It's MothMan Festival this weekend. Wish I was back home to go.
Living in rural Mason County, in the middle of MothMan country I don't know how many "wth" moments I've had.
In 9th grade, a friend of mine was in a car accident. She was driving her dad's s10 and was thrown out the back glass. We had been super close as kids, but had grown a little apart by 9th grade. I was walking home from the bus (about 1/4 mile) and I looked over and she was walking beside me. I said "What are you doing here?" She told me "I thought I'd just walk with you a while" So we walked on for a bit and then she was gone. I found out when I got to the house that they had unplugged her life support that afternoon.
Growing up, there was a portrait of my grandmother and grandfather that hung in her house. No matter what you did, the photo was crooked - my grandfather's side was higher than my grandmother's. He had died before I was born. It used to drive me crazy and I'd spend FOREVER trying to straighten that picture. My grandmother used to laugh at me; I even tried hanging it in different places in the house. My Grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer and eventually they sent her home from the hospital because there was nothing else they could do. I stayed with her every weekend. I woke one night to see the lights on in the living room, where she had her hospital bed. I could hear her talking to someone and them answering back. I fell back to sleep and the next morning I asked her who came to visit in the middle of the night. She just smiled and told me "no one" but that my grandfather came sometimes to tell her that things were going to be alright. They would reminisce about old times and talk about what was coming.
About a month after that, my grandmother died. The wake was held at her house, the coffin in the room where I had been sleeping. Coincidentally, the same room where that photo hung. I was standing in front of the coffin and looked up and realized, the photo was straight. The same photo that had been slanted since 1972, when my grandfather died, has hung straight since that day. When I go to my mother's house, sometimes I will slide it so that it's crooked on the wall. As soon as you let go, it rights itself.