Signs

My sisters and I have such unique personalities that if we didn’t know better, we’d think we weren’t related at all.  Other people think Julie and I physically resemble each other quite a bit (even though we don’t think we look anything alike), to the point that we’re often mistaken for each other. 

But as different as Julie and I are, we shared a common interest with Bunny: the supernatural.  From childhood, Julie and I have had precognitive dreams—we’d dream about things that would later happen.  Sometimes, we intuitively knew about things that were about to occur.  We even, at times, could read each other’s thoughts.  Any time we reported these abilities to Mama, she would roll her eyes and snort “As if!” or some other derisive comment.

Bunny’s only psychic gift was precognitively thinking about songs that he would hear later in the day.  He readily acknowledged that it was a pretty useless ability, but he was quite proud of it.  Some obscure song from days or yore would come on the radio or television and he’d loudly proclaim that he was just thinking about that song a few hours before.

Many years ago, long before cancer came calling, Bunny and I decided on a code word—butterfly—that we would use to communicate with each other once one of us had passed on.  If the survivor heard that word from a medium or anyone else claiming to have a message from the departed, the code word would be the key to knowing if the message was genuine.  We happily kept to that word until about a year ago, when we found out that “butterfly” is the word that most people pick.  A medium who throws out the code word “butterfly” has a very good chance of getting it right.

Naturally, we had to come up with a new word, right then and there.  Before cancer, we would have done it eventually, but the fact that Bunny was so ill gave us a sense of urgency.  The one we picked is obscure, but not so obscure that either of us would forget it.  I’m not going to tell you what it is (that would kind of defeat the purpose of a secret code word), but you’re welcome to guess.   

Julie was visiting us when Bunny entered the hospital for the last time.  As we visited him in the ICU, and it was evident that he wasn’t coming home, we explained to Julie about our code word.  She wanted one, too, so I stepped out of the room so they could come up with something: theirs was actually a code phrase.  Of course, Bunny was thrilled to have someone else to contact from beyond.

He had a list of questions to find the answers to once he reached his final destination.  One was whether Bigfoot really exists.  Seriously.  He was fascinated with several different oddities, and Bigfoot topped the list.  Another was whether UFOs exist, although he was already sure they did.  He was so sure of it that, in the days before cell phones had cameras (or before people had cell phones, even), he kept a camera in his glove compartment in the event that he saw one while he was driving.

I don’t remember what his other questions were, but those were no-brainers, so it’s easy for me to recall them.  Although, I have to confess, I was a bit surprised that there weren’t more burning questions to which he sought answers.  Julie and I added our questions to the list so he could give us the answers from the beyond.  See?  That’s why you need code words!   Otherwise, you might find yourself walking around with erroneous messages from people who are just making things up.

Once Bunny died, Julie started getting bombarded with her code phrase as soon as she got back home.  It’s an unusual phrase, and certainly one you wouldn’t expect to see in everyday life.  Not more than once, anyway.  I haven’t heard my code word yet, but I haven’t been seeking out mediums, either.  I do believe that Bunny has let me know he’s around me, though.

The first sign I had was that the Wii was on. If my mother were still alive, she’d be rolling her eyes right now. I got the Wii several years ago, chiefly for exercise.  After I’d had it a few months, my dad told Bunny that Netflix made a disc you can put in the Wii and get movies online.  Thanks, Daddy.  Not!  After that, I had to fight for Wii time, and Bunny would never take his disc out when he was done.  He also left the Wii running 24/7, which aggravated me to no end.  My protests that it wasn’t good for anything to run all the time fell on deaf ears.

Sunday night, once I got back home, I settled down to watch whatever mindless show I could find.  I caught sight of it almost instantly—the Wii was on!  The tell-tale blue light was emitting from the disc slot.  I’m a freak about turning everything in the house off before I leave, which aggravated Bunny to no end.  Many’s the time he bitched and moaned that I was too paranoid, electricity’s been safe for years, and on and on.  More than once, I told him he could thank Daddy for raising us that way.

Aside from the fact that my freakishly paranoid obsession with electricity would have kept me from leaving the Wii on, even though Trinity had spent the night Saturday, we hadn’t used it.  We watched movies instead.  No one had gone near the now-running Wii.  Then the second sign came yesterday.

I was visiting my family physician, Dr. Williams, who’d also been Bunny’s primary care doctor.  It was time for my annual check-up.  Dr. Williams is one of those rare doctors who doesn’t rush in and out—she takes her time, listens to her patients, and actually cares about what’s going on in their lives.  She was the first non-family member to call me after Bunny died.  Before she left the exam room, I held her back a second.

“I just want you to know, John and I were married over 25 years,” I began, my voice breaking.  She put her hand on my arm, and I composed myself.

“In all that time, he hated going to doctors.  But he always loved coming to see you.”  I couldn’t hold back the tears any longer.  She wrapped her arms around me and hugged me tight, and thanked me for telling her that.  Her own eyes were brimming with tears. I wasn’t exaggerating—Bunny loved Dr. Williams, because she’d listen to his various ailments or stories or whatever else he had on his mind, even before he got sick.

When she left the room, she left the door ajar so the tech would know she was finished.  As I waited for the tech, I could hear two people talking in the hall.

“What are you, a rabbit?” One asked the other.  I took that question as a sign from Bunny, because sometimes I called him Rabbit or my Rabbit.  Corey sometimes called him B. Rabbit.  The timing was too eerie to be coincidence.  Besides, how many times do you hear the word “rabbit” in a doctor’s office?  I couldn’t remember ever having heard it, and I’ve actually worked in doctors’ offices.  Bunny was happy that I’d told Dr. Williams how much he loved her.

I’m not surprised that Bunny has visited us.  What surprises me more is that Mama has visited me.  About a year ago, Mama told me about letters she’d read to Dear Abby about pennies from heaven—recently bereaved people finding pennies in odd places, and believing that their departed loved ones had left them there as a sign.  She reported that she had had the same experience with pennies from heaven. I was astonished that my mother--who’d been a doubter all her life--would believe such fairy tales.

I don’t like pennies—they take up too much room, so I try to rid myself of them whenever possible.  If I get pennies as change, I leave them on the counter for the next person who needs them.  Suddenly, I was finding them in the very least likely place they’d be: my house.  I’ve found five so far.  The first was smack-dab in the middle of the living room, in a spot where Mr. Dyson had traveled less than an hour before.  I thought it strange, but not overly so.  Until I found the second one.

“What the hell is with all these pennies?” I asked Margeaux.  Then I remembered the conversation I’d had with Mama about pennies from heaven.  I found the next one within an hour.  She would have scoffed at the idea of a code word, but she’d still found a way to reach out from beyond.  Now I don’t mind pennies so much.