Friday, January 30, 2015

Outdoor skate rinks and other memories

Weird things happen to me.

Usually they are dream related, but sometimes the waking world coincidences are so incredible, I can barely believe they're true.

Like the time I walked past a little side street, and without ever walking down it to check it out, said to myself "I'll probably live there". I bought my house on that street 3 months later.

Last week was one of those weeks, filled with both waking and dreaming weirdness. First there was the dream where I went to visit my friend in Australia. I brought my dishwasher with me and spent most of the dream trying to install the stupid thing. Only to discover the next morning when I opened my bedroom door and was hit with a lovely cloud of steam, that the dishwasher had broken and gotten stuck on "heat water" for the 8 hours while I slept.

Two nights later I dreamt that my cousin was trying to get my friends hooked on drugs. He gave me antihistamines.  When I woke up I used nearly half a box of Kleenex because I couldn't stop sneezing.

But the one that was reveled to me just the other day has left me... just... huh.

Last week I drove past a tiny street in my home town... twice. I never notice the street usually. Both times I turned to the person who was with me and asked them about a rink on the street. In my head both times I thought about an old man who used to live near there. He was stuck in my head for the rest of the week, I even told someone at work about how he had the whole youth group over for chocolate cake one time, how even in his eighties, he always took the time to check in with the teens.
I was sad thinking about him all week. I wondered when his funeral had been. When I was 16 he was frail but living on his own.I wondered who had gone to his funeral, and thought a lot about the community I'd been part of 20 years before.

Fast forward to this week's Wednesday night dinner.

A girl I've known since my youth group days comes up to me and starts chatting. She tells me that our old pastor had been in town and catches me up on all the news of their grand babies etc. Then she stops, looks very seriously at me and says "they were in town to do a funeral for Jim". I was in shock, their son in law had passed away and I hadn't heard about it? He's just a few years older than I am.... she looks at me and says "no, Jim Maidment... he was 102".

Really, it's left me wondering if maybe I had super powers last week and didn't  know it.

http://www.rossfuneralchapel.com/?page_id=44&id=1579

No comments: