Author: Richard Alan Scott
Rhode Island, USA
06/11/21
About thirteen years ago I was involved in my very first adult Writers' group. It was a statewide program that was run out of a psychologist's office where she did Family Counseling. She also happened to be the President of said Writers' group, which advertised her as a well-known and successful playwright. Now I had been in the theater, including professionally, for thirty years before I began writing as a profession, and certainly I had never heard of her. Later Bios did show that her work was performed by a very obscure acting company that I had also, despite decades working in my home state's top companies, never heard of. But of course we know how that goes. One did have to submit some writing and be accepted into the group, so why not? Could be legit.
So I got in, had the aforementioned woman in my first writing "class," and I was ready to participate. One of our assignments had to do with creating a piece of non-fiction which could read as a short story. There was a giant issue in my life that I was certain I'd have enough material about to cover the assignment, and that was the death of my mother when I was fifteen. Many lose their parents but not often so young, and I had a thought swirling in my brain that that event had informed the way I dealt with life afterward.
At this point I was 51 and I had not gone through my own near-death health experiences, nor had I given up on Catholicism. I have gone through a bit of losing my Mom (and a story about a witch telling me I'd hear on my Birthday, the decision on a story I had submitted in Ireland, which did occur), in earlier of these journals, so please scroll down for those discussions. But as I wrote this non-fiction story, entitled "Anna's Lost Little Boy" I had a backlog of a whole slew of weird stories surrounding my mother being in the afterlife. These were the days when I still believed there was an afterlife and that yes, people were constantly trying to communicate with us from there. Sort of an unseen Facebook.
The cross that had been displayed on my mother's open casket was given to me after her funeral. Me, the kid who would watch something like The Wolfman late at night and believe Talbot was making his way to my neighborhood. I was the last person anyone in their right mind should give this cross to, but who's gonna argue with their Pastor? So one day, in a spiritual mood, I hung the cross over my bed's headboard on the wall. That night, my Dad had to wake me from screaming nightmares, where I saw my Mom in her coffin all deteriorated and maggot-ridden, saying, "Dicky help me, help meee!" Okay, down comes the cross. A few months later, "Oh, I just had a bad dream, I shouldn't be so foolish," and up goes the cross again.
That night I'm dreaming of a snowstorm going on and we were sent home from school early. I walked the three or four blocks to and from school, so I'm walking on the street adjacent to mine, silent in the snow, nearly home. I see my across-the-street neighbor's van parked by the roadside. I think, "Huh, why didn't Kenny and Pat put their van in their yard? I guess it broke down in the storm." It was a very distinct van, you could never mistake it. It was purple with big sixties balloon letters proclaiming "NEMESIS" on the side, and the requisite wheel flames, etc. Kenny was a drummer in a rock group. He used to practice loud to a Blood, Sweat and Tears album in the afternoon. I loved it but my parents did not. Anyway, I get home and my mother opens the door. She looks like herself, not a zombie, and she says "I made chicken noodle soup." Nice dream, right? I wake up, all cozy. "See, the cross is fine."
I go downstairs and my Dad looks all solemn. "The neighbors got into a big crash with their van. Kenny has a broken leg but Pat is fighting for life, and will need reconstructive surgery." Oh, shit, that's why I saw the van out of place, Ma was telling me something. Cross down, Pat made it through.
Next time more messages from beyond and the weirdest writing feedback I ever got, when Anna's Lost Little Boy continues.
