Sometimes you just have a feeling about things. You know something seems a little “off.” Maybe you leave for work a couple of minutes later than usual and miss an accident. Maybe you suspect someone isn’t quite what they seemed, and you find out you were right all along.

These Redditors had the same feeling about their parents, and they were right. Here are their stories:

1. Mending fences

This is a more recent one. Past two years I have been having this feeling that my mother or father was about to pass away, and as the days got closer and closer to 2018, I decided to act on those fears. At the time I was living and working over-seas, and had a very bad relationship with my father. My sister also had an even worst relationship with him….Well, around this time last year I moved back to the USA to (above many other things) make an attempt at mending our relationship and to work hard to get my sister on board…And that feeling of dread that I would never talk to him again, kept getting stronger and stronger..Eventually, earlier this year, we all did become closer. My father remarried at the age of 65 ( i couldnt attend the wedding but my sister did) and for a second I kinda felt that maybe I was just acting on weird impulses…I talked to him right before his honeymoon to Jamiaca, and he sounded excited and giddy as a kid and that is mostly because he had NEVER traveled outside the USA and was deathly afraid of Airplanes…

That was the last time I talked to him. He passed away 2 weeks later to unknown causes.

2. Remember to say “I love you”

My brother and dad lived in a different state, and my brother was in the hospital recovering from an accident.

My first weird feeling was when I was booking the flight to see him and I was considering cancellation insurance. “What if something happens to my dad and I have to fly out sooner?” I shrugged it off. My dad was doing fine.

Two weeks later, my brother tells me that my dad was visiting and went home early because he had evidently caught something and wasn’t feeling well. I got a really bad feeling and called him. It went to voicemail– he did say he was going to bed early and it was about bedtime for him. I said I heard he wasn’t feeling well and wanted to check in, and that I really really loved him. I felt weird, but my dad would’ve been royally PISSED if I called 911 to his house because he was under the weather and decided to sleep it off. I decided to wait until the morning.

Morning comes. Nothing. My brother sent his friend over. No answer. Friend goes in the house. My dad had passed away.

I wish I had called, it just didn’t SEEM that serious and I have a penchant for overreacting. The last thing he told my brother was, “I’ll be fine, I’m just going to bed”.

The thing that got me was the voicemail. I looked through his messages. Mine was read. If nothing else, I know he listened to that voicemail. One of the last things he heard was me telling him I loved him.

Edit: Thank you for all of the kind responses. My dad passed from a heart attack, according to the coroner. It didn’t sound like anyone could have helped even if they had found him right after it happened — the coroner said, “It seemed sudden and not like he suffered at all”. And if nothing had happened yet, he probably would’ve sent them away anyway because of his “I’ll be fine” attitude.

3. Practicing eulogies

This year has been a big one for me. Since January, I had a strong feeling one, if not both of my parents would die this year, and that this year was would one of great change. I found myself, often in the shower for whatever reason, practicing eulogies for both of them. I brought it up to my dad and he convinced me to think less on it. In March, my mom started acting very aloof, almost lost at points, would spend hours in the bathroom. Turns out, she had stage 4 brain cancer, which we found out about in April. She slowly slipped away throughout the summer and finally passed away in August. Two weeks later my dad’s brother had massive strokes and died as well. In the midst of this, my dad was also working hard to sell his 20yr old company, which he managed to do before mom passes. On his first day of retirement, he started having heart attacks, got a stent that failed a couple weeks later and sent him in to get a double bypass surgery, which had he made it out of. A week before my mom’s service, my girlfriend, my partner for four years who I would spent my life with, dumped me because the pressure between us had gotten too much. Now it’s just me and my dog living across the country from everyone I know. Dad is talking about traveling the world. There’s a strong chance I am going with him now. It’s been a f*cking trip…

4. Panic attack

My pregnant mom picking me and sis home from school, usual. Lived in a one bedroom home with Mom, Dad, and older sis in a rough neighborhood. We were walking home together, sis happy as a clam, mom silent but calm. I was happy too, because I wasn’t bullied that day, and I was just selected as hall monitor (6yr old in 3rd grade, no one respected the badge I would soon learn).

I felt like the day was just too normal and good to be true.

I started having a panic attack 200 feet from the house, because things were just so…. different. I really can’t explain why, but I just felt…. weird. After calming me down, my mom carried me (poor mom) on her hip as I hugged her tightly to the house.

She fudged with her keys, opened the door, and we went inside. I was still held by this goddess of a pregnant lady whose calmness I will never understand as we went to the kitchen table top to leave the keys. A note was there.

The only time I ever regretted knowing how to read, because with my mom holding me with one arm on her side, she picked it up so we could both see, set it down, brought me to the couch, and tucked me in for sleep. Sleep at 3:00pm. But I obliged, for I knew what was coming — one of the single greatest panic attacks of my life. I knew too much at that age to not react any other way. The house always had its fights and shouting, I wasn’t an innocent kid that didn’t know what was going on.

For the next 4 hours, she was calming me down, taking care of me, making me feel better. I have no idea how she kept her composure, but I did remember hearing he sob later that night.

On the note were the words, “I’m leaving for good. It’s just too much. You are too much, and damn right Avrpro is too much (keep in mind I was an autistic kid so I know it was tough raising me). Don’t bother, I am never coming back. Check on the bed for 1k. Goodbye. — Dads name”. My drug addict and alc*holic excuse of a father left my 6m pregnant mother and her two kids.

5. A not-so-happy holiday

Not creepy or crimey or anything, but I’ll never forget it:

Christmas 2002. I was home from my freshman year of college. The vibe in the house had been really strange and tense since I got back. On Christmas morning, my mom gives my dad a really heartfelt, personalized present. My dad gives my mom an expensive but generic-looking bracelet with some diamonds in it. She starts openly weeping. Something was not right.

He told us he was leaving the next day and moved out immediately, into the house of the coworker he had been sleeping with. It was not a good time.

Edit: REALLY did not expect all the upvotes on this one. So, to answer the multiple questions, we’re all five by five. My mom spent a long time very depressed and not sure what to do with her life. I was angry for a long time; my younger siblings were angrier for longer. Mom is doing great on her own now and dad is happily married to said coworker. Way happier than he ever was with my mom.

Still some lasting bad feelings, but we’re all pretty good.

6. Always had a feeling

Another weird feeling for me: I always had a feeling my mom was going to die. When I was in elementary I would often lay awake at night and think about her dying and how I would tell my classmates and friends. I was never wishing for her death, just being a weird kid and playing out scenarios in my head.

I even wrote her a Mother’s Day card in 4th grade where at the end I said “I’ll miss you mom. I love you”, and I remember her reading it and laughing telling me she’d be around for a long time. She asked me why I wrote it and I said something along the lines of “I’m afraid you’ll die.”

Fast forward to me at 13, my mom has been in and out of the hospital for various surgeries. She had colon cancer. I basically watched her deteriorate in a year, it was honestly awful. She would go into the hospital and tell me she’d be out in a week. Then 2 weeks. Then “soon, I’ll be out soon”. I stayed with my dad and step mom while she was there. She was transferred to a hospice, but I was so young I had no idea what that meant and I believed her when she said she’d be home soon. Had to have my friend (her mom was a nurse) tell me that hospices are where people who have 5months or less to live go. She died Jan 13th 2007, when I was 13.

I was also not sad when it happened. I was sad/cried the night she died because I was there and got to say goodbye, but she died on a Saturday and I went to school that Monday. My family said I didn’t have to go and I insisted on going. I was just sort of numb to the whole thing. Thinking back on my middle school years I don’t remember much, I blocked a lot of that time period out. My pain started maybe 2 years later, and her death is very painful for me now. I’m 24, and miss her more than anything. I wish I could go back and act differently, but I was so young and had no idea what was happening to her. I think it was best that she died when I was young. Sometimes I imagine her dying when I was in my twenties, and I think my soul would have shattered.

For years (and sometimes to this day) I thought I willed her death to happen. I never wanted it… just a very weird experience that has followed me my entire life.

7. Just in time

My dad and I had an argument one night when he was bringing me home from the hospital; he was acting erratic and out of it, and he got so angry over a minor disagreement that he dropped me off on the side of the road and drove away home. I remember how f*cking shocked I was that he did this to me after just getting out of the hospital, I knew something was wrong with him. It took me hours to get to my neighborhood and I walked around for another hour before going inside because I was so upset that he had abandoned me. I decided to go home and apologize, even though it wasn’t my fault, because I had that nagging feeling something was wrong. When I finally went inside, I could hear his music in his office room blasting extremely loud, at almost 2 in the morning. I knocked on his door and it was locked, so alarm bells started ringing even louder. He told me he was sorry for everything he’d done, and that’s when I finally knew what he was trying to do. I screamed for my sister, and her boyfriend at the time that was spending the night woke up and knocked the door down.

I’ll never forget opening that door and seeing my dad standing there with blood dripping down his head onto the ground in a puddle from a self-inflicted stab wound and a gun that he was in the process of taping to his hand. He was obviously drugged up and out of it, there were a ton of empty pill bottles he’d used to overdose on. He pointed the gun at us by mistake and we had to have police come and subdue him. We got ushered outside by SWAT and I remember running outside with my hands over my ears because I was so terrified of hearing him kill himself.

That night the gun was shot twice and I’ll never forget having to hear it go off. It all happened in slow mo. Thankfully the gun malfunctioned and shot through the window… Apparently, he had been high on cocaine when he was driving me home, got upset over our argument, had more cocaine, and then decided to kill himself.

If I had waited any later to come home, he would have been dead. If I had come home too early, I would have been sleeping and he would have killed himself. My dad’s alive and our relationship is finally starting to repair but…yeah. I never doubt my gut instincts anymore.

8. Not out for a walk

I came home to my mom supposedly out for a walk and my little brother seeming worried she hadn’t come back yet.

I noticed her keys were hanging up. I had a sinking feeling something wasn’t right. Why not take your keys?

Anyway long story short. She hasn’t gone for a walk. She has locked her self in a back room in our guesthouse thing that you can only lock/unlock from the inside and had taken a whole heaps of pills to kill her self

She survived. This was over 15 years ago. Still haunts us. She was dressed in her wedding dress (my parents had just divorced it wasn’t nice)

EDIT: Thanks guys for all the concern. I see my mama in two days for the first time in months so it’s fitting to be able to hug her. I told her I posted this and the flood of concerns about her and she was very heartfelt and said she was sorry. I also told her I got gold and she doesn’t understand so now she thinks I am bringing her gold jewelry as a present back from my trip.

I would also like to add one thing that she has said to me in the past is that she wishes she had reached out to someone before she did it. A chance for help. Because she could have easily have died and when it came down to it, when she was drifting to sleep she didn’t want to die anymore and just wanted to hug her kids (that’s what she said). But it could have been too late. So learning from my moms experience please if you feel like this please you have nothing to lose than asking for help.

9. He kept them together

So when I was little, my cousin that lived 30 minutes away was my best friend. Our parents used to meet up at my grandmothers house every week just so that we could play together. Occasionally I would go on sleepovers to her house. One weekend when I was staying over with them, it was coming up to bed time and I had a really weird feeling and just wanted to go home. I was crying hysterically and my uncle brought me home.

Only this year I found out that my dad had planned on leaving my mother that night, and me ringing crying saying that I wanted “Mammy and Daddy” made him change his mind. My mother doesn’t know this, nor any of my siblings. My dad told me one night while we were out at a bar and he was drunk.

10. One last picture

When I was 8 and heading out for school my dad stopped me, gave me a hug and told that he loved me. Not something he’d usually do like that. I had a weird feeling the whole day, and I remember drawing a picture for him. When I got home police were everywhere and my mom and some neighbors found me and told that he had killed himself. I later found out that it was because he had been diagnosed with ALS. The picture I drew that day was buried with him.

edit: Thank you so much for your kinds words, it means a lot. It really did mess up my family. My little brother and I got taken away from home a few years later because my mom became mentally ill. Life has been tough. I often wonder how it would have been if he was still here and I miss him greatly.. but I sort of already ‘forgave’ him for leaving. I wouldn’t wish that disease on my worst enemy.