holidays

An Assignment for a Night

Podcast link

 

Here I am hovering over my assignment for the night of October 31, 2024. My assignment was to make sure Tom makes it through the night. Sometimes I wonder, how are these assignments passed out? What spirit is assigned to who and why? Or is it just a random drawing? This is something that will never be revealed to the spirit army.  

From my orders I see that Tom is a male over eighty years old. He was in his mother’s womb when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Tom is living a typical American life. He was never famous or well known. Just one of the millions who try to do best with what they must encounter in their life. Tom was drafted into the army in 1964. He was very fortunate he did not have to experience the pain of war. He was assigned to Germany and the other seven he was drafted with went to Viet Nam. Tom always wonders why that happened and thought about that throughout his life. Why was he so fortunate? Tom did have some difficult times in his life though. Tom had to experience the hurt and pain of a divorce. Over five years of unemployment was hard and very stressful.  However, all in all, he has been very blessed during his eighty years on this earth. 

As I started my assignment, I noticed that Tom fell asleep very fast. No tossing and turning for Tom. Lights out, nighty night. His nights are full of dreams. He almost started dreaming immediately. Being a spirit I have the benefit of hearing and seeing subconscious and conscious activity. Can’t hide anything from me. 

His first dream was about Sandra. She was his first female attraction. They went through school together, from kindergarten through high school. Because of religious conflicts Tom started pulling away and after high school they went their separate ways and lost all contact. Fifty years later Tom had a dream. Sandra came to her and said. “Tom we were meant for each other. Our lives would have been totally different than what is has been”.  This woke Tom up with a start and finally after a week Tom decided to research the internet looking for some information.  

He had to go to high school alumni newsletters to acquire her married name and doing the search he discovered that Sandra died three days before he experienced the eye-opening dream. WOW! This convinced Tom that spirits and living do have on occasions contact between them. Since that experience Tom is convinced, there is time after life on earth. 

Now the time is around one o’clock in the morning. That eighty-year-old bladder says it is time for attention.  

After a couple of minutes of attending to bodily functions Tom returns to bed and immediately falls back to sleep. The next dream is about Viet Nam. Wait a minute, Tom was never in Viet Nam! This dream was through the eyes of a sergeant, and they were in a firefight with the Viet Cong. A troop crawls over to him and says, “Sarge, we can’t return fire because the Viet Cong is using civilians as shields, what should we do?” “They are slowly killing or wounding us.” After some tortious thoughts the Sargeant commands shoot them and kill those bastards hiding behind the human shields. Was this Tom or do we live parallel lives and that was a parallel life speaking and somehow the signals were sent to the wrong parallel life. The dream was through the eyes. I never saw what face I had. Mine or someone else’s? The name Sarge was used, not Tom. One will never know who it was.  

Three o’clock in the morning and the bladder is demanding some attention. Tom does what is demanded by his bladder but this time he does not go back to sleep. Coming back to bed he begins to toss and turn. He finally starts thinking about his latest project of creating video podcasts. Just before bed Tom was working on combining sound with photos or clipart and didn’t figure it out before bedtime so now some time had to be spent thinking about this obstacle. Tomorrow he will see if his options work out.  

Finally, he falls back to sleep and dreams about his near-death experience in February 2023. Tom experienced something unusual during that time. In his own thoughts he thought he took his last breath and went somewhere. He likes to say that he was in the waiting room waiting to go to time after death or return to life on earth. During that time, he experienced something out of this world. That was peace, total peace. A feeling he has never felt in his life before and has not felt since. Then the surgeons removed the blood clot and Tom returned to life on earth. Tom had a large blood clot between the lungs and the survival rate was 3 to 5%. Tom was one of the survivors. This dream was an attempt to experience that great feeling he had. Sorry, it did not work. 

Bladder calls again and then back to dreams. This was a Halloween dream since it was Halloween yesterday. It was a scary dream. Tom and his wife were in an old-fashioned streetcar, and someone came on and did something bad. The men on the streetcar started fighting with him and savaged him, tearing him up and mutilating him. He ended up with this gelatin-like substance you see in jars of pickled pigs’ feet. This nightmare was so bad it woke him up with a start. At that time, it was 7:30 in the morning and time to take his blood thinner medication and start another day.  

In summary, this was an interesting assignment. It was more interesting than I anticipated. Tom has led an interesting and full life. Tom is over eighty and knows that he is near time after life. It may be ten days from now or ten years. He has loss his fear of death from experiences in his life especially his near-death event. Now I must go to my next day assignment. Spirits do not sleep. We do not need sleep.  

Ramblings Magazine Issue #5 Podcast

Ramblings Magazine Issue #5 Podcast

Ramblings Magazine Issue #5 PDF file

Hello Ramblings Magazine reader! Welcome!  

This is a podcast of the fifth issue of Ramblings Magazine.  

The Headings are: 

Memories of Faith. 

Comments on Christmas and Holidays. 

What’s Next? 

Cars in My Life. 

A Good Leader. 

No Dream Job for Me. 

I Was Named After? 

I Don’t Have a Pet. 

Life is Fun. 

Something I Missed. 

Decision. 

The Lottery and Me. 

Complaints, Complaints, Complaints. 

Heights. 

Vintage Computer. 

Cleaning Out Files. 

I Avoid the Kitchen. 

Memorial Day May 27, 2024

Today, the one day in the year that we remember the ones who have fallen for the freedoms and life we enjoy every day of the year. They are the ones that stepped up and fought for this country and made the final sacrifice. So, in your busy schedule of enjoying the freedoms and comfort, take a moment to remember the ones who gave you this gift of freedom and security.

Mother’s Day May 12,2024

Today is Mother’s Day and a couple of days ago I realized that it has been over forty years since mom passed away. I was in her body for nine months. She nourished me, kept me warm and protected me while I was just growing inside her. I am sure I created her a lot of pain since she commented to me that I was a large baby.

From birth until my twenties, she fed me, protected me, taught me many things about living and life. As I look back at my life, I was a handful during my young years. One time while standing in the grocery store behind this lady. The lady turned around and said to me, “you little snot!”. My mother asked her what the problem was, and the lady replied. “Your son just pinched me on the butt!” I then received the lesson that you don’t pinch ladies’ butts.

The teenage years were very difficult for me which today I still do not know why. I was angry at the world and didn’t like myself. I took everything for granted and gave my mother many trying times in those years. I got involved with the wrong crowd of teenagers and was very fortunate I didn’t get arrested or paid long term for any deeds we did. My mother continued to love me and never left my side.

When I was drafted into the army, she faithfully wrote me a letter every week If it wasn’t for the letters from mom, I would have received very few letters from home during military times. I had very few friends at that time. I am the type of person that does not attempt to continue a friendship.  

Coming home from the military my parents welcomed me back into their home and allowed me to live there until marriage came into my life. I did have to pay room and board while I lived there though. It was good for me because I needed to realize in this world nothing is free. Mom loved me just a much as she did when I was young.

Through marriage, a divorce, living alone mom was always beside me. Her love never faulted. I now regret that I took this love for granted and I wish I would have done more and showed more appreciation for this everlasting love. I am sure mom is looking down at me now and saying, “Tom, I still love you”.

Mom, I love you. I am sorry it took me so long to realize how much I love you.  

Camping Tales

When I was Young the exciting thing to do during the summer school vacation was to sleep outside between the houses or in the back yard. Two or three of the neighborhood kids would have a campout. It was spooky and scary staying outside with no parents nearby. Of course, this was before your parents had to be concerned about rampant crime and many things could be done without that fear.

My next camping experience was after I started work full time and some co-workers were campers and they would invite me to go with them to camp up in the mountains. Fishing and camping over the weekend. What an experience. I never did like sitting around the campfire though. It seemed like the smoke from the fire always followed me and my eyes would burn, and my clothes would retain that smell of smoke for a long period.

My next camping experience was during basic training. You received a shelter half and you had to find a buddy so the shelter half could be combined to make a pup tent. The army didn’t call it camping though, they had their own name, it was called bivouac. Then In Germany they had maneuvers and had these large tents that held eight or ten troops. I can’t remember what kind of tent they called them.

My final tale was after I was married and had two sons. We had friends that had a van, and I became enthused about a camping van. I bought a delivery van from the company I worked for and converted it to a camping van. The kids would sleep outside in a tent and the adults slept in the van. It was a fun time of my life. Unfortunately, I became divorced, and the budget could not afford a van and camping.

After my life became more stabilized, we occasionally went camping. I would rent a RV for the weekend or the week. It was fun, but I did not enjoy driving the wide RV and the length of the RV. I learned to take a tranquilizer before I started the trip. It was fun and enjoyable though and it gave me many good memories.

My camping days are over now.

Daily writing prompt
Have you ever been camping?

Easter Thoughts

Here it is the Saturday before Easter. Dee and her granddaughter Danielle are busy in the kitchen making Easter pie. It is an Italian tradition to have Easter pie for the Easter meal. It is basically sausage, eggs, flour and a crust. We bought twenty dollars of ricotta cheese yesterday and Danielle is bringing the sausage and eggs. How many pies will they make? Too early to tell. I would guess four or more.

Reflecting on my past Easters. I was born and raised a Catholic. I remember the forty days of Lent. No eating meat on Fridays. During Lent having to fast, the last two meals could not be more than breakfast. You were supposed to give up something for lent. Just like making a New Years resolution. I gave up on both and no longer even think about them. Stations of the cross every Friday during lent. You were reminded many times you were a sinner, and it was a job to get to heaven. Dressing up for Easter service and a family meal after. The churches Easter guidelines have eased up quite a lot.

The Easter Bunny was around with the Easter egg hunt. You had to hard boil the eggs and then color them. Does anyone do that anymore? All I have seen is the plastic-colored eggs. Surely some of the eggs were hidden so well they weren’t found until the middle of summer.

Easter has become commercialized so much these days and the real meaning of Easter is becoming an afterthought. I just saw that the president just banned religious-themed designs from White House Easter egg art contest. So many American traditions are on someone’s agenda to change or remove them.

ANYWAY!

Inserted after our Easter Dinner. I am so blessed.