He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not, He Loves Me, He’s Gone.

The lush green grass that surrounded me was so vivid. From my peripheral vision I could see woods surrounding the grass as well as a body of water. I opened my eyes, jumped off the couch and snatched up my cell phone. I immediately sent Tony’s brother a text message. “My ancestors showed me something. You need to search anywhere where there is a lot of healthy green grass that has a pond with woods around it.” He wasn’t particularly receptive to what I told him, but I had done my due diligence and relayed my vision. The rest was out of my hands. This was only the beginning of what I was in for: unusual signs, messages, metaphysical dreams, unexplained occurrences, and premonitions. All things that have always been normal in the world I exists in. But my life, my beliefs, my spiritual path were all about to undergo a transformation I never could have imagined possible.
Destiny brought Tony and I together. He was truly my twin soul. He visited me from Boston, MA, for a week. Before leaving we made a pledge of devotion to one another. The plan entailed returning to Boston for two weeks, working, saving money, and gathering the rest of his belongings. He would come back after that time and we would begin a new chapter of our lives together, or so we thought.
Tony went back to Boston. We conversed every day and couldn’t wait for that short time to be over. But after a week the frequency of contact decreased exponentially, and I noticed an ominous shift in his thinking. Tony had served in Iraq, something that completely changed who he was. He manifested symptoms of severe PTSD. We talked, and he agreed with my perspective; a salient feature of the PTSD was suicidal ideation and psychotic symptoms. He told me there was a Veteran’s home nearby where he could reach out for help. I encouraged him to do so. After that conversation I didn’t hear from him for 3 days. One Wednesday I called the residence of his grandparents with whom he lived. His grandma answered and responded with disappointment when she heard my voice because she’d hoped it was Tony calling from my phone. She was feeling some distress given the length of time that had elapsed since she’d last seen him. We would end up keeping in touch far longer than either of us expected. Tony ended up missing for just over a month. My earnest hope was that he was too busy to make contact because he was somewhere getting the help he desperately needed.
I visited my father’s house for comfort and went for a walk by myself. The desolate road I was on was surrounded by a big field; a set of train tracks ran parallel to it. I was returning to the house when a third train whizzed by. Something was telling me to pivot. The feeling was so overwhelming I turned to look. Immediately my attention went to an orange car that read “TIGER” with an illustration of the animal. This didn’t feel arbitrary–Tony was a taxicab driver back home, and all his coworkers called him “Tony the tiger, the taxicab driver.” Hot tears blurred my vision as I looked up at the sky and blurted out “Thank you God” over and over.
That night as I closed my eyes, something uncanny occurred. I heard a man’s voice call my name; the voice so transparent and audible it could have been a person right next to me. I lurched up and peered around but there was no sign of anyone. I thought nothing more of it, sank back into my pillow, and fell asleep. About a week later I had a vivid dream about Tony. We were in an apartment on a lake. I was standing in the kitchen and Tony was walking on the deck. He motioned for me to come out. When I walked onto the deck my shoes got wet. The deck was unstable. In fact, it was sinking, and Tony was trying to draw my attention to it. That’s all I remembered from the dream, but it would be enough.
There was a myriad of peculiar things that occurred during the month that Tony went missing. All of which I thought were signs from God to alleviate my pain. The days became harder to stomach as they passed without any news of Tony. At this stage I was still clinging onto hope because I knew how much Tony loved me, and that was enough to keep me going.
It had been exactly one month and still no word from Tony. That afternoon I was gripped by an intuitive feeling that something was wrong, so I called his grandma. She informed me that earlier in the morning an unidentified body had been found in a pond roughly a mile from her home. The police had assured her that based description, it wasn’t Tony. That was the first time it occurred to me that Tony could have volitionally ended his own life. That nauseating feeling stayed with me throughout the day. I tried to ease it by going to the beach. I sat there for an hour in the evening, praying. At some point I started to pace in the sand. I lifted my head up and there he was, sitting on the breakwater rocks, roughly 200ft from the shore. He was opaque and translucent for me to see, but I could see the colors of his clothes. There was a tranquility to his presence as he smiled at me. It lasted all but a few seconds; in a blink of an eye he was gone. I just stood there, waiting for him to come back, but he didn’t. I wasn’t confused by what happened; I just reveled in the spiritual energy that he gave me.
I got home and went into my room–my phone started to ring. It was Tony’s grandma. My hart thumped so hard I through it might smash out of my ribcage. I answered, my voice quavering. “Hello?” The inflection of his grandma’s voice matched mine, “Charity. I have some bad news honey.” I dropped to my knees, screaming “No, no, no!” into my pillow. “It was him honey,” she revealed. “The body was Tony’s.”
Tony lost his battle with PTSD. He committed suicide by drowning in the ice-cold water, and the cruel ice would not release him from the underworld until it melted.
Tony has changed my life in ways I never believed possible. I miss him immensely. I wasn’t angry with his chose; that was out of my hands, nor do I regret the time we spent together. I smile when I ponder the memory of having seen him at the beach; he was with me that day, and that realization is so empowering.
In hindsight, I wouldn’t change a thing; I was loved by him and I loved him in return. To experience and know this unconditional love is what sets this heart free in times of painful memories. This has been my sturdiest test of emotional endurance to date. I can now tell others, “That happened to me also; you’re not alone.”

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