I wanted to put the rest of this in a second post, about all the odd things from the last 3 months, I think mostly because I am extremely interested in the things we don't understand about consciousness and I always question if things are fated or can be changed. Do we feel when a loved one is leaving soon? Should you pay attention to 'signs'? Should you do something? Can you? Are the clues even clear enough (they often don't play out exactly as expected) to change the future? I'm sorry that what I write below may be disturbing and now quite depressing, and I certainly wouldn't have mentioned them before (except to my husband, who could verify it all), but I just have to share them now, to get them out. And there were so many...
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Final Curtain Call The finality of the statements "this is it" and "the final curtain call". I remember the first time I saw the press conference I thought, "Geez, you're not going to
die or something, are you?" It always bothered me. Maybe because I'm like that... believing in signs, having precog dreams over the years. It just creeped me out from the very beginning. I thought it a very bad choice of words and prayed they weren't prophetic. I almost in some faint disturbing way expected something to happen when he was in London, sorry to say, because of these haunting words. (But not
before London, geez.) But I also had this kind of shadowy impression that he would get shot in London... gulp... that some nut would do something like that. But of course I blew it all off and tried to ignore it. Most days I was just as excited about the concerts as anyone else & expecting to see them. I 90% expected to see him the end of August.
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Fear I'd Die Before Concerts In May, I was due to have knee surgery for an injury, which was cancelled at the last minute to do some scary blood test results. I'm high risk and the docs were really concerned about the anesthesia. In fact, that's why they cancelled it after the bad blood results. The surgeon said ok, but the anesthesiology department refused to do it in the end. Up til then I kept feeling like I might die from something gone wrong with the anesthesia (or end up paralyzed by a lumbar puncture gone wrong, because they were considering a spinal). So my life was all about the fear of death. I bought a book shortly before I injured my knee about experiences of the dying and I was worried this book was prophetic of my surgery outcome. Mostly, I was afraid I would die and miss the concerts! I often told my husband, "If I die before I see Michael, after waiting all these years, I am going to be sooooo pissed!!!" I figure it had been cancelled because I
would've died, so I didn't even
try to reschedule the surgery then. The last month was all about just
not dying, ...so I could go to London!
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Obsessed with MJ So many times, perhaps because of tax stress, the "final curtain call" and my death vibe, I really, really soaked myself with Michael since March "like there's no tomorrow"... for comfort and distraction and joy. I haven't been that obsessed since I was a kid. Downloading everything, watching him every single night, listening to him all day. I even finally began ripping my old videotapes for YouTube. Most of these rare MJ videos of mine were then uploaded on June 24th...
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Praying "Please don't take him" Since May I'd felt this
intense urge to pray for Michael several times. I didn't believe the bad health rumors, so I don't think that's it. So many times I had almost religious experiences, I would say, in which I pulled all my love for him from the years into a moment, with all the gratitude and joy he's given to my life and just cried with the universe. I had prayed, "
Oh God, thank you for Michael. Thank you for all these years with Michael! Please, please, please don't take him anytime soon, God. Please let us 'keep' him. Please don't take him anytime soon." I
begged for this desperately and I didn't know why. (Echoed later in the way I begged his heart to keep beating in the dream from June 20th.) Had never really done that before without obvious reasons (like similar during the trial or when the '93 allegations broke). I'm not much of a pray-er usually.
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No Plane Tickets My husband kept insisting on putting off the purchase of plane tickets. He didn't know why. He just kept feeling like we wouldn't actually be going to London. So we never bought plane ticks or booked a hotel.
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Unseen Message on Documentary DVD We recorded a message for Larry Nimmer's documentary and I felt so happy thinking that Michael would see it. I'd never had that opportunity before. Michael was going to see our video! Oh!!! And now I can look at the fact he never saw it like this: In 1995 I finally got around to writing an important letter to an author who was really important to me, because I desperately needed to know how to interpret something in one of her books. I mailed the letter and a week later my sister said, "Oh, Did you hear? Linda Goodman died a couple of weeks ago." Ugh, too late. She was gone. And for years my mother had tapes of John Denver's aunt and uncle singing at a church musical with my grandparents and she was always going send them to him. (We're John Denver fans, ok?) Knowing him, he would have loved to hear these tapes. I kept bothering her every week in late 1997 suddenly, "send him the tapes! you never know when something will happen!" And then he died that October 12th. Tapes unheard.
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Shakesperean Premonition June 24th On the night of June 24th I watched the O2 press conference again before bed and I had this horrible feeling come over me looking at Michael, like a premonition. The only thing that flooded through my head was a Shakespeare quote from Romeo & Juliet, but I couldn't remember it and mixed up parts. It's the part that begins with, "Oh God, I have an ill-divining soul..." (Juliet 'seeing' him dead in their near future). It creeped me out totally and gave me chills. And then I promptly blew it off as being tired. I just ignored it. It wasn't so strong that I couldn't ignore it. But it definitely happened. My God.
P.S. I don't think I'm some kind of great psychic or something. My whole family tends to have weird experiences, so I try to pay attention. I think many, many people do, just usually don't talk about them openly. But I'm always questioning it all. Like what if he was still ok right now? Could I have still had those experiences with nothing happening? Could it all be a series of coincidences, like the mind trying to connect things that otherwise would have meant nothing? That I'll probably never know.
