Yes and No.
There are some mediums on television who truly have the
“gift” for “seeing” dead people. But
there are three times as many people who call themselves psychic who are no
more psychic than my dog Buster--he's not, by the way.
How do you know the difference? you might ask. Here’s a hint, if the person calling
him/herself psychic asks for money—he/she is a fake! They will also do this trick in a large group of
people: they will say something that sounds like this: “I’m picking up a
name of a person with the first name that starts with an S or an M—is there
anyone with relative with a name starting with an S or M?” (Many popular names will begin with letter such as J, S, M, K or T.
That trick makes me laugh, because if the person
did have this gift, he/she would walk straight up to that member of the audience
and say, “Your Uncle Milo wants me to tell you….”
You get the idea. If a person has this God-given ability, whatever he or she said would not have any ambiguity. The information he or she told would be filled with accurate and specific facts--so many there wouldn’t be a doubt the message came from Grandma Jean or Cousin Ralph by God's gracious permission.
That’s how I feel about mediums. If they had a message from a dead loved-one, they wouldn’t want money—it would be like asking for money for something holy. Is that something a “real” medium would do? It never made sense to my way of thinking (no pun intended).
If I tell you I
had a long conversation with a resident of Memory Gardens, you can believe it or move to the next blog--I don't care one way or the other. I
don’t claim to have a “gift” like those “real” mediums (a lot of
the time I don’t think even “real” psychics get everything right—that’s
different topic). Since the deaths of my
mother and father, I’ve gotten better at “listening” to these still, small voices—that’s
all I’m admitting.
I have a very
good friend who is a “true” psychic. Another way of knowing a “real” one from a “fake”
one is: real ones hate to admit to
anyone they have this ability for fear of being laughed at or called ugly names. Going back to my friend—she says my power
of discerning the dead is getting better because I’ve been hanging around them
a lot since moving to Farmington, and living next to a cemetery is like enrolling in a college course--Communications 525 Communicating with Dead People.
Whether this is
true or not, I’m not going to try to convince anyone what I generally hear and/or feel
from the dead people I meet in Memory Gardens is “real.” Go ahead, think I have a wonderful
imagination (which I do, by the way), think I’m crazy (didn’t I admit I was on my very first blog entry?), or think I hold long conversations
with the park’s inhabitants (sometimes even I don’t believe I heard what I
heard or felt what I felt—take that to the bank).
Today I managed
to distract the dogs from going from a walk this evening in order to watch
tonight’s fireworks. We did go out this
morning as usual. Again Beanie chased the ground
hogs, but this time those freakin’ rodents teased him mercilessly. One would pop a head up in a hole—Beanie sped
for it as it ducked into the burrow.
Then another would poke a mocking little nose out of another hole and
squeak insults at the poor little dog, who got angry and dashed for that guy,
who disappeared with a rude stated comment.
I let Beanie do this for a long time before ending his humiliation.
What was strange about the situation was, Buster didn't want to join in, and he usually wants to do everything his
brother does.
He walked
straight to a particular grave and sniffed curiously. It lay in a section of the park which was
in the wilderness where most of the hole-rats reside. Still, the up-right headstone was literally
fifteen feet away from its nearest neighbor—maybe his
relatives wanted him to stay clear of the other residents or perhaps it was
because the location stayed shady in this New Mexican desert until late in the
morning. (See, I’m not psychic, hah!)
Anyway, his name
was “Pepé,” and like many Latinos had three first names before a family
one. His friends and relatives had gone
to a lot of effort and expense to announce the eighteen year-old's names, dates,
picture, but oddly enough gang affiliation.
The oval image alone told a story you didn’t need to be a medium to read.
Knowing this
didn’t stop me from starting a conversation, even though there wasn’t a good
“feeling” about this shade-quilted bed.
I started with the blunt statement, “I hope you didn’t go out in a blaze
of gunfire.”
I felt him
grinning, and it wasn’t like the one he wore in the picture. There was a pride, a smugness to the gesture even
dead due to nefarious activities.
“Clearly, you
didn’t learn anything from what happened to you,” I said, pulling Buster
from the stone, as if Pepé’s influence would rub off on the small dog.
Here’s the
strange part. I clearly heard a voice I
knew was his say, “Wanna know why I’m out here like this, b----? ‘Cuz soonah ‘r latah, my homeboys R goin’ ta
be here wid me. So f--- off, and dunt
let your f------ pero take a f------ dump
near me—ever!”
Buster hadn’t
pooped near that grave; he hadn’t even peed on it, which I wouldn’t have
allowed, even though this hombre
deserved it for speaking to me like that.
What he said wasn’t as bad as some of the things my students had thrown
abusively at me, however.
If Pepé had been
alive he wouldn’t have scared me half as much as he did now he was
dead. I had kept my home address private
from my violent prone students, but this gang-banger knew where I
lived. If he hadn't “chained” himself to that
singular bit of ground I would have been more than concerned. Nonetheless, he had staked out the
spot, waiting patiently for his friends to show up—and I don’t mean driving
their souped-up, whoopty-cars out to his grave to decorate it with gang memorabilia.
As we returned
home, I felt Pepé lean against his stone head rest the way he might have done
against a friend’s flaming red car, making sure I and the dogs were leaving, giving us a cheeky
grin, and throwing a gang sign which silently repeated everything he had said.
I didn’t look
back nor did the dogs. It was if they
had heard his every word, had seen his every gesture, and had understood
exactly what he meant.
Beanie wouldn’t come
near it when I called to him to stop chasing those blasted dirt-rats.
It was the first
time I was glad to be leaving Memory Gardens.
The gang banger's grave is the one with the cross on the far right--see how far it is from the nearest grave on the left.
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