The Boy Under the Bridge

When I was a teenager one of my favorite things to do was drive around at night with my friends.

Listening to cool songs under the moonlight left me plenty of warmhearted memories.

One night, while listening to Moonlight Drive by The Doors, someone in the car told a story as we drove over a small bridge. It was about a boy who drowned in the lake below.

The story says if you stop on the bridge at midnight on March 19th, the last full day of winter, and throw a penny in the water and make a wish, a milky eyed boy will float up from the depth and try and take the coin.

Rumor has it the boy's brother held him under the icy water just a bit too long, and was not able to pull him back out after his game backfired.

It's a terrible tale, but supposedly true.

Please tell me any urban legends that YOU know--I love them all.

xo

A Deal With the Devil

I know someone who lost several family members and two pets over the last six months. The relatives were close--not the type who hide in Alaska and are not seen for years--but the near and dear who they spoke to and interacted with on a regular basis. In fact, they were favorites.

The family dog was a favorite too, so much so in fact that many said she was the best dog they had ever known. 

So a bargain was struck by the owner after the dog started to act sick. Please, they said, let us have the dog. You have taken a godmother, a grandmother, a great-grandmother--why do you need the beloved pet? She is young. Let her live. Let her live and things will be put on hold. In fact, it would be taken as a sign that maybe they would reconsider their atheism. They would even pray again. Let them have the dog! Fix her--fix her and let them keep her until she was older, with grey around her muzzle and she had a hard time walking--not because of an illness--but because she had genuinely been around the block enough times.

The career could be put on hold too--it could wait. They could even focus on church. Just give her a few more years.

They closed their eyes peacefully that night because the vet called and told them that even though she had a stroke, her neurological symptoms were improving. 

But the phone rang at 7:00 am, and middle of the night and early morning phone calls are rarely good news. This was no different.

The dog was worse, in fact she was worse off than any of the other dogs at the hospital--and now she was suffering. So now a choice had to be made.

She was gone by noon.

They still had plenty to be thankful for. They had each other. 

But the point is there was no one listening. No prayers were answered, and it was the final straw. Desperate times make us do desperate things, and in this case the last-ditch prayers once again fell on deaf ears--or more likely just echoed on and on into space.

We are fools. We are raised to genuflect to an being that we never see. We are told to love someone who does not speak to us when we talk, or answer our heart-felt prayers. We are told to give up our earthly lives and through faith live for a spirit who instills separateness and judgement in a world that so much needs togetherness. 

Maybe they did it wrong. Maybe they were speaking to someone who is too occupied, or confused, or overwhelmed. Maybe they needed to speak to someone who would listen.

Maybe there is no one listening.

They asked me what was worse, if someone was listening and chose to ignore them? Or if there was no one at all. 

Death Day

By Paola Cirmia~http://tinyurl.com/phz2zaw

I love spring when life is stirring. Of course summer thrills me as the suns warms me for a while. But we are coming to that time of year where the invisible bones of my dead relatives walk through my yard, and the darkness that resides in us all peeks from the creaking closet door of our childhood nightmares.

Oh, Halloween, my October love. Your brittle embrace allows us a small glimpse of death before our time. 

As I sit on my front porch at dusk and watch the sky turn from orange to purple, I wonder why so many of us are moonstruck in the fall. Some of us feel the familiar pull, the same kiss we read about that turns mortal into beast; and with the waning moon, back into a human being. 

It is more than our memories of trick or treating in the dark, crunchy leaves blowing at our feet, and the crooked smiles of glowing Jack o'lanterns grinning in a slightly sinister way. It is something more primitive, an ancient stirring we feel calling to us, but we don't know how to answer. It confuses us because it is delightful and wicked, but makes us feel very, very good. It is related to death, but we don't know how to celebrate death here in the United States.

We mourn our dead. We have somber ceremonies because a loved one has passed. But we don't celebrate what they were or the spirits they are now, happily haunting us for the rest of our lives. We wish their spirits would stay with us and never leave. We would not fear them.

We are only afraid of the ghosts that don't belong to us. 

Whether it be a simple memory or flash of movement out of the corner of our eyes, our private ghosts are precious. Far too few of us admit a belief in the otherworldly, but October thins the veil between our world and theirs, and the lovely creature-under-the-bed feeling we all experience in the fall is nothing but a temporary stroll between two worlds.

We don't realize it, but we have a foot in each of these worlds. We spend much of our time being rational and logical, states that can be overrated and over valued. But our beloved science is a study of humility, discoveries and revelations constantly being overridden and facts found to be false. 

Knowing when the phone is going to ring, saying the same thing at the same time as a close friend, and a flash of insight about the right thing to do are all tiny windows of our intuitive side, the B side of logic and rationale. Some say children and animals have a natural connection to the great beyond because no one has talked them out of believing, or told them they it is all their imagination. Maybe they trust everyone because they are being guided by the invisible hands of the dearly departed.

The sun sets earlier now, and we are exposed to the dark for longer periods each day. We think differently at night and fear different things. Our belief in the supernatural blooms during these long-shadow days, and we prickle with a faint knowing we don't understand. Why does it feel so good to decorate our homes with trappings of the dead for Halloween? Death is so sad, after all. 

Or is it?

Is this our secret way of celebrating death? Of allowing our intuition to embrace the knowing we have deep in our hearts that our loved ones have simply moved to a different location?

In Mexico and other countries they celebrate Dia de Muertos, an official holiday that honors the dead with sugar skulls, favorite foods of the deceased, and visits to the graveyard. Ghosts walk freely among the living during this three-day event, and friends and relatives do not feel so alone.

We Americans would never admit to celebrating death in such a way. But we will:

* decorate our houses with skulls, monsters, bats, and Jack o'lanterns on Halloween

* get dressed up as Dracula, a mummy, zombie, or any number of undead creatures and go to a party

* call psychics, astrologists, and tarot card readers to hear about our future or contact a dead relative or loved one

* attend a seance for messages from the grave

* watch shows like Ghost Hunters for clues and signs of spirits

The difference is we will do it in the name of FUN. We don't take any of these things seriously, right?

Maybe we should.

Maybe that sigh we heard from the kitchen was not the dishwasher again, and maybe the flickering light in the laundry room was not a loose wire. That perfume...isn't that what Gramma used to wear?

Maybe our minds are naturally more open during this spiced cider time of the year, when we are a bit more in tune with the other side, and the thoughts we have might be more than a little influenced by those we had known and had to bid farewell.

Zero by the amazing Nate Wragg--more here:  http://tinyurl.com/pghs2fd

I call for a Death Day of our own here in the United States to celebrate the lives of our lost parents, children, grandparents, friends, family, and pets. They deserve more of a place in our lives than just a picture on the mantle. October 30th sounds good to me.

So keep a cup of tea close at hand and don't be so quick to cover your eyes when you feel a shiver of fear. You never know who is close by.

For Marg <3 Woof

A Sunday Sleepover for Jesus

When I was in junior high my best friend asked me to sleep over her house one Saturday night. I was excited because it meant snacks in her bright pink room while we watched her tiny television until 2am.

There was one caveat--she wanted me to go to church with her in the morning.

Ah crap.

I was 13 and had already decided in my middle school, know-it-all fashion that church was not for me.

I had my doubts from the beginning. I did not believe for one minute the story my grandmother told me that thunder was god and the angels bowling. (I had the real, scientific scoop from my dad who told me that the raindrops fell from the sky because they did not get along and the clouds rubbed together and created sparks that became lightning.) Nor did

I believe it when she told me when I had the creeps it was probably the devil at my left shoulder and that I should stomp firmly on the ground and yell GO AWAY DEVIL.

I was also a bit traumatized from one memorable Sunday when I was six and I went to our Russian orthodox church. My mother decided that I, like all the other parishioners, should and get up from the pew, kiss the cross, and get a piece of holy bread to eat from the priest.

I was fine until I looked up at the life-sized crucifix with a bloodied and tortured Jesus nailed to its center. His thorny crown stabbed his head causing punctures I could see from my seat and filled his upward turned eyes with blood. That was IT for me. I would NOT be eating holy bread, and I certainly was not kissing anything is this hall of tortures.

After running from the church into the hot July sun, my mother explained to me that I would not have to kiss THAT cross, but the one the priest was holding. I didn't care. I wanted nothing to do with the otherwise beautiful church, even if my mom told me it was the right thing to do on Sundays.

That evening I asked her why there was a statue of a dying, almost naked man in our church. She explained the story of Jesus to me. I didn't like it. Then I asked her why we had to die. She told me "so we can meet Jesus in heaven."

Nope. I didn't even want to see him in church anymore, and I surely didn't want to spend eternity with him. I got very upset and told her I did not want to die. Not at ALL. She said god was our father. Now I was frantic. Who was the man who lived with us all these years!

I began to cry. She asked, "don't you want to meet Jesus one day?" "NO!" I cried, and continued to cry for about 45 minutes.

"OK," she finally said.

"OK, what??" I sniffed.

"You don't have to die," she said.

And that was all I had to hear. She did not make me go to church anymore, and she tried to make me say my prayers for a while--but I was having none of it. AND I got the good end of the deal. No dying for me. Part of me is still convinced I am immortal.

So fast-forward a few years and there I was, faced with a major choice. Popcorn, cookies, and covert TV til all hours sounded awesome. BUT--I had to go to CHURCH. I had put all this behind me years ago. 

I told my friend of my dilemma. She said, "first of all--there is NO bloody Jesus at our church and no cross-kissing. Second--it only lasts about a half hour."

I figured I could put up with this obviously more civilized version of worship for 30 minutes. I slept over and we had a great night--we talked and talked and didn't even need to watch TV. Totally worth the church visit in the am, I told myself. 

But what they didn't tell me was this church had their OWN version of holy bread. I watched as the rows and rows of people walked to the front to take their wafer and a sip from a gold cup.

"What are we eating and drinking?" I asked.

"The blood and body of Christ," said my friend's brother.

Twilight Zone. The room got hot and I felt like running out the doors again.

"WHAT?!"

My friend told me it was just wine and a wafer--but my Post Traumatic Church Disorder was kicking in full-force, and before I knew it I was standing in front of the priest with my mouth hanging opened like a carp.

"The body of Christ," said the priest, and I stood there blinking like a fool.

Nope again. I do NOT want to eat a piece of Christ.

After 20 or so uncomfortable seconds of silence, the priest told me I should not be there, and I should leave. 

I was kicked out of church.

There was no explanation. He was a bit angry too.

I have been to church several times since without bursting into flames. My wedding, my son's Christening, and several funerals went off without a hitch.

But I still cant quite shake the feeling that something is going to happen every time I walk through the doors...or that I will get my Eternal Life Free Pass revoked.

So for now at least, I will stay away, and keep my immortal status.