Category: rock and roll

Who is Coming Through?

I had been having dreams of an old friend for a while. The dreams were pleas for help and they were sad. They were of a man I knew, Mike was his name. I call him my intellectual friend. Our conversations were so interesting, his wealth of knowledge and history were fascinating to me. He was a dozen years older than me (I was in my early twenties) which was one of the reasons I did not want to pursue anything other than a friendship with him.

But now the dreams were increasing in intensity. There was yelling in at least one dream and in another he was making noises to get anyone’s attention. I knew something must have been happening. I had tried to locate him, not knowing where he lived then, but could not find him. It led me to the conclusion that he must have passed on, although these were not visitation dreams. This is actually the story of someone else I knew and how she came to me.

I first heard of automatic writing from a book I had read by Ruth Montgomery (I don’t recall the book title now). It was a spiritual practice that I had been using on occasion. This was one of those occasions. So, one afternoon I turned on a new age music channel, lit a candle and sat down with a pen and notebook. As I closed my  eyes I asked my question and waited for spirit to come through. I had wanted to know about Mike. I wanted to find out if he would come through. He did not. The message was that he was still in the physical world. I found out later that the noises and cries for attention were just that. I believe he may have been going through a difficult time. I tried to reach out to him through the internet unsuccessfully. But while I was getting the information that he was still here, I felt a presence near the left side of my body. I was aware of someone there.

With my eyes still closed I asked who it was. It felt like a female and it was. I had not seen her or spoken to her in more than 20 years. Her name was Peggy and she was a good friend from school. We were classmates from elementary school through the end of our sophomore year  in high school in Upstate New York when her family moved away. I recalled the parties at her house; not cool kid parties but nerd parties. We also shared an interest in rock music. Peggy  had albums that we played while we hung out: Elton John, Peter Frampton (Frampton Comes Alive!) and Jefferson Airplane. She brought Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody Album jacket and liner notes to school to show me the lyrics on the album sleeve. She loved the brilliance and absurdity of the words in the lyrics of the title song. When the movie Bohemian Rhapsody came out in 2018, I thought of her during the scene where the band members were recording the title song. And she could read a  600 page book in one day! (She did well on school book reports.)

Through a choppy few sentences she told me she was in a car accident; there was ice; and the year 1992.

The shock and surprise of receiving this message from her after all these years really threw me. I had not seen her since she moved away. We wrote letters to each other occasionally, and then, well life went on. I went to the internet to search her name and research whatever  else I could find out about the details she gave me. I found newspaper articles that said she had passed due to being in a car accident in 1992. There was ice on the road, which had caused the accident; she was the passenger. I really wanted to know why she contacted me after many years. But it doesn’t really matter. She was just checking in, as some crossed over loved ones do, only wanting us to know that they are around us. 

Remembrance

On Sunday, September 27, 1981 I called my close high school friend , “Janie” (not her real name) to check in with her. I had not spoken with her in a couple of weeks. I had graduated high school three months earlier and while I was happy to be out of high school, I did miss seeing the friends I had left behind. They were seniors now, their last year before exiting school and entering the next phase of their lives. So, it was her uncle who, after I asked to speak with her, wanted to know who I was and what I wanted. I told him who I was and explained I was a friend of hers from school. What he said next really stunned me, paralyzed me actually. He told me she died the night before, a car accident, and the date the funeral would be held.

For the first year following her death I could not get over it. Whenever a song or group that we liked came on the radio I felt the pain physically in my gut. I always remembered her birthday and the date of her death two days later as the years went by. Eventually, she faded to the background as I started a career, entered and exited relationships, got married and started a family. It was while I was driving to work one morning in the early 2000’s, after both of my children were on the school bus, that I received a message from her. The reason she chose that moment was mysterious but effective.

Shortly after that I would begin writing what I could recall from our brief school years together. At first it was just a few memories, the obvious ones like the favorite band that brought us together. Then the little things like passing notes in school, boys, what she wore, her hair. The more I started to write down the details the more I recalled. Then the tears came and the heartbreak all over again. I could not believe some of the little and big things, nuances, her sense of humor and other memories that I had forgotten or suppressed over the years.

I turned it into a short story in 2014. ‘Sweet Dreams’ was inspired by our friendship and my own spiritual journey up to that point.

I still feel her around me sometimes. I have wondered how she would have reacted to the grunge movement in the early 1990’s that ushered in Alternative rock. She may have said it’s all rock and roll. I wondered if she would be a drummer in a band as she always dreamed of and what she would think about other women rockers. In 1981 there was Debbie Harry, Joan Jett and the Go-Go’s. Would she have been among them one day?

What I know for sure is that there is a reason for everything. The answers are not always offered up. Maybe it’s just meant to be a mystery. Whatever the reason, she is still in my heart and always will be.