You may not think this possible, but everything I am about to tell you in this overdue blog is true.

First, on the night of Wednesday, February 13th I heard a noise on the second floor of my house – an area that for the last ten years has been the exclusive domain of my late Mother, Helen Jean Paxson Casey. My mother died in this house on September 27th, 2007. While did not thing about the noise at first, the sound continued, so I had to go upstairs to check it out. While I turned on the light to the stairway and began walking upstairs, suddenly I heard the loud sound of something striking the concrete in the first floor courtyard below. Well, since I was already three-quarters of the way up the stairwell, I went to the second floor and checked in on my mother's room. I opened the door to my mother's bedroom and at first glance, I didn't see anything out of the ordinary.

But, when I opened the sliding door onto my mother's bedroom deck and looked down onto the courtyard below, I was surprised to learn what the noise was about. You see, a 9-foot wooden ladder than I purchased and had delivered to this house on the very day that my mother first moved here ten years ago somehow threw itself over the wooden rails of the upstairs deck. It seems the 9-foot ladder, which had suffered from years of weather, aging, broken rungs and - during the last two months - a broken left leg somehow, someway fell over a wooden railing one full floor to the concrete surface of the courtyard area below.


I know what you are thinking… No, I didn't actually see the poor old 9-foot wooden ladder throw itself over the wooden railing outside my mother's bedroom, but what else could have happened? There is no other explanation that makes any sense at this point. Like I said, I bought that ladder just two hours before my mother first moved in with me in this house to the day exactly one decade ago. The ladder came from Payless Cashways – a home improvement store that had been in Edmond for many, many years, but was soon to be run out of business by the larger Home Depot and Lowe's home improvement stores later that month – February,1998. Now, just tell me the Cashways story, the history, and the ladder are only a coincidence. If you have to know, I removed the wooden ladder the following morning and placed it inside a large dumpster at the large apartment complex in the next block.

That was on Wednesday, on Thursday night – February 14th, things got really spooky around here. After returning from a regularly scheduled late night walk with my two dogs, I was shocked to see my two dogs running upstairs when we came back into the house. My dogs never run upstairs after a walk, at least they have not run upstairs since my Mother died last September.


After I removed my coat, gloves, etc., I went upstairs to find my dogs scratching at the closed door of my mother's bedroom. The light wasn't on or anything, and I really didn't suspect anything strange going on – despite what had happened with the ladder the night before. After turning on the light which is located directly over the double bed, I still found nothing out-of-the-ordinary except for the fact that one of my mother's old TV pillows that's been sitting atop her double bed since the day she first moved here had fallen to the floor. My mother's black TV prop-up pillow one of those big, heavy pillows designed to aid people to sit upright while watching television in bed, so any shift in the position of one of those pillows could easily send it tumbling off the side of the bed. I didn't think anything about the pillow falling to the floor as I reached over to pick it up and return it to the top of my mother's bed – a bed which still has the original linens, the comforter, the bedspread and the pillows and covers from the night she last spent in that room January 31st, 2007. As I placed the pillow back on my mother's bed, I noticed this card on top of the pillow my mother always slept on at night.


The card is the March, 2006 funeral itinerary for the husband of my mother's absolute favorite relative, Dorothy Bonny. Dorothy is 88 years old, and still lives by herself on her working farm in Canute, Oklahoma. Dorothy had been married to Elmo Bonny – a really sensational guy – for over 50 years when he died of cancer on March, 2006 at the age of 87.


I had never seen that document before Thursday night, February 14th, 2008. My mother never said anything to me about it and I had certainly never read it before Thursday night – Valentines Day. What that funeral itinerary was doing on the top of my mother's pillow is what freaked me out. Yes, I understand that the TV pillow was probably just sitting on top of the funeral itinerary and my mother's primary pillow for a long time, and it's natural that I never saw it. Come on! How could I have never seen that program – even if it was underneath the TV pillow - lying on top of my mother's sleeping pillow before now, especially considering the number of times I have been in that bedroom the last few years. Finding the paper where it was in my mother's bedroom has some special meaning, I just don't know what it is. The funeral itinerary is telling me something, but I am clueless as to what that specific message might be. Do you have any ideas, suggestions, theories???
I emailed Dorothy Bonny's son - Jack Bonny - about this incident a couple of days ago, but he did not reply. Jack is a former Speaker-of-the-House in the Oklahoma State Legislature. Jack was a well-liked, effective, and powerful state representative from Burns Flat for several years. At the end of his political career thanks to Oklahoma's term limits laws, Jack Bonny moved to Elk City, where he farms his own land, while also farming his mother's property in Canute, Oklahoma.


Pat Casey