I was broadcasting from KBIX, in Muskogee, Oklahoma when my mother was killed. There were nights I’d find myself alone in the radio station when midnight rolled around, and I remember hearing footsteps from time to time, the opening and shutting of elevator doors, and most unsettling of all, every now and then I’d get the feeling that someone was watching me.
Then came a night a few days after my Mother's funeral when I found myself alone in the building for the first time since her passing. At midnight I picked up all my little bags of cassette tapes, CDs, written material and headed for the elevators to go home. I felt especially uneasy that night, and as I walked through the lobby to the side door, the echo of my footsteps on the old marble floor added to my apprehension.
The parking lot was well lit and I always gave it a quick once over when I opened the door. My Buick was parked nearby this particular night, and when my eyes settled on it I stopped short. I clearly saw my Mother sitting in the passenger seat, and my fear was gone the moment I thought to myself, “What the hell! It’s my Mother sitting in there, and there’s no way she’d hurt me!” So I stepped outside and took my eyes off the car for just a moment when I reached the stairway, and when I looked back up my Mother was gone.
I hustled over to the car, jerked the driver side doors open, put my things in the back and got behind the wheel in record time. I felt a presence the moment I sat down, and I didn’t waste any time starting the car. I wheeled it out of the parking lot and onto Broadway, but I didn’t stay on that road for very long. Everything’s always quiet in Muskogee that time of night, and I worked my way over to a much busier street as fast as I could. I live a short distance from the radio station, and a drive that took only a few minutes, seemed like it took forever.
My Mother used to love to ride in that car, and I believe she wanted one final ride. Then again, it could have been my mind playing tricks on me, but I truly don’t think so.
Right around that time two things happened, my vision began to fail and I started to have the same dream over and over again. In just a few weeks I went from normal vision to shadows, and the revolving dream was about my Mother. She’d be standing in Memorial Cemetery near our family burial plot, in the light of a full moon, and she appeared exactly the way I had found her the day she had been murdered … face bashed in with her eyes hanging out of their sockets. But in spite of the disfigurement, I could still make out the lost and forlorn look on her face. That vision haunts me to this day.
