Reading back at this piece, so far, I notice that I've been vague at times. Know that this has been on purpose. There are personal details that I am simply not quite comfortable sharing, at least online. Things that were happening beyond the footsteps that are often present shortly before someone dies. Those things include (but are not limited to) incredible encounters with birds and animals (for my family, it involved Bald Eagles), visions of dead loved ones, electronics in the house malfunctioning for no apparent reason, deeply personal dreams, so on and so fourth. 

I'm not yet comfortable sharing those (at least on this collection of writings) yet, as they are still very fresh and cut deeply into mine and my family's emotions. Dying and death are sacred and necessary parts of life. Though, they are far from easy or enjoyable. While joy, love, and gratefulness were ever-present emotions and feelings on the farm, the sting of dying and death were still with us on that farm, too. I could sense, even before I knew about all of the personal and supernatural shit going on, that death was close by. That things weren't quite right. I felt these things even before my grandma's cancer diagnosis, though at the time, I chalked them up to anxiety surrounding college and my emotional inability to accept my autism diagnosis, and the fact that I am, and will forever be, "different" and "disabled". 

However, as emotionally tough as it's been to accept parts of myself that I cannot change or control, I've just realized that the grief I was feeling even before my grandma's diagnosis wasn't entirely rooted in my self-acceptance struggles. In fact, I'd argue that most of that pain had nothing to do with me. Instead, somehow, some way, I could sense that something was wrong with my grandma, before I consciously knew of her condition. Before we even knew she had cancer. 

Even writing about this shit in a personal journal is tough, let alone throwing it out there for others to discuss. It's really begun to fuck up my whole worldview. As scientific and analytical as I often am, I don't have the pride to just blow off these feelings and events as mere coincidences, or just dismiss them as my anxiety rearing its ugly head again. Sure, parts of those dreadful feelings have come from my heightened anxiety surrounding college, and the fact that I'm learning in therapy about what it takes to accept the parts of myself that I was born with and cannot change. But, most of my anger, grief, and anxiety were coming from someplace else that I wasn't consciously aware of. That place being my grandma's deteriorating health. 

I just wish that my apparent "psychic" abilities (for lack of a better term) were more specific. But, all I really had was a perpetual feeling of extreme dread and sadness. 

I also wish that we had scientific reasons behind why people have these strange feelings and experiences. But, as far as I am aware, science knows almost nothing about them. We know that some people are "visited" by their recently deceased loved ones before they get the call. We know that people often report seeing and hearing weird shit before and after a loved one dies. We know that clocks within the vicinity of the dying person tend to stop at the exact time the dying person takes their final breath. We know that the dying can "hang on" for just a few more hours or days if they know a close loved one is coming to visit. Or, they survive just long enough to protect their loved ones from witnessing their death. We know a lot of shit like this. We just don't know how or why. Frankly, I don't think we ever will. 

With that said, do I want to delve into this weird, freaky shit further? No, not really. I am curious, and I'm more than happy to find scientific reasons for the weird going-ons (such as, checking the upstairs for animals whenever footsteps were/are heard, or chalking up the occasional loud bangs in the kitchen and main room as the stoves reacting to changing temperature in that poorly insulated house). But, there's not a snowball's chance in hell I'll ever try to open myself up to whatever may or may not exist beyond what science can answer, in the sense that I'll sit down with a group of friends and play with an Ouija board. I think that's just as stupid as running with a flag in a bull pen. 

If anyone wants to go to a graveyard and start trying to converse with the dead, or go to a church and try to perform an exorcism, go right ahead! But, I'm not gonna take part in that stuff. Hell no!