Note: This was written on the night of Saturday, December 7th, shortly after I was informed that one of my best friends, Eric, was in the hospital after suffering two strokes and a heart attack. 

For my whole life, I’ve had the eerie gift of “premonition”. It’s something I don’t like talking about or even acknowledging in my mind, because… well… it’s frankly creepy that I can “sense” when something bad is about to happen, or has happened and I just haven’t been told yet. 

When I was little, my seeming ability to “predict the future” began with weather. I could accurately predict when it would rain, snow, or, worse of all, a tornado was on the way. In fact, I was so good at predicting the weather that I often left my family baffled when what I predicted actually came to pass. 

Today, I still have this ability to predict the weather a lot more accurately than Denver’s weathermen can. But my anxiety about the weather has thankfully diminished since I was little, though not entirely. 

What’s even more impressive than my ability to predict the weather, is my seeming ability to sense when bad things happen to my loved ones. Well… impressive may not be the right word. But, the point still stands. 

I’m sure I had my “moments” of premonition when I was little that I simply don’t remember. But the one that’s seared into my memory forever was when I learned my grandpa Bob passed away, over six hours before my dad called to give me the news. 

The morning my grandpa Bob died, I snapped awake in a cold sweat the exact moment the paramedics declared that he was not coming back. 

At 6:00 AM, Minnesota time on Memorial Monday morning in 2018, after working on him for almost an hour, the EMT’s that responded to my grandma’s 911 call decided it was time to let my grandpa go. At 5:00 AM that same morning, Colorado-time, I sat straight up in bed, huffing and puffing for seemingly no reason. 

My heart actually felt sore when I woke up, but I assumed I just had a panic attack in my sleep. I got up to get a drink of water from the kitchen, then went back to bed shortly after. Though, I will say, the feelings of dread, sorrow, and angst never left me that day. And I was hardly shocked when my dad called me to tearfully tell me my beloved grandpa Bob passed away. 

Was I crushed? Absolutely. Freaked out? Sure as hell I was. Shocked, however? Not really. 

A similar thing happened when my grandpa Lyle suffered a major heart attack a couple years ago. A few days before he was hospitalized, I was feeling very unsettled and restless. In fact, I remember feeling a little sick to my stomach, but I couldn’t pinpoint why. Something just felt deeply, deeply wrong, and not anything like what a typical bout of anxiety felt like. 

In fact, the only time I could recall feeling that same way was when my grandpa Bob died, which scared the ever-loving shit outta me. But, I again kept it to myself, hoping that denial would be enough to stuff it down. 

Needless to say, my denial didn’t stop the heart attack from happening. Thanks to God, however, my grandpa Lyle survived and has since fully recovered from his heart attack. 

That same year, however, I started getting that awful, sickly feeling yet again. A couple weeks later, while hiking the Coyote Song trail in October, my dad broke the news that my grandma Shirley had cancer. It was rapidly metastasizing to the point chemotherapy couldn’t do anything for her. She had only a few months to live. 

After those three instances, I realized that denial of that deep, sickly feeling wouldn’t get me anywhere. Apparently, I had a very unsettling ability to sense when something was seriously wrong with someone I loved, and it was just something I had to accept. 

Still, I kept my mouth shut about it. After all, how could I even explain my premonitions to people without sounding like a crazy person? Hell, what was I even supposed to do with this apparent “gift” to sense/predict when tragedy struck? I couldn’t imagine staring anyone in the face and telling them they’re about to die (or, at least, shake hands with death), let alone someone I knew and loved.