EXPECTING

I got the chicken pox when I was 25 years old, and I got them bad. Around the same time a dear friend of mine was expecting her first child. As you know you should steer clear of people with chicken pox when you are pregnant. As soon as I got the all clear from my GP I rushed out to her house to visit her. I knocked on the door but there was no answer. Just as I was about to pull out of the driveway I saw my friends grandmother at the side door of the house in the billiard room. I got back out of the car & approached her but she walked away. As we hadn’t met before I called out who I was & that I just wanted to find out how Debbie was. Still there was no answer.

Later that day I got a phone call from Debbie, she was in hospital & had given birth to a boy. I told her of how I’d been out to her house but that her grandma wouldn’t talk to me. Debbie was alarmed to hear this, her mother Dianne even more so. Debbie’s grandma (her father’s mother) had not been at the house at all. But in the days leading up to the birth, Debbie & her mother had been talking a lot about Dianne’s mother who had died the year before. They talked of how they wished she was still there with them but yet they felt her presence in the house somehow. My sighting of Debbie’s grandmother gave them a lot of comfort but it distressed me. What did I see? Was I still sick & slightly delirious? Alternatively, was I hypomanic & hallucinating? I don’t know, I still can’t explain it.