Dizzy and Sometimes the White Light

From: 
Story type: Past Life Experience
Location: Oklahoma
Source: Form Submission
Date submitted: Sat Dec 27 20:33:17 2008

For as long as I can remember there has been the occasional sense of dizziness. Almost to the point of falling to the ground. It was 1983 and a very fair day in the month of May, only a few days before my birthday. Things were growing , flowers and grass, and you could smell it when you went outside. I could, always. It was the smell that related most to life for me. Life was happening. Not only could I see it, but I could smell it, and were there “sheep showers” around, I could taste it, too. I loved the tart taste of those little yellow flowers I plucked from the grass and ate. “That’s nasty, don’t do that” my dad would say. “What if a dog peed on it”. I never listened. I was eight going on nine years old. I did not take for granted the fact that I was young, I just enjoyed it and was always aware what it meant.

I didn’t eat any sheep showers the day of our family reunion. By reunion, I don’t just mean a get-together. It was quite an affair. We drove nearly 100 miles to be with a branch of the family whom we seldom seen, if ever. This was my first of only a few, to date. I think one of the reasons is because of both the overwhelming familiarity and then the uneasiness that came out of nowhere that day.

They rented a high school cafeteria, there was so much food. A funny looking old man who I later learned was my first cousin, gave the blessing and we all ate. His voice was odd, to me. His accent. I had never heard a person pray with thee’s and thou’s but somehow I knew that it meant “you” both ways. It was then time to pass around the shoebox full of old family pictures. I was so anxious to go play on the school equipment that came with the hall that I did not look at any of them. On my way out, a kind old woman who called me by a name which I have since forgotten but that was not my own motioned me over to her. “Go on” dad said “That’s your great aunt, it’s OK.” They had always told me never to talk to strangers. Everyone here was a stranger and now, all of the sudden, it was ok to talk to any of them. She, herself, was sweet and I felt so comfortable giving her a hug that I told her about everything going on in my life. School, toys, books, pets.. I did not want to go play, at that point, but rather spend the entire day talking to her. It was almost as if we were catching up on lost time but she was in her eighties and I was not yet ten.

Later, it was time to visit the family cemetery. I had never liked graveyards because, even though it may have been Summer, they gave me the literal sensation of what can only be described as a cold feeling and not on the skin. It felt cold inside. Close to the bone. Kind of like when you take your socks and wet shoes off after walking in snow. Chilled to the bone with a slight ache.

We toured the insignificant parts of the cemetery. Walking with the crowd I read last names not my own on headstones that seemed like anything you would see in a movie or at another grave yard. They were upright markers. Some were toppled others laid flat. They were all out in the open. We walked over to a cluster of graves beneath a cedar tree. It was then that I got dizzy and almost fell into the headstone in front of me. There was an overwhelming sensation of sinking. Later on in life, because these episodes did not cease until recently, if that, and because they always happen in dreams, now, the sensation is accompanied by the presence of an all encompassing white light.

Someone grabbed me from the back and caught me just inches from falling headfirst into the headstone. “Sometimes the ground sinks in out here” the same old man who gave the dinner blessing said. And, as I recall, it was no event to anyone. The crowd moved on to visit other graves. I felt weird like I had been running. My heart raced, my stomach was uneasy, and I wanted to leave.

Having visited the site in adulthood and standing over the headstone as a full grown man, I think to myself for no apparent reason “ You could not keep me here”. So help me, these are the first words that come to mind. It seems obvious, but nothing is that obvious. There is more to the story which I may never know. Do I want to know?

The man buried there was my grandfathers younger brother who was shot in the chest while riding his horse one day. He must have been no more than twenty. This happened in 1917. At that time, the massive manmade lake just below the cemetery did not exist. Much of the area was farmed by the people who now rested in the graveyard, my ancestors. I have had the chance since then to look at all the pictures in the shoebox I overlooked , that day. Naturally, we all favor in the face. On a personal note, I have never shot a gun and there is a small whelp in the center of my chest. It is just as much a birthmark as the large brown spot in the center of my back.