When my father died, it left my mother with 4 children who ranged in ages from 18 months to 14 years. There were
three boys and me. My oldest brother was unprepared for what he felt life had dealt him. He became lost in the 60's.
Even today, he listens to 8 track tapes. He has a '55 Chevy...a GOOD LOOKING 55 Chevy, I might add. He has worn the same
rebellious hairstyle he grew immediately after Dad's death. Dad would NEVER have permitted the long "bowl cut" that my brother
has chosen as his signature hairstyle. Instead, he would have awakened one morning to find one part of his head clean shaven.
My dad liked cutting hair, you see. And he had a devilish side to him sometimes. He used to call my Aunt Ruth and ask
her in a disguised voice, if his cow was in her garden. She always sweetly told him that no, she didn't have a garden, and Dad would ALWAYS
say, "that's ok lady! I don't have a cow!" and hang up. Aunt Ruth never figured out it was Dad on the phone. Dad would dance around in
glee that it kept working. He loved playing practical jokes.
My youngest brother was only 18 months old when Dad died. My mother was unable to handle the pressures put upon her by
having four fatherless children and a construction company to run. She just went into a shell that she never came out of. Unfortunately, there
were children who needed taking care of. We took care of each other. Being the only girl, it fell upon me to do things like change diapers,
help little ones with homework, order take-out for dinner, bandage knees, and basically raise the baby. Mom helped, but far too much of it was left to me, and I was just a
kid myself. I didn't know what I was doing.
Luckily, I didn't kill John in the process. He grew up quite nicely, actually. He was a fashion trendsetter. That's what we called him, anyway.
If he wore something a couple of times, everyone started wearing it. If his hair was short, everyone's hair was short. He was very popular and
very cute...and very short! He was only 5'5". I was taller than he was!
He was a fairly normal guy. Liked sports, but not the average sports. He could pitch a baseball with deadly accuracy, but couldn't tolerate the way the
idiot parents acted, so he only played one season. I stood behind the batter's cage during one game and talked to him...telling him to concentrate on my voice and to ignore everything else out there
that people were yelling. He pitched a no hitter.
He was on an ice hockey team years before it became popular here. We had a skating rink next door to our house when growing up, so he could skate with the best of them, having been taught before he was three years old. When he was barely
able to peek over the edge of the ping pong table, he could beat all of us older kids. He used to hit us with those rubber tipped bow and arrows when he
was small enough to pass as a cupid in his own right...diapers and all! We couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, but he could hit running targets! When he was a bit older, he started pinch hitting for the professionals at Magic World doing their BMX bike stunts. He wasn't old enough
to work, he just went there to see the show and could do most of what the paid performers could do, and they became friends. John was like that. He went to UT to take diving lessons
when he was barely in high school. The coaches saw raw talent in him. I can remember when I taught him how to swim. He was 3. We talked Mom into coming to the pool one evening. She had no
idea he could swim. He climbed up on the diving board and said "Watch this, Mom!" and off he went. Mom about fainted. She couldn't swim, so she knew SHE couldn't save him! There was no
need for a rescue however. He came swimming up to the other end of the pool, having gone almost the entire length of it underwater. She was too weak to drive for quite a while. :) Motherhood
is like that sometimes.
I never could imagine John grown up. I used to wonder about that. I could see myself and my other two brothers grown up, but never John. I used to think it was only because he
was the baby, and we were all so used to treating him as such. Now I wonder. I think that I was being given a hint. I think it was one of the ways that GOD was trying to let me know to
prepare myself.
He wrecked on August 5, 1982. I can remember the drive to the hospital, some 40 miles away. It seemed like it took hours to make the trip. Mom was moving in slow motion. I drove. I drove as fast as my car would
go. I got there in about fifteen minutes after picking up Mom. It normally takes me about 40 minutes to make that trip. He was in the hospital in a coma for 50 days before he died. He could hear me when I spoke to him
though. I have absolutely no doubts of that. On my birthday, I went into him in the ICU and told him, touching one of the few places that didn't have broken bones..."John, today is my birthday. I know that you can hear me,
but I would like for you to squeeze my hand or wiggle your toes or something so everyone will know you hear me."
I was holding his hand at the time, in anxious anticipation of getting a little squeeze from this first born of "my" children. I got it. Not only did he squeeze my hand, he wiggled his whole body lifting his entire right leg off the bed to show me.
I thought he was going to try to get up and walk! I knew then that he heard me. He seemed to respond best to my voice and my mother's voice. We sounded very much alike, so he might have not realized that it was me instead of her. Who knows? But I was
always his protector. I was like having another mother to him, so I think he knew the difference.
When it became apparent that he was not going to be able to make it, the whole family went into the intensive care unit and told him goodbye. Then they all left. My mother and my other brothers turned and looked at me and my older brother asked me
if I would stay with him until he died. None of us wanted him to be alone, but none of us could stand the thoughts of seeing someone we'd spent a lifetime loving take their last breath.
I couldn't leave him alone. It just wasn't in me. I had to stay there.
The doctors told us it would only be a matter of hours. I sat next to him for three days and nights. He wasn't supposed to live that long...they'd only given him minutes.
On the third day I kept catching myself singing to him. It was the oddest thing. I would be sitting there quietly with him and the next thing I knew, I would be humming. The song wasn't familiar to me, not really. When I realized what I had been singing LATER, after he'd already
passed away, I was amazed. Our pastor came in to check on us, and I told him some of the events that had taken place. I told him how I'd actually had a vision and had seen John's memorial page in the high school annual.
I told him how I hadn't been alone at the time of the vision, and who had been with me. She didn't know what had happened, but she knew that something had happened. She said she could tell I was looking at something, but there was nothing to look at where we were! She asked me about it immediately, but I couldn't tell her, it was too terrible.
The vision was in black and white. That was somewhat surprising to me. I would have thought visions would be in full color, but this one wasn't.
It was like someone had held a black and white photograph in front of my eyes. I actually looked at the vision. I saw the birch trees along the road where he wrecked, I saw a picture of him and there was a beautiful poem on the page. The memorial
page that they actually created for him in the yearbook is amazingly close to the one I saw. I told this to the Preacher. He told me to take comfort in the fact that I'd seen it. God knew that I would need to have this information for some reason. He told me that
a few people actually did have the gift of prophesy, and that I had opened a door to that source of energy, and to not fear it. I had never been afraid of it. I mourned what it foretold, but I didn't fear it. I had seen the vision in late May, just a few months before he wrecked.
It changed how I interacted with him. I knew he was going to die, and I wanted to make certain that he got his life straight and his act together. He did. I was very proud of the enormous growth he showed in that short summer.
It was at about 4 in the morning going into the fourth day when I decided that I needed to leave to go home and change my clothes and brush my teeth. I had been sitting round the clock with John for 3 days, and had only left him to go to the bathroom. I had told him repeatedly
that it was alright for him to leave us. He could pass. We would survive and none of us wanted him to suffer anymore. He was free to go. And then I would hear myself singing the melody that still haunts me to this day.
I hurriedly told my Aunt Gladys that I was going to run home, that I would be back very soon. I had barely walked into my apartment when the phone rang. He was gone. It was September 27, 1982. He had lived in a coma for 50 days.
I felt like I had failed him. I didn't stay with him. I left him alone. Aunt Gladys was there instead of me. I should have been the one to be there with him. I had let him down in his greatest hour of need. I had a very tough time
living with that, until one day the radio started playing the very song I had caught myself humming to him in the intensive care unit that last day of his life. It was an old Elvis Presley song.
I don't know the title of it, but it has the most beautiful melody. As I intently listened to the words of the song, I discovered that this song was about a man who was in the hospital. He awakened just in time to realize he was dying. His wife was sitting next to him asleep, her head laying
by his side on the bed. He looked at her and started to awaken her, and realized that he didn't want her to have to see him go. He didn't want that to be the last memory she had of him. So, he took a pen and paper and wrote this down for her.
These were the words:
"Softly....I will leave you softly...for my heart would break if you should wake and see me go..."
He hadn't wanted me to see him die. He thought that would be too difficult on me. He was right. I don't know if I could have taken seeing that sweet young man take his last breath.
He had been sending me a message, but I had been too caught up in my sorrow and sense of duty to him to notice it. I must have sung that melody at least a hundred times that day. It was playing non-stop on my internal
radio! He had wanted it that way. He wanted me to leave, and just as soon as I did, HE left, and for a far better place.
He was only seventeen. He would be very happy to know that he has a namesake. John Jeremiah Barnes was born on May 26, 1998, sixteen years after I had that vision. He has my hands, and walks on his tip toes just like his namesake. We're nuts about him! John would have been, too.