Today's showing is a memory and the memory came as a dream, but I know it really happened. I woke up this morning with the premonition of death and soon found out that a friend was experiencing it. It always comes like this, whether it's for my life or for someone else's. I suppose I intertwine myself too much, or maybe we all are intertwined but most can't pick up on it.

It was a cold Saturday morning just like this one, only it was in December and I was six years old. I ran into my parents' room and jumped on the bed between them. I remember I was smiling and looked over at the pattern of the light coming through window shade. "Toothbrush," I used to call it, because it reminded me of the brush.

I leaned over and kissed my mother's belly twice: once on the left for the baby that would be Noah and once on the right for the baby that would be Sam. I did this every morning until she sentenced to the hospital about a week before they were born.

Something wasn't right this day, though. My mother's stomach growled and my father wasn't smiling. They glanced at each other in a way I didn't recognize.

"Why's your tummy so noisy?" I asked.
"Because I'm nervous," my mother replied.
"How come?"
That's when she looked at my father and took a deep breath.
"Remember last night when the phone rang really late and woke you up?"
"Yeah."
"It was Grandma. Grandpa couldn't breathe. Daddy went over to their house and Aunt Linda and Sharen were there, too. He was in the middle of giving himself his nebulizer treatment and he called out to Grandma that he couldn't breathe and he fell on the floor. The paramedics did everything they could. But he died."

I sat there still for a long moment. My mother started crying and so did my father. I had never seen him cry before.

Up until that point "death" had only been something in a story or on the news. I didn't really know it. And Grandpa had been my best friend. He used to take me to the park and let me run in the sprinklers. He'd hide Chuckles in his socks drawer for me to find. After he died, I'd go there to look but Grandma never took the time. He'd take me downstairs to play with train set and I'd watch it go around and around. I never saw it again. He gave it to my cousin.

After the funeral, when we were back in their house, I curled up and dug my face into his special chair. It was the kind that spun and rocked at the same time and we'd go on rides. Only this time he wasn't there, so I sat in it alone, and I let it sink in that he'd never hold me on his lap and sit in that chair with me again.

Up until now, I think I always thought my childhood ended when I was eight. But it didn't. It ended when I was six and realized that life comes to an end and some people never come back.