My first real memory...

Ok, so maybe not so much my first real memory, but my first real significant event in something that I remember but have never really been able to explain.

When I was still in school [like not out of HS, still living at home school] my grandfather died.  It was the middle of the night, and everyone was in bed asleep.  For whatever reason, I jolted awake from a sound sleep, pulled the covers over my head, and started crying [bawling really, truth be told].  I remember saying something along the lines of "Oh, grandpa!" while I cried.  I didn't know why I was doing it or how I knew that he was gone, but I knew it as sure as the tears rolled down my face that he had died.

Probably 2 minutes later I heard the phone ring in my parents room and my dad's muffled answer, and shortly after that my mom speaking in muffled tones.  I don't know if she was talking on the phone or responding to dad, but shortly after they came into my room to officially tell me he was gone.

Apparently he had sat down in his favorite chair to watch the news like he did every night, their poodle Muffin had jumped up in his lap as she usually did, and he closed his eyes.  [Now, in my family, to watch TV with your eyes closed is pretty standard procedure.  I mean really, I think we are all born with off switches in our asses.  The sad thing is that my grandfather wasn't even related by blood...so this means it was a contagious thing even back then!]  When grandma was ready to call it a night, she got up to take out the dog and wake up grandpa so she could drag him off to bed like she did every night.  It was then that she discovered he'd passed away in his sleep as he sat in that arm chair with the dog.

To this day I don't have any idea what it was that woke me up, or how I knew that he was gone.  It's not like in the movies where he would have been standing at the end of the bed telling me his final goodbyes while I was still too groggy to process that he was standing in my bedroom.  What I am sure of is that I just knew...now to find out how.....

Jewell  =)