Knowing...

I'm lying awake feeling like I'm going to vomit with a flutter in my chest that can only be described as the beginnings of a panic attack. I've just had a flashback of the night Andie died and can't go back to sleep.

I'm trying to think what triggered this tonight and it must have been a conversation I had with my mom earlier in the weekend. I told her that I had known Andie was not going to make it before the ambulance even got there. She was surprised that I had never shared this with her; she too knew he wasn't going to make it then, but had never shared that with me. I've never spoken it to anyone really because to admit it feels like I gave up hope somehow. It's the same reason I couldn't tell him I loved him that night- It was like admitting defeat if I told him I loved him for what I instinctively knew would be the last time. And that by somehow doing that, I would be the one to seal his fate. Not a responsibility I was willing to accept. So I held out a tiny sliver of hope, but something deep inside me just knew...

So tonight the flashback is about that night and me trying to figure out the exact moment when I knew that he was going to die. Replaying it moment by moment to see if I can pinpoint when the "knowing" came. I don't recall having a conscious thought that he was going to die but I knew it on an intuitive level. It was purely gut instinct, but I knew. It washed over me at some point. I remember when we finally got in the ambulance and I thought I should pray, but for a split second I wondered if it was worth it because I knew it wouldn't make a difference. I was already angered with God and feeling resigned to the fact that he wasn't going to help me...though that too was not a conscious thought. Just a feeling deep inside...but I prayed anyway holding on to that tiny sliver of hope cause my mind could not accept what my instinct already knew.

I had the same gut level sense of "knowing" the day I learned my father died. I had gone to school like a regular morning that day. The few days prior my dad had been having some heart problems but the doctors had sent him home- everything was going to be okay. The assistant principal came up to me in the cafeteria and told me to go get my things because my mom was coming to get me...in that moment, though no other details were given to me, I knew my dad was gone. Again, I didn't have the conscious thought that he was dead but I intuitively sensed it.

It's a feeling of deep foreboding that comes with this sense of knowing. It's painful, gut-wrenching, and literally heavy. It's something that is very hard to even put into words. It's intuitive, instinctual, primal. There is a millisecond of extreme focus and peaceful acceptance of fate when the "knowing" creeps in but then your mind takes over again, trying to will it all to be different, fighting to make the impossible possible. Your mind is the last to catch up, but your body knows, your soul knows.

Your heart knows...