It was a surreal moment stepping into my home after a hospital stay filled with traumatic, supernatural, life-changing events.

The chalkboard in my mind still keeps a tally of whether or not I'm nuts or possibly in possession of a hyperactive imagination... But since the floodgates of my mind have been opened....well...the film still plays in my head. 

A constant quick flash of faces, places, dates and times, animals and people. More often than not company, is always out the side of my eye just out of reach.

Since the first time in the hospital, my mind just keeps watching that film.

I was walking into a lounge area and standing off to the side stood a large older lady sipping tea. The older lady made her presence known by blasting out a super large fart!  

It seemed I was the only one who could hear her and see her at all.  After having described her behaviour to a man on the couch, it turns out she was the gentleman's mother only she'd been gone six months. 

I was gone too you see....for one minute and nine seconds. I'm ashamed to say, by my hand. I do remember vividly the moment my eyes opened.  I awoke to a circus inside my head! My brain has been on fire ever since.

The large woman in, I don't know how long, was the first mark on my chalkboard that said not nuts. 'Cause I thought, (sometimes I still do) "Fruit cake! Aisle seven! Right behind the nuts!"

I walked through my front door looking around and saw familiar things.  The same walls I'd known for some time, smelling the same air and seeing my items about the house in their customary positions.  All of which are well known to me.

 Yet it was unfamiliar too, as if the whole world took a slight twist.  A small shift over. My eyesight was more particular.  The colours are a little brighter, the air a little more aromatic, and the food a little tastier.  It seemed as if the room was a bright memory from a movie I watched rather than a reality. I had the new and distinct feeling of not being alone anymore even when I'm by myself.

I will say this, out of all of the chaos and the debilitating feeling of desperation, fear and hopelessness that brought me to the hospital, the paralyzing depression was gone!  No trace of it! Right up to this day!  I went slowly through my house like I was invading somebody's privacy yet it was my own. A very strange, disconcerting sensation.

 I decided that I'd been through a traumatic experience. I haven't been home for a while and realized everything was going to seem different. Of course, it would be different.  So I chalked it up to a normal reaction.  A transition or adjustment to coming home after so long seemed reasonable. 

The adjustments were only just beginning.  Still, I thought I was half bonkers and that I was dreaming stuff up. Walking into daydreams or nightmares (depending on your perspective) and questioning the things I've seen and heard.  Nor had I quite completely learned to give up control and step aside for the "flow" yet.  A conduit as I understand it. A phone booth.

If I thought I was gonna leave behind the movie in my head, the sights, sounds and smells at the hospital, that hope too was completely gone. 

So far I was aware of people for just a glimpse from the side of my vision.  When I turned my head quickly to look, they would shift back fast, like a game of cat and mouse.  I would also see what one would call "shadow people" drifting around the room where the shadows had no business being. 

That night as I crawled into my bed for the first time in a while, I became aware.  Aware of an outline of a tall man forming at the end of my bed.

As his formation progressed,  I could see what appeared to be a male. He had a long black cloak, black clothes with a bow tie and a tall black hat.  His face was almost flat, His small nose spread out a little bit giving him an almost Asian look. A beard with no mustache completed the look of this man that was just standing there staring down at me at the end of my bed.

Two thoughts crossed my mind one was, "He looks like an Amish guy" and the other thought was, "Oh, I don't think there were a lot of Amish people around here any time recently."

And then my heart stopped when another thought skidded to a halt in my brain. "This man was not from this time at all."

He just stood there gazing in my direction with a pensive expression. Then he slowly, as if dismantling himself, shifted back into shadow. 

In the moment it didn't occur to me to be frightened as I was looking at a person.  No freaky apparition, no head spinning, no spewing pea soup and no orchestra playing creepy music in the background.  None of that weirdness that shows up on T.V. It's just one person looking at another. The fact that he had faded in and out changed that a bit.

 As I was attempting to calm myself, I formed an imaginary sign in my mind "Do not disturb" That sign still goes up every night when I go to sleep reminding them I'm still human and I must rest... it's a necessity. 

I would see the Amish guy almost every night. Sometimes it was just his cloak swishing around the corner or the tip of a shiny black shoe or maybe just the top half of his head peeking around the corner in the hallway.  

 One night I was sitting on my couch doing what I normally do repairing jewelry and cleaning up nail products.  I happen to look up to the left of my TV by my door where the two walls meet and come to a corner, I could see a set of hands coming out from the corner and pulling apart that corner and out popped the Amish guy's head and then one of his legs came through, then he pulled the other leg through. After that with his hands and his legs, he pulled the rest himself out of the corner of the wall.  The wall popped immediately back into place. He gave me that pensive look again and moved off down the hall fading as he went... My overall impression of this man is that he wasn't quite sure what he was supposed to do or where he was supposed to go.  He's been hanging around for a while now just sort of wandering about like a man strolling through the park.  He ignores the light thinking it's an overly bright sun. 

 I decided that tonight I was going to talk with him, for him and to him. This stuff I was about to act on was new to me.  I operated on what I guessed is more like an impulse or reaction to certain factors. That brought me to want to have this interaction with the Amish man. I didn't know anything for sure but that's where I was at.

Later that night he showed himself peeking around my bedroom door. His expression changed to something of an expectant look.  I began to speak. To tell him that, "The light is good, not the burning sun. It's OK to go through that light.  Everyone you love and need is there on the other side. There is no retribution. There is no revenge.  There is no punishment, simply a return home."

  I said the same thing over and over with only slight variations, "There is only love on the other side and it's okay. You can go into the light and you are home on the other side where positivity reigns."

A kind of expression of relief slowly came over his face and then he faded away. I haven't seen him since.

 During the time of the Amish man's visit, a little white dog kept coming around.  A small white terrier/poodle-looking cross-breed with curly hair. A happy, silly grin on his face pink tongue lolling out, kept coming around walking through my living room looking at me and wagging his tail.

 When I went to go retrieve the dog, I could never find him.

 I wanted to find out who owned him or perhaps give him some water or something, while I searched. He was nowhere to be found.  It occurred to me this little dog was deceased. 

 So I began asking people who came around to come visit or came by my house. Did you own a little white cross-breed dog? The answer was always the same.   Nobody knew that dog, nobody had one like him.

 Every day the dog came prancing through my living room and every time I saw someone, I'd ask if they knew about the little dog.

 A few weeks went by and the mystery just continued to go unsolved and annoyed me to no end that I couldn't find the answer.  An acquaintance of mine I hadn't seen in some time, popped in on the spur of the moment just to say hello.

 So I asked him, "Do you know anything about a little white dog? Curly hair looks like a crossbreed terrier or something ?"

 He responded, "Oh yeah, that was my wife's dog. She loved that fucken dog. But that dog died a few weeks back." Figures, I thought.   These little jolts, along the way, of affirmation are starting to thicken my skin a little bit more so they become a little less shocking.  They are, however, a reminder and another notch on the chalkboard in my mind that maybe I'm not so nuts after all.

I told him, "Well, your dog's here, you can take him home now."

He mumbled something about needing to leave then gave me a strange and rather uncomfortable look when he left.  The little white dog followed him dutifully out the door flashing a little white doggy grin as they left.  Win some... lose some.

These events happened in the first three weeks of my being home but were a precursor for what was to come.

 A premonition if you will, to prepare for bigger and greater happenings that would require all of my nerves, resolve and beating heart to get through...

Some would call it a gift...I dunno. I'm still trying to figure that out.