Your True
Tales
December 2003 –
Page 4
A Dying Man's Last
Message
by JoAnn
When I was 15 years old, I lived with my family in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I had been raised. We had a typical California ranch-style house in a suburban neighborhood. It was November 18, 1966. My mother was working that night, as a cook in a nearby town. My dad was at his "moonlighting" job, trying to start a new business of his own. My younger brother, Tommy, was in his room. I was in the bathroom getting ready for bed, looking at myself in the mirror while I was brushing my teeth, when I heard what seemed to be heavy, labored breathing. I turned off the water and listened.... I was, at this point, quite calm and just curious as to where the sound could be coming from. I quickly ran through all the "possibilities" in my mind: something wrong with the heater; my brother outside the window trying to scare me, etc. I checked to see if the sound was coming from the window (which was closed), but no matter which direction I checked, it seemed the sound was coming from everywhere. Over what was probably only a few minutes (but what seemed like 15 or 20), the sound became louder and louder. Finally, I opened the door and went to get Tommy, who was in his room. I told him to come and listen to the noise. When he came into the bathroom, the noise was gone! We waited a while, but it didn't come back. So, after a bit, I went back into the bathroom to finish my "toilette," and as soon as I closed the door, the breathing started again. I remember thinking how ridiculous it seemed, because it just didn't make sense. I was determined there had to be a logical explanation. I waited up for my mom to get home, and told her the whole story. She attempted to brush it off with logical explanations, as of course she would. But the freakiest part of the story was yet to come....
The next evening, we were all seated around our big round oak dining table, in the middle of dinner, when the phone rang. My mother answered it, and after a few seconds I could see she was quite disturbed. After hanging up, she came back to the table and said that it was her mother on the phone, calling to let her know her cousin in Oregon had passed away the night before. She was quite upset and left the table to go to her room. Several weeks later, she and I were sitting up late talking about her cousin, who was a boy she had grown up with in Wisconsin. She told me they had been "romantically involved," but being first cousins, were of course kept apart. When I was 11 years old, I had met him when we visited his family in Oregon. Other than that, I had never seen him. My mother told me that when we were at his home, he told her I reminded him of her when she was a girl, and actually asked my mother if she would let me live with him and his wife! (He had no children of his own). I later found out that he died of respiratory failure at exactly the same moment I heard the breathing in the bathroom!
This may sound crazy, but to this day, I still believe he was trying to communicate with my mother through me, to let her know somehow that he still loved her, that she was the last thing on his mind!
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