Two More Dreams

Last night, I was fortunate to have two dreams about Kacie.

In the first one, I was pulling out of a gas station when something caught my eye. I turned around and most of the station was trimmed in orangish reddish brown. I soon realized that this was Kacie's favorite color and then I woke up.

This second one was a little better. I was in a large room and there were a lot people Kacie's age, mid twenties, apparently having a party. I noticed that in the center of the room was the turntable that Kacie recently bought and we now have in her room. She walked over to me and handed me a record that she wanted played. She didn't say a word and she had no expression. She appeared to be maybe 6 or 7 years old. I put it on the turntable and inserted a tape into the unit to record the song. It began playing "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" by Gladys Knight and the Pips. This was a big hit forty years ago. Suddenly a small dog ran across the room and jumped on the record as it was playing. I then woke up. I believe it was one of those long wiener dogs which I had as a kid.

Gary

Name Change?

After going through many of Kacie's writings, I've discovered another curiosity. She changed the spelling of her name on various occasions.

When Kacie was born, her name appeared as "Casey " on the birth certificate. But several years later when she was still very young, we changed the spelling to "Kacie." Nancy felt that the original spelling was actually a boy's name and that we had made a mistake. So her name was legally changed. When Kacie went to kindergarten she signed her name on her artwork as "Kacie" and this did not change until around her senior year of high school and into college. We have a rather large collection of her school papers and occasionally she would write her name as "Casey." On one of her college papers which she had signed "Casey," her professor actually circled her name and questioned her about the spelling.

Does anyone have any idea as to why she would revert to the original spelling?

Thanks,

Gary

Tower of Terror

Kacie's mother won't be too happy when she sees that I posted this story but it really happened and it's classic Kacie.

When she was about 10 or 11, we took her to OrlandoFla. to see all of the parks. At the end of our vacation we visited MGM Studios. We spent the day there and saw all of the attractions and ate everything in site. When it started to get dark there was only one more attraction-the Tower of Terror. This ride takes place in a very high haunted house, maybe twelve stories or so. The victims get in an elevator that takes them to the top floor, the doors suddenly open and the elevator goes into a free fall to the ground. The descent is so fast that you're actually weightless for a few seconds. Kacie and I had heard all about the above and I was terrifed but she was just as cool as could be.

Before we go on with the story, here's a little background information. If you knew Kacie when she was a little girl then you'll understand. She had a huge appetite for such a little kid and as a result she often had an upset stomach which caused her to have really bad gas. Long trips in the car with her were real endurance tests. She embarassed us many times with her "accidents" but the Tower of Terror was the worse.

On with the story. As we entered the haunted house we were taken into the library where we had to wait for the elevator to take us to the top floor. There must have been fifty people packed into this room like sardines. We were literally standing there shoulder to shoulder with no space between us. The doors in the library were slammed shut after we entered and the only escape was the elevator. It was unbearably hot and there seemed to be little oxygen in the room. When the aroma first hit me I thought I would pass out. I looked around the room and the faces of all were filled with desperation and agony. I looked down at Kacie and she had a big smile on her face. Another "accident." I was composed until a young Hispanic boy yelled out with a deep accent"who cut the cheese?" I lost control and could not stop laughing, which was rather embarassing because I was the only one there with a sense of humor. The elevator seemed to take forever, but when the doors opened there was a mad rush to get inside. The ride was just as terrifying as I thought it would be but Kacie took the whole incident in stride.

The first time I met her...

I just thought I'd share the very mundane story about how Kacie and I first met. 

My friend Mandy got me a job at Roots Natural Market when I was maybe 16. Kacie was working there and was already casual friends with Mandy. I was super shy because I didn't know anything about natural food and was really intimidated by all the organic tree-huggers around me, so I don't think Kacie and I had a REAL conversation until this one day that I'm thinking of...

I didn't get my driver's license until I was 18, so for all of my high school years I had friends driving me everywhere. One day, Mandy had to leave work early, and she had been my ride that morning. So I was frantically trying to get a hold of my mom, when Kacie asked me where I lived. I told her Ellicott City, and it turned out we lived like 10 minutes away from one another. 

She drove me home that night and I remember thinking her car was very cool. It had stickers all over the back, and I think that was when she was hanging Mimi's silver necklace from the mirror, rather than wearing it. She also smoked....which all 16 year olds think is cool.

It still makes me laugh to think that I have been friends with her for all these years, and that it all started in that hell-hole Roots. (I know she still harbors a genuine hate for the store's owner Jeff Kauffman)

Incidentally....Roots was also where I met Jeff. He was always called "grocery boy" and never really spoke when I was around, lol...but he was fun to play Balderdash with, and Kacie seemed to like him a lot....so I thought he was ok.

hospital

When Kacie passed her parents allowed me to go on her laptop and find all the pictures she had and put them onto a cd for them and others. One of the strangest and most amazing things that I found was her desktop picture. It is a beautiful and peaceful picture as you can see above. I found the picture saved on her computer and the title the picture is saved under is "hospital".... Why would this picture have been called that? Isn't that kind of crazy? I also at first felt a little weird opening her computer but when i first opened the computer there it was...Kacie had a picture of her and i opened on photoshop that she had never closed. that made me feel a little better about it. This "Hospital" picture is beautiful and I hope thats where Kacie is now.

kacies things

 

these were the covers for the records that Gary was talking about in Kacie's curiosities. She had taken photos of them and put them on her computer. 

kacie email quotes

these are little pieces of emails kacie wrote to me....

"today i was watching "the amazing lives of billionaires" when i drifted off into my own elaborate daydream of you and i lounging on the french rivera. i had just closed a prosperous marketing deal (as a single and independent woman) and had afforded us a quite extravagant vacation together."

"all  i want is house in md and a condo in ocean city. is that too much to ask. godddd"

"i want a chimichanga"

gary's stories

for some reason Gary's blogs are not showing on the main page. We are going to try to fix this asap! In the meantime please click on Gary New on the side bar under contributors. He has two blogs in there. Enjoy!

yay!

I am so excited people are coming and posting comments and memories. This is a great way for us all to communicate together, since most of us all live far apart from each other.

Here is a pic from Halloween 2006, Kacie and I were "Thelma and Loise" the little scarecrow is my brother Michael. She always came with me to my dad's house on halloween to watch my 2 little brothers get ready and trick or treat a little bit. Then after that we would go out to our own halloween parties. She always was a part of my family too.

Always Free-styling

I had been longing to have a dream about Kacie since she had passed. When she was here I always had dreams about her and I doing silly and stupid things but, when she passed it was as if my ability to see her in my unconscious died with her. That was until about two weeks ago, when I finally saw her in my sleep.

In my dream, I was with some other people at some kind of outside concert. All the sudden Kacie appeared there, and we started talking about where she was and how happy she was. She also told me how happy she was for me that I had found a new job and that I would be moving soon. The people I was around in my dream started to ask me who I was talking to because there was no one there that they could see. Kacie could only be seen by me and she thought it was funny, so she started free-style rapping. Which involved her rapping about the people around me and making fun of them as always. I, of course, started cracking up in my dream and the people around me thought I had lost my mind. 

I know that there was a reason for that dream, and that she was really there for that brief moment in time. It was the only dream I have had of her to date and though I long for more moments like that with her, I am grateful for the few minutes we had together in my sleep because I know she is ok and is here with me, with us all always.

Not a dream...but a moment I knew she was there...

I was unpacking and decorating my new house the other day. My sister was with me.

One of the first things I took out of a box was the small, gold-framed picture of Kacie in her wedding dress, given to me by Amanda and Sarah. I put it on the mantle above the fireplace in the kitchen so that it was nearby while I unpacked boxes and boxes  of dishes and cutlery (some of which once belonged to Kacie). 

As I continued unpacking, my sister called my attention to the mantle. Without realizing, I had placed a set of silver candle sticks on either side of the photo. My sister said, "you made a little shrine." I laughed and told her that I hadn't even realized I had done it. I then went to move the candlesticks, thinking people would probably think I was a nutjob when they walked into my kitchen. But my sister stopped me.

She said, "don't move them...Kacie would love knowing someone has a shrine built to her." I laughed so hard. It was such a true statement and so encompassed the humor that I know Kacie still possesses. I knew she was looking right at that thing thinking, "God, I have Larissa COMPLETELY wrapped around my finger. Now how can I make her get mommy a little Powerhouse Sandwich?"

I ended up moving the make-shift shrine to my bedroom, on a shelf by my desk. It now consists of that photograph, along with the one of us dressed as saloon-girls in Ocean City, and one of us from her wedding. It also has the little fisherman we won in an arcade in OC.

I go to bed; she's there. I wake up; she's there. She'll always be. 

DREAM 1

I have had several dreams about Kacie since she has passed. The first few were all about the hospital. That the doctors did something wrong and she would have made it. They were very sad dreams that I often woke up in tears to. It was not until recently that I had a happy dream with Kacie. She visited me. I don't remember where the dream took place but I was sitting on the curb of a sidewalk and Kacie showed up. She sat down with me and I was holding her so tight and hugging her. Someone else was there too. Standing above us in the street. We were laughing so hard. In the dream I knew Kacie wasn't alive anymore. Kacie knew she wasn't alive anymore. She told me how happy she was that she didn't have to work anymore. Then somehow I woke up. It was sad but made me smile too.