The German-born American poet, novelist and short story writer, Henry Charles Bukowski wrote, “We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.” After this observation and until the time of his death from leukemia in 1994, I’ve often wondered if Bukowski ever felt differently. If I could speak to him now, I would tell him he was dead wrong (pun intended). Many of us are eaten up by everything or more appropriately, everything eats us up. Don’t ever believe those with the false bravado and the cocksure poker face that some play in this game of life. They may be navigating the art of overt diplomacy but in the midst of their concealed darkness and privately-held apprehensions, there’s ample anxiety among these impudent and misguided souls that are in constant conflict. 

Bukowski would define me as either a outlier or at best a conundrum. The obvious flaw in my character has made my outward expression of love and trust for others as something to be lost, versus earned, when engaging new people. Am I the last of the hopeless romantics? At a younger age some believed so. At this age, my expectations remain often very high for my fellow human beings and I am let down easily but that’s a different story than the one being told this very day. This is a story of being terrorized and flattened by premonition and not any premonition but that associated specifically with the passing of a loved one. For it is this cross that I bear in this life. These are two events that have happened in my lifetime that are worth sharing with you.
The first time in my life I could recall I was really distressed with the dying process and death was the night my maternal grandmother passed away. Odd as it may seem, I wasn’t in need of hearing the news of her passing through my nine year old ears. As our neighbor, who was staying with us that evening, fumbled to try to explain it all to me, she really didn’t need to share a word. I didn’t even need my parents’ expression of such grief and sorrow when I saw them the next morning. I knew that she died, before she actually did. It caused me to become discombobulated and there was no easy explanation for what I had experienced.

As a nine year old, I sensed anticipation of, or anxiety over what was to be a future event – what many label as a presentiment or a forewarning in modern day paranormal episodes of late afternoon television talk shows. I had no special insight, prompting or training. Beyond my Catholic-school understanding of the announcement of the incarnation by the angel Gabriel to Mary, I didn’t have much experience or any other relevant example to draw from. The passing of my grandmother is what clearly brought forth this bold insight.

I knew. I empirically knew she was going to pass away that very night and it is as vivid in my mind today as it was that night when our neighbor told me to go to bed. I knew because my grandmother came to tell me. It wasn’t a ghostly appearance like in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. As I recall it now, she called my name, kissed the top of my forehead, gave me the biggest hug I have ever received and told me she would see me again sometime in the future. I wasn’t despondent seeing her, at least initially, but for the three decades since that moment I was intimidated by the dying process and ultimately with any death. The loss of my maternal grandmother at such a young age made me love my surviving grandparents that much more but there was a gaping void that was left. Without her in our lives and in my life, our days were much different than they were before. Yes, it ate at me day after day and I maintain that I am remiss that I was never able to say goodbye to her as I had hoped.

Fast forward about fifteen years, I was driving home in the evening during the early part of Thanksgiving week and sensed that there was something that just didn’t feel right. I had an uneasy feeling. I was not dizzy or nauseous, but I was vexatious and feeling completely out of alignment. Upon arriving home, there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. My parents and younger sister all went to bed early. Our German Shepherd was also already well into her canine dreamscape chasing squirrels or overindulging on some sizable beef or bison femur bone. For me, I decided it may be a healthier choice to also get some additional rest with the night before Thanksgiving alumni unofficial reunion festivities quickly approaching, and of course, the annual Turkey Bowl on Thanksgiving morning. 

It must have been just before midnight when the hallway light beamed under my closed bedroom door. I heard my Father’s voice speaking at a level above his normal calm and composed demeanor. The buckle on his belt was clanging as he fumbled to hold the phone and put his denim jeans on that were already hanging on the bannister outside of his door. As if we had planned it, my sister and I each opened our bedroom doors simultaneously as my parents were already heading down the stairs. “Your grandmother is being taken to the hospital – we’ll meet you there,” my Dad said as he seemingly leapt down the entire flight of stairs and out through the front door in a single motion.

Without hesitating, my sister and I changed clothes and we were in the car behind our parents heading towards the hospital. In the few moments that I did sleep, I already knew my paternal grandmother had already passed. My sister began to ask me a series of diagnostic questions. I listened but I didn’t share with her that I already knew what had transpired. There weren’t many secrets we withheld from each other during our childhood or young adulthood but I didn’t think she was ready to hear that I knew our grandmother had already died before anyone had shared the news of her even being taken to the hospital. 

We raced through the toll and across the bridge in what seemed like seconds. When we arrived at the emergency room, my grandfather, parents and aunt and uncle were already with my grandmother’s body. My sister and I walked into the scene and it was all just déjà vu to me. I had already been there and lived out the entire scenario – I was an eyewitness to the event as it unfolded. 

As my uncle detailed what transpired earlier that day with my grandmother’s catheterization procedure and the uncomfortable feeling she was having when she returned home, I heard the words he was saying but confidently knew already what she had experienced. When the emergency room attending, cardiologist and cardiology fellow met with our family, I felt a deep sense that I already knew what they had tried and what they didn’t attempt when trying to save her. I turned to the fellow and shared that I knew that she tried to do everything that they could. 

Yes, it was a flippant statement. 

I knew that they didn’t and knew that their lack of effort resulted in this unfortunate outcome. As far as Bukowski and his nonsensical statement, these were not trivialities in my life and each of these events have made me love that much more as I have been gifted this astuteness where others ignore such invitations to see.