I’ve thought of two other signs, besides the ones that I listed in a previous post, that seemed like some kind of prophecy or forewarning.
This past winter, I was enchanted with Korean dramas. I watched quite a few online and told you how they just made me so happy. Not all Korean dramas are happy- but I watched the happier ones- the romantic comedies. I told you it was kind of like what sports were to you- a fun escape. I made you watch quite a few episodes with me, and you thought it was so funny. I remember you coming in the door once after a late night gig or maybe after we fought and just laughing hearing the Korean and watching me so intently staring at my laptop. You laughed and laughed and said I was so cute and funny. I loved that you thought that.
But then after you got back for Christmas, I remember I started watching one that was sadder than I thought it would be. A young girl liked a new boy in the neighborhood and through a series of events, he ended up losing this necklace that was all he had left of his father. He was standing on a bridge and it wound up in the river below. Later, the girl was looking for it for him in the river, and then she shared about it with her older brother. He said he was a great swimmer and would find it for her. He left his stuff by the shore and dove in. Much later, she came back from school or someplace- I forget, and his stuff was still there- but he was not. She started to cry out his name. I think the next scene was the funeral. She was wearing a white traditional Korean ham buk for mourning.
I remember at that point turning to you and saying- at the point where he disappeared into the water- “No way, don’t even tell me he’s going to drown!” But I think you answered that this is how Korean dramas are- very sad.
“I’m not gonna watch this one; it’s just too sad for me,” I replied.
Then, there was another thought I had…kind of like the one where I thought- “Am I being prepared to be a single mom? Is Dan going to die?” and the one where I told my mom “I haven’t had any real tragedy in my life yet,” three days before you died.
Well, I had the thought one day- that I had not experienced the death of a peer yet. We had been to two funerals of young women who died of cancer, but we didn’t know either one super well. But I was thinking, what will it be like when someone I know- a friend, or a friend’s husband dies at a young age? I had this thought, certainly in the past six months, though I don’t remember why or where.
Are these actual “signs?” Not really, I know. But they have all leapt out at me since your death, and I can’t help feeling they might have been planted there.
But this has happened before. You haven’t seen a friend in a while or heard from them, and a day or so after you thought, “Gee, I haven’t heard from Kate, or Alice, or Sam in a while,” they call. And you don’t think it’s prophetic, but more likely that it had just been a while since you talked and they were realizing the same thing. So maybe, yeah, no one we knew had died, so it was just time. But it was you- that I wasn’t prepared for at all.
Not sure what to make of any of these, but still feels important to get it down. A friend, Brian, said when I chatted with him in the early days of this, “It helps to make stories of our lives.” Maybe that’s what this is all about– me looking for literary devices, hoping it wasn’t really this sudden or traumatizing- hoping if I go back and read a bit more carefully- I’ll find the foreshadowing I’m looking for. Something to make this more like a novel, with an author and a plot and a plan.
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