I saw a ghost that day. I think. A hallucination? Maybe. I don’t know for sure what I saw. But I know I saw something.
It had all started a day or two before actually. At 7:32am. I know because I looked at the clock as I fell out of bed onto the floor gasping for air, in agony as a migraine from Hell tore suddenly through the left side of my brain. I wasn’t thinking properly. It took several minutes for me to get up off of the floor.
I knew I had to go to class and work that day. I was miserable. I made it through class wearing sunglasses against the light. I even went to work. But I was sick and hurting that day and the next before it got better.
Then I got the text. HE’S DEAD. That’s how I found out my brother died. I went into shut down mode. I remember coming home that day and finding my husband standing in the sunlight from the front door window. As I went to hug him and started crying, I looked down the hallway and saw someone else there too.
My brother who had died! He stood there, clear to me as my own hand. He never said anything, just stood there wearing the ever present cowboy hat and boots, looking at me and smiling his little smirking smile.
I don’t know if it was really him or my mind playing tricks, but I was so angry at him for what he did and how he had died, that I told them both that he was a coward for what he did and I felt ashamed of him. Maybe one day I’ll forgive him but not right now! The vision looked shocked and hurt.
He stopped smiling, slowly took off his cowboy hat and held it to his chest. He looked at me sadly and just slowly faded away. I haven’t “seen” him since. But I wonder about things. If maybe it was really him. I remember wondering if he’d ever come back as I watched him fade away.
What you don’t realize is that my brother died of a head injury in another state. It was suicide by cop, so I am sure you could guess what the injury was.
When I told my sister that my migraine hit me in that spot and at that time, and that I had found out that was when he had died, her husband told me that she had woken up and gotten violently, nauseatingly ill too.
Her illness had started that same morning at 7:30 am. The same time as when I lay gasping on my bedroom floor, the same time as when our brother lay dying, several states away.