I have come to the conclusion that I am either a green-eyed cat; a creature from some Galaxy far, far away… OR I’ve had an Angel living on my shoulder since the day I was born! Nothing else explains why I have survived no fewer than seven scenarios that should have rendered me well and truly dead. Truly!
I could tell
you about all of them, but you’re probably busy doing very
important things, and besides, why would you want to spend your precious time
reading about the bizarre, super-natural experiences of some aging Gypsy Crone
you’ve never even heard of?! So, I’ll take up only as much of your time as it
will take me to tell you about just three of those
experiences.
December, 1995: It
was the week before Christmas and all through the….no, that’s not right.
It was the week before Christmas, 1995, and I was finishing my Holiday shopping
in the Pasadena Mall. Having recently suffered a lower back injury, I was
unable to walk without a cane. So, with a cane in one hand, and a large
purse stuffed with small gifts in the other, I hobbled onto an empty elevator,
for a trip to the parking garage.
Just as the elevator doors
were about to close, two young men, one tall, one short, both with the words
“If you can read this, you’re #×*$×!” written in Neon on their foreheads,
slipped into the elevator. Wearing baggy pants; oversized sweatshirts
and grins that Great White Sharks would envy, they stared at me and my cane,
and suddenly every cell in my body was screaming “Get out!” “Oh
shit!” I said out loud as I raised my cane, shoved it between the
nearly closed elevator doors, and hobbled…no, more
like gimped (“gimped” is a word, right?), okay, so
I gimped for my life. Behind me, I could hear my two would-be
assailants laughing and one saying “Oh shit is right lady!”
I was shaking from head to toe
as I walked “gimpally” down one flight of stairs and entered the large
shopping mall garage. “Are you okay?” asked a Security Guard
who, I’m fairly certain, was at least 14 years old, and appeared to be dressed
in his Daddy’s Uniform. “No…nope, not okay. No, definitely not okay”…I
babbled, then described my elevator companions. “Yup, sounds like the same
guys” Security Guard Baggy Pants said to me, as he sent an urgent Security
Guard message on his Dick Tracy Decoder Ring (well no, actually, it was his
Walkie Talkie), then he added: “Lady, it’s a really good thing you got out
of that elevator cause a woman about your age was killed there last week.
We found her body in a dumpster. Her throat had been slashed, and the two
thugs who did it match the description of the two guys in the elevator with
you!” [cue Twilight Zone Theme Music]
January 17, 1994: It
was 4:30 in the morning and, sitting at my desk in my home office, I was
putting the finishing touches on a spec script I had written for the TV series
“Frasier”.
My make-shift office consisted
of one desk, one high-back desk chair, and six 2×4’s, each six feet long, upon
which sat a computer tower (you remember computer towers, don’tcha?); a
printer; a Boom Box (please tell me you remember Boom Boxes); dozens of books,
and half a dozen potted plants in some major league terra cotta pots. So,
there I sat, typing the words “Fade Out. The End” and poof — out went the
lights. Something felt wrong — very wrong
and very dark — and a voice in my head SCREAMED “Get
UP!!!”, so I got up. I dove out of my high-back desk chair
and, as I did, I heard a thunderous CRASH…then everything started
to shake as a 7.1 Earthquake rocked the world of everybody in
Los Angeles.
From her bedroom down the
hall, my then-twelve-year-old daughter was screaming “Mommy,
help!” “I’m coming, honey” I shouted, though I doubted she
could hear me over what sounded like a freight train barreling through our
home. The walls shook and anything not nailed down was flying through the
air. I tried to get to my child, but something was blocking my way, and
in the darkness, I couldn’t see what it was.
Knowing, as all southern
Californians do, that, when in a building during an
earthquake, the safest place to be is
standing in a doorway — second only to
being in a building a few thousand miles away — I shouted to my terrified child
“Stand in your doorway” as books, dishes, and framed artwork flew
through the air. I could hear my daughter shrieking, but I couldn’t reach
her. Dinner plates had become flying projectiles and they were slamming
into my back from the open cupboards behind me. All around me everything
breakable was shattering. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face, and
I couldn’t move. I was trapped by objects that, in the total darkness, I
couldn’t even see. The noise was deafening, and the shaking of the walls
wouldn’t stop.
Suddenly I heard a neighbor
calling my name and then he appeared, flashlight in hand. Somehow, he
made his way to my daughter’s bedroom, picked her up, and carried her down the
stairs and outside, to safety, with me following close behind. Dozens of
neighbors were gathering on my front lawn and in the street. The rotten
egg smell of ruptured gas lines filled the air. A young man pulled his
Zippo lighter from his pocket and, as he flipped it open to light the cigarette
that was dangling from his lips, he was tackled from two directions, and his
lighter fell to the ground, unlit. “That’s gas, you idiot!” a
chorus of neighbors shouted.
As the first rays of dawn
peeked over rooftops, I borrowed my neighbor’s flashlight and carefully made my
way up the stairs and into my home. My living room floor was more than ankle-deep in plants, potting soil, bits and pieces of broken pottery, shattered
mirrors, and a bazillion multi-colored, jagged shards of what had been my
treasured Fiesta Ware service for six. My living room had been
rearranged – nothing was where it belonged. My cozy, over-stuffed couch
was on the wrong side of the room, with my oversized TV nesting, upside down,
on the middle cushion.
I picked my way through the
rubble, into my little office, and what I saw caused a wave of nausea too
overwhelming to control. The shelves that had stood around my desk had
collapsed, and there, in my high-back desk chair, at a 45-degree angle, was a
six-foot-long 2×4 that, had I remained seated in that chair one second
longer, would have decapitated me. [cue the Twilight
Zone Theme Music…again]
November 1975: What began
as a party ended abruptly with my death. Drugs can do that! This
time, the inner voice that could, and often did protect me
from harm, was silent and so…I died. But my death was
short-lived. Eight minutes long, to be exact and, how, on that occasion,
I was able to return to the Land Of The Living was the
strangest experience of all. So strange, in fact, that I wasn’t sure it
had actually happened. I needed proof that my ‘Divine
Experience’ really had taken place, and that’s exactly
what I got… and it was proof that no one could deny!
One minute I was alive.
The next minute I was dead. That should have been the end
of my story, but it was only the beginning. I met God. I
talked to God and God talked to me. You may not believe my experience was
real, but that’s okay because Reality is real, whether you believe it or not.
So, am I a cat who is now living the seventh of her nine allotted lives; am I a creature from some distant Galaxy, OR has an Angel been living on my shoulder for lo these many years? I don’t know the answer. That wasn’t one of the questions I thought to ask God during our Question-and-Answer Session. Oh, sorry…I neglected to mention that during those eight minutes when I was well and truly dead, I stood at the front door of Heaven and had a Question and Answer Session with God. I did, really, and I can prove it!
— Brooke Jones
Amazon Best Selling author Brooke Jones is the author of the Memoir, WHY ARE THERE MONKEYS? (and other questions for God). It is described as “Profound…Hysterically witty…Not to be missed!” — US Review of Books
The eBook, Paperback, and
Hardcover are available from online retailers and bookstores everywhere. (A
portion of every sale is donated to The Breast
Cancer Research Foundation)
For more information, please
visit http://www.WrittenByBrookeJones.com
