My Aunt

I have been reading stories here for a few weeks now and even questioned if I could post here. Since the answer was "yes" here I go! And this is not fiction, whatever you may think!

When I was a teenager my Aunt M. died. Mom was the one that found her. Peacefully "asleep" with a book in bed. Mom and Aunt M. had made a "pact" that who ever went first would find a way to let the other know if there was more to death than being dead.

Well, the night after she died my aunt let us know! Mom and I were upstairs with the cat and dog. We were comforting each other and planning the wake when we heard a huge crash down stairs. This was 11pm and we were alone in the house so we fairly leapt out of our skin. We got down to the library and found that one shelf, out of 20-some-odd had fallen off the wall. Now, this was in California, a mere mile from the San Andreas fault so we shrugged, placed the shelf back on the brackets and the books back on the shelf. Mom did comment that some of the books were actually Aunt M.'s. But we didn't give it much more thought. In the morning I got a hammer and double checked the brackets. All was secure.

It was now the second day after Aunt M.'s death. Mom and I are still alone as my Dad was back east on business. It was about eleven o'clock (we were to later to learn this was the approximate time of Aunt M.'s death). And, you guessed it...crash! It was the same shelf. The wall brackets were still firmly in place. This time however, the books had fallen in an odd way. Most had scattered within a few feet of the wall, as one would expect. However, the books that Mom had borrowed from Aunt M. (all of them and ONLY them) were 20 feet away, at the end of a long passage. My Mom was very casual and merely said "Aunt M. always liked to make sure her point was well taken." My Dad has always maintained it was a earth tremor. But Mom and I are quite sure it wasn't.

  Diane

/ BACK /