Through the Veils of Time

By K. L. Vesper

My husband, Jerry, and I have been married for almost 36 years now, and with him being a twin, strange "feelings" and suddenly "knowing" something is wrong is pretty common around our house. His twin sister lives in Colorado and we live in Texas, but he knows when her health is in danger and she knows when he is not doing well. So, with "twin communication" so obvious, it was only a small step indeed to accept the amount of "unspoken communication" amongst ourselves and our two sons. It just seemed natural to accept one of us will know if one of our family members were in danger or having a difficult time emotionally.

Jerry experienced a recurring dream that began as early as his teenage years. He dreamed he walked into his mother and father's house - the same one he was raised in - and found his father on the bathroom floor dead. I remember him repeating the dream to me even in the earliest days of our marriage and asking me if I believed in the possibility of our dreams really coming true.

Death dreams like this can oftentimes be frightening and very confusing especially when the death is someone you love. We oftentimes just file it away as a nightmare. Since I also suffer from such dreams, the subject was frequently discussed between us. Jerry was really concerned about this particular dream because it occurred once or twice a year and always left him anxious and depressed. He had also dreamed about seeing an older woman lying in a hospital bed in his mother and dad's living room. He believed it was his maternal Grandmother who had already passed away and had been a frequent visitor to his home.

His mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and his father with emphysema shortly after we were married. His mother passed away five years later with bone cancer, and she had spent the last four months lying in a hospital bed in their living room. She chose to put the bed in the living room, not only because the TV was there, but also because her large family visited on weekends and we would have plenty of room to sit and visit. This situation really intensified Jerry's anguish over his recurring dream of finding his father slumped on the bathroom floor. His father lived for several years after his wife passed away and continued working as a bookkeeper until his worsening emphysema made him take an early retirement.

Jerry was hospitalized with hepatitis on his 40th birthday and spent almost the entire month of October 1989 in the hospital. His father came to visit him several times during his stay, even though the exertion of walking from the elevator to Jerry's room required him to sit down and catch his breath. Jerry had only been out of the hospital for a few days when he suddenly sat up in bed one Sunday morning and started to hurriedly get dressed. He called his father and when he received no answer said, "Get dressed. Something's wrong with Dad."

We quickly got into the car and our drive over to his father's house was quiet and tense. We first noticed the car was in the drive, so he hadn't gone anywhere, but there was still no answer when we rang the doorbell repeatedly. We were getting pretty shaken by this time and a strong sense of dread enveloped us both as Jerry let us in with his door key. Jerry was the first one in the house and receiving no answer after calling his father's name, he went into the bathroom to find his father slumped on the floor by the bathroom sink, dying. He had been standing at the sink shaving and dressing for breakfast when he collapsed.

The scene was so much like the way Jerry had described in his dream that even I had that odd deja-vu feeling. We managed to get him into the living room and onto the couch, calling 911. The ambulance took him to the hospital where the doctors worked for over an hour to revive him, but his lungs had collapsed and he passed away that same day. Even now, the vivid recollection of the similarity of Jerry's recurring dream and the actual drama of finding his father leaves him shaken.