Here is something Sandy Downs sent by email last night, which she told me on the phone just up and fell out of her after she sat down to write something else. It is very, very difficult for human beings to relate to a visionary, which Sandy truly is. She was born one. She has been one all her life.
_________________________________________________
Since I was a small girl, 3 yrs old. I have had vivid dreams, foretelling the future. I knew that my sister was going to die when I was 3 yrs. old. My sister was in the hospital, and when the phone rang, I waited for my mothers tears, I knew she had died before the call even came. She had died.
Before my niece at 3 months even got sick, I called my sister to find out if her daughter had symptoms of what I knew would befall her. I told my sister that her daughter had to have stomach surgery, they didn’t think they had insurance for it, but it would turn out alright. She started vomiting that night, and had to have emergency surgery. They thought their insurance was cancelled due to job changes, but it turned out they had it. I predicted it all. When the same niece fell ill with a heart condition at age 5, I told my sister she was fine, there was no need for surgery. They checked the young girl, and said “Miraculously, the hole in her heart had closed.”
I was baptized at age 11, in a cold stream in Indiana in March. But I was already on a quest, long before that.
At age 10, I knew my uncle would die. I didn’t know how, but I saw death on him 3 months before he passed. I was appointed to talk to him about God, but I did not. He intimidated me. I was always ashamed of that decision after he died of a gunshot wound to his stomach. He died entering his own home through a window during a rain storm. His room mate thought he was an intruder, my uncle had merely forgotten his keys. I knew he would die. He knew too. He told his sister a week prior to his death. I had done nothing, told no one. I was young, who would believe me?
I likewise, don’t expect any of you to believe me. I thought everyone had these dreams, I thought everyone could see what I saw. I learned they did not. I learned very few people saw ahead. I learned that most of them kept it to themselves for fear of the ridicule. I learned there was ridicule. I learned it was not ordinary, and for the most part it was not acceptable to have this “gift”.
I learned that people were for the most part blind.
I entered the Sheriff’s race. It is not a matter of the Sheriff‘s race. I have always sought out to cure society of injustices. That is what I lived for. That is who I was…from early on and still now. They call me crazy, I call them blind. They say I‘m delusional, I say they are.
I thought everyone knew the same things as I did. I have been called a visionary by some people that have known me for 30 or more years. I am always ahead of our time in my thoughts, and also in my fears. I see things coming, sometimes clearly, sometimes in a fog. Nevertheless I see them. Everything from fashion to wars. From health problems to death. I see.
When my son died, I knew he was going to die. I just didn’t know how. I knew 3 months before that. I told my parents in Indiana, please come to visit now, while we are all still here. That didn’t persuade them, so I finally said, “You will be coming for a funeral. Please come now.” They didn’t believe me. They did not come.
At first, I thought it was me who was going to die. So I got all my things in order. I gave my life insurance to my daughter and prepared her to take care of the children. She also had visions of a death, she also thought it was me.
It wasn’t until 2 weeks prior that I knew it would be Preston my son who would die. I asked for a restraining order from Judge Peary Fowler and said I feared for his life, exactly 1 week prior to his death. I thought it would be at the hands of MCSO Det. Manny Cuervo. I sent him to the work site with my husband and his big brother to keep him safe and he died there. The last conversation I had with him was the night before and concerned Terri Shavo, I said that her parents should let her go. I expressed that either you believe in something after this life or you don’t . I told Preston, if they believed they should let her go, instead of her being held hostage in a body she could never use again. They should let her go, and tell her it was OK to leave them.
The day Preston died, I was working on their entries for the Florida Keys Fishing Tournament . They had weighed many big fish in and they were winning many awards. I was doing paperwork for it and getting ready to go to Big Pine in an hour or so for Mother’s Day Tea with my younger son. I felt an urgency to go to Key West, and kept asking my son John, if he needed to go for any reason. He said, “No.” I knew I needed to go to Key West but it didn’t make sense to me. I had to be in Big Pine in an hour.
I heard a yell, a gut wrenching yell from my son, the fisherman, Danny. He was screaming Preston’s name. He frantically searched for him, and I told him, Preston was in Key West. My phone rang then at that moment, and before I even picked it up, I had grabbed my keys and was heading for my car. I don’t know how it happened, but both my younger sons were in the car with me, one came straight out of the canal from swimming and only had his trunks on, no shoes. I had not even told them about my call. They knew. We all knew. My older son had told me Preston had an accident, I knew he was dead already.
As I drove to Key West, Preston said to me, “You don’t have to build on to the house Mom, now you can have my room for someone else.” I was so angry that he thought I needed his room for someone else. I thought, did I ever make him feel that way? Did he feel he was a burden? I wrestle with his words to this day.
His body arrived at the same time as we did. They wheeled him into the room, and I followed through the automatic doors. I smelled death. I mean, I smelled death. Ask a soldier and they will tell you, it has a smell. It is death and there is no mistaking it. I smelled it. His brothers begged me for reassurance that Preston was going to be alright. I told his brothers and sister in law, that Preston is not going to be alright. They need to get ready to say good-bye to him.
I had given him permission the night before to not hang on in a useless body. I had told him it was OK to go. I had told him you either believe in something after this world or you don’t. I had told him he could leave. With his hands fused together, and his organs damaged, and his body burned that he could never use it again, I knew he wouldn’t want to be here. The champion fisherman, the superb 100 ft. free diver, the track star and athlete, the mechanic…..he would find no joy in this world lying in a hospital in a vegetable state from here on. I miss him so. But he had to go. I told him it was OK.
I entered the Sheriff’s race for a reason. It was not to comfort me for my son’s passing. It was not to enact revenge on the Sheriff’s Dept. It was because my son loved the Keys. He Loved the Keys!! He loved it all! He loved the water, the fishing, the homeless, the kids, the sky, and the boats. He loved the Keys.
It is ending, the Keys as we knew it is ending. Long gone is Houseboat Row, long gone are the real conch Cruisers, long gone are the pets in the restaurants, long gone are the fishermen smoking and drinking and comparing their catch. Long gone are the local restaurants, and the locals. Long gone is One Human Family. Long gone are the rainbows, the sunsets, the artists, and the dreamers. Long gone.
I figured if I could take back the Sheriff’s Office and put it in the hands of the locals, and create the oversight committees of the locals, then slowly but surely we could get the Keys back on track. No more harassing the eccentrics, the workers, the kids, the poor, the homeless. No more jail cells for an open container, or half a joint. No more running our people out of the Keys just to make a little more room for the 2nd home residents and the posh upscale resorts that sit empty ¾ of the year. I figured, we could restore the Keys to a humane place,…. at least we could do that.
We are measured as a society by how we treat the LEAST of us, not the most successful. I have never been a respecter of persons for what they’ve accumulated. I always figured they had to squander from a lot of little folks to build up such a wealth. I always loved the worker, and so does God. He says so over and over again.
I will tell you what I know. That what has been printed on Bob Peryam is the least of what he has been accused of. I will tell you that in the Big Pine 29, 29 people went to prison for a family we name parts of Key West after. I will tell you that the MCSO Officer of the Quarter is accused of much more than burning a trailer down. I will tell you that Sonny McCoy’s friend went to prison for what Sonny McCoy was doing to Celeste Bruno. I will tell you that we are headed down a WRONG path. I will tell you that people don’t see here because they don’t want to, not because they can’t. I will tell you that the “seers” are afraid and are hiding, and that is not OK. I will tell you that there are enough left handed people in Key West to move a mountain, and a mountain needs to be moved. I will tell you that people need to start stepping up to the plate and backing these “lone rangers” trying to take their County back for them. Or it will be too late.
I will remind you of Robin Hood fighting the Sheriff of Nottingham, and I will remind you of the Braveheart movie, and I will remind you that there always is a choice. You can sit on the side and watch, or you can engage yourself and stand up. I will remind you, I am looking for my Merrymen to help. I will promise you, it can be done. I will tell you, it is not too late. It is too late, if it is only Sloan and me fighting to take back this County for you all. We don’t want it for us, for God’s sake, can’t you see by the way we live. We want it for YOU! Help us! 10% of this County wants it all for them….there are 90% of us who are willing to share it all, with all, with everyone. Please join us! Please come forward!
Sandra Downs
______________________________________________
I was not born a visionary, or if I was, it was asleep in me until it was awakened suddenly in August 1988, as if a light-switch had been thrown. From that moment, I lived day and night with a blessing and a curse, which is what being a visionary is. We see in ways that no one around us comprehends. We frighten people. Sandy’s way of perceiving is different from mine, but the end result is similar: there is no hiding from us, even as there is no hiding from ourselves. We are shown everything: the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly; and right now, the bad and the ugly are getting the most votes in the Keys. Right now. Fortunately, there still is time for the pendulum to shift, but as Sandy says so eloquently, it is up the people of the Keys to create the shift. All she and I can do is share what we see, and do what is given to us to do.
Sloan Bashinsky, non-partisan county commission candidate, District 3
Political advertisement, yeah, right, written, borrowed, approved and paid for by me