A Message to My Sister

From: sharyn johnson (shsharyn.johnson1@rcn.com)
Story type: Channeling
Location: my home
Source: Form Submission
Date submitted: Fri Oct  2 12:10:56 2009

It was the evening of January 27, 2003. I was in my home in Arlington, Virginia surrounded now by medics, police and concerned neighbors as I had come home to the scene of a brutal suicide. My husband had taken his life.

I remember it snowing hard and medics covering me with a blanket and asking for contact information on my family. My family is small and my elderly parents and two siblings lived in northeast Pennsylvania--a four hour drive. At the time, I was estranged from my only sister and had been out of communication for several years. She knew little about my life and home. In fact, she had never been to visit while I lived there and was not even familiar with my physical appearance, such as haircolor, whether I wore glasses, etc. So when the police suggested calling my sister, I was more or less hesitant. However,I knew that families, regardless of issues, come together in times of need and this was one such occasion. The rawness of the incident and the shock coupled with the need to get through the long night ahead compelled me to make the call. A policeman later came to sit with me and told me that my family was on their way.

It was already 8 p.m but it would be 4 a.m. the next morning before my husband's body would be removed and the scene cleaned up. During that time, a counselor came and sat with me, helping me through the blur. All I could focus on was the recurring cycle of images playing in my mind...coming home from work, seeing the house dark, turning on the lights, running up the stairs, hearing my dogs bark in the bedroom, walking into the bathroom and seeing the horrible scene of the suicide.

My family finally arrived and somehow we made it through the day. My sister was very quiet and spent time tending my Yorkies and helping with arrangements. Finally the next evening we had time to talk.

She said she had something to tell me and it was weighing very heavy on her as she had expressed it to her husband the night before she got my call.

She started by saying, "It's hard to explain what I am going to tell you because it's never happened to me before and I am not sure how it will land, but you know I have never seen or been in this house before yesterday". I nodded in agreement. "Well, I had an urgent and vivid dream the night before your call. In it I was somewhere I did not recognize, standing at the bottom of a pair of steps. I saw a woman ahead of me with a jacket on. It swished back and forth and I ran after her trying desperately to grab it, to stop her from going further. As hard as I tried to reach the jacket, it eluded my grip. When I got to the top of the steps, she was gone and I saw a gate to my left and heard noises coming from behind it. It made no sense to me but I had an overwhelming sense of dread. I woke up and told Ted (her husband) the whole thing, thinking that it was Mom and something awful happened. Then when we arrived yesterday and I saw what you had on, my heart pounded. It was the exact jacket I saw in my dream. The person I was supposed to stop was you. And the staircase here was the staircase I saw. The gate at the top of the steps was the doggie gate, and the noise was your Yorkies crying to get out."

My sister's dream was right on...I wore a gold jacket to work that awful day. It was a swing coat and swished when I moved. My little Yorkies were kept to play in a big bedroom that was gated, and it was at the top of the steps to the left. And yes, I ran up the steps in a panicked rush looking for husband, only to find his lifeless body in the bathroom at the top of the stairs.

Many more details were shared by my sister as we spoke. Details that only I knew about that incident. How was it that she was able to get the help message of the exact incident 24 hours before it ever happened? Did my husband send for her to help me? My guardian angel or guide? Or was it something else? I'll never know.