I had a cousin who was two months younger than me. He was always the type who wanted to be the first to deliver news to the rest of the family or neighborhood. Whether it was a car accident down the street or a house fire or even a death in the neighborhood he always raced to our grandparents 3 family house to be the first to tell about it. My brother Michael and I would laugh among ourselves about this. If something in the neighborhood had happened my brother and I and our cousin would head back to the house to tell the rest of the family. We would watch our cousin as he sped up his walking the closer we got to the house. My brother and I would just smile at each other.
Just before the age of 29 my cousin had died of a sudden illness not known to the family until after he had died. He had blood clots in his leg and one of them went to his heart and killed him.
The moment this had happened I was alone at home (in another town 15 minutes from the 3 family house). It was late in the morning and I was sleeping at the time as I had a 3rd shift job.
My mom got the news of my cousin's death where she worked. Evidentally somebody in the family had called her job to give her the news. Since I took her to work earlier in the morning she had to call me to give me the news and to go and pick her up from work so she could be with her brother during this terrible time.
Well, my phone rang and rang because I was sleeping. The sound of the phone ringing was most likely what caused me to dream that I got out of bed, went into the kitchen to answer the phone.
Me: "Hello?"
My cousin's voice: "Guess what! Michael just died"
Me: "What?"
I woke up suddenly and quickly sat up on the bed. That dream scared me. I never dream about death or people dying especially family members not to mention my own brother. The phone was still ringing. It must have been why I dreamed that I was answering the phone, I supposed. It had been ringing for quite some time now so I rushed to answer it.
Me: "Hello?"
My mom (sobbing): "You have to come pick me up. Kevin just passed away"
Me: "Who? Johnny?" (Johnny was another cousin addicted to crack and cocaine and was always assumed to be found dead at some point because of it)
My mom: "No. Kevin. I need you to come now and pick me up..."
I had never forgotten that call. I am one who can explain many of my dreams by connecting it to something that had happened to me unusually during the day before I had fallen asleep but this one I could never explain.
It was a dream that let me know that something must happen after death. That we do continue. To this day I have yet to tell this to my aunt and uncle. Years have passed since and I'm thinking about telling them about that dream.
I was woken up by the phone, and heard my brother George's happy voice saying "Hey, baby, I just wanted to let you know that Mama is all right". Then he hung up. I thought it was strange that my brother would be calling to tell me this, because Mama had died almost two years to the day before I had this dream.
I woke up then, for real, and realized it had been a dream. We didn't even have a phone in our bedroom. I went downstairs, and half an hour later, got a call from my older sister telling me that George had died a half an hour earlier, of a massive heart attack. He had 'called' me to let me know Mama was OK, and he knew that, because he was WITH her, at that point.
Even in our sadness at his sudden death, the knowledge that Mama was all right was a blessing to all of us, because we knew that Mama had been in respiratory distress at the time of her death, and we'd always worried about that. In our hearts we knew that she was in Jesus's loving arms, and in no more pain, but it gave us peace to hear that she was all right.