From the Forthcoming Book, 'Well, Yes, I Did See Him Standing There'

For many years, probably more years than I care to mention, it has always been with me. "It" refers to a presence, a sense of something other-worldly, something that was larger than myself. "It" seemed to permeate my day, and I could sense it was something, but I never really realized what it was.

Well, not until the other day, when I saw "it", or rather, "him", standing before me. 

I have had senses of things not being what they should be, or what they seemed to be, for quite some time. I thought it had a lot to do with all the meditating I had been doing; meditation put me on another plane, which helped me to appreciate, to enjoy, to revel in the beauty of nature, of the surroundings I had about me, of what was. I learned, through meditation, more about myself than I ever cared to know, things that were long since buried, and I never took those thoughts or feelings out, never wanted to. Painful and burning, I wanted them to remain buried for a long time, because they were unrequited, unfulfilled thoughts and dreams, things I wanted to save for a rainy day.

But on this perfectly normal meditation morning, where I felt stressed and rushed, and wanting to break out of my own skin because I didn't have time to meditate, I had three columns to write, a story to finish, and a blog to master within the next six hours, I wasn't expecting anything to occur. I had asked for nothingness, prior to my meditation. Usually, I get the old, "Come on, you have a load of laundry to do...you have vacuuming that needs to be done...that story isn't going to write itself...the puppy needs to go out, and she is howling..." litany that plays itself out within my head. But not today. Today, I opened my eyes, and there he was, this Adonis-like being, and I had to blink twice, because I thought maybe I had gone nuts.

Since that moment, my life has never been the same.

Wherever I went, this spirit, this form, went with  me. It appeared to be sad, and whenever it presented itself to me, I could sense the sadness within it. I also knew that whatever it was, it was thoroughly pissed with my husband, for whatever reason, and I had no idea why. If I were to try to sum it up in layman's terms, this was someone who was out for blood, but it wasn't my blood it wanted. It wanted my husband's, and it was trying to convey some sort of message to me.

I would shake my head several times to  make the presence disappear. I took to walking about with a St. Michael's medal stuffed into whatever pockets I would be wearing at the time. I would thoroughly and convincingly swear, "Get the hell away from me, you demon from hell - I have no idea what you are, but I don't want you near me."

That seemed to make the apparition that much stronger.

I remember one day, running in the pool, as I usually do, when I need to take off a bit of weight. And the apparition was on the pool ladder, in full colonial garb, with that long, blonde shock of hair pulled back into a periodic ponytail. His garb was ala "The Patriot"; long white shirt, black leggings, black leather buckled shoes. He looked like a mad Pilgrim with the face of an angel. 

I would ask him what his name was, and he would always tell me that I knew it. For years, the name "Michael" would come to me, but I always thought it meant something else - an old friend's name, or St. Michael, who I was always calling upon for aid, or just the fact that it was my favorite name. I didn't realize that's what it meant, this spirit. The spirit's name was Michael. Several psychics have asked me who "Mark" was. It wasn't "Mark"; the name that they were stumbling upon was, "Mike".

The sadness overtook me, until I thought I was suffering from depression. Medications that the physicians had written prescriptions for me were not touching this feeling of sadness. It was soul-wrenching, if that makes any sense. The spirit had a message for me, and it kept saying, "I have to go...but I need to tell you something first."

This lasted for years. I would have to say that it must have lasted for five or six years before I finally realized what was going on.

Quantum physics has long maintained that time is folding in upon itself, and has stated that we, as humans, are living multiple lives at once. I never bought into that belief, but for some reason, when I would awaken on a daily basis from sleep, I felt as though I had been somewhere that I remembered, and upon rising, felt like I had lost my best friend. I didn't believe that this could be possible; how could I be here, yet living multiple lives simultaneously? And who or what did this spector represent?

Finally, one morning, I realized that the spector, which had been trying to get to me through movies, it would appear during some of my favorite scenes, it would appear in songs, was someone from my long-distant past. It was a former lover, someone who had been with me, someone with whom I had shared a lifetime. It was someone who I had loved completely, with all of my soul. 

Someone once stated that when you truly love someone, you will give anything to be with them. You will want to literally crawl under their skin to be close to them. It has been stated that only once in a lifetime, once in every soul's existence, this love appears, and it leaves you with an indellible mark of its presence for the rest of eternity. Someone also stated that this love should be the love we have for our own selves, that transferrence of that love to someone else was wrong, and that we needed to love ourselves that completely, since we were the ones we had been looking for.

But this was different.

When I realized who this spector was, when I remembered, it was as though I watched myself walking down a long corridor, and shades and photos of previous lifetimes were flashing before my own eyes. I was suddenly drawn back, in a violent and startling fashion, where it felt as though my soul had been drawn through a straw, and that I was looking at my former life, through my mind's eye and not through my physical eyes.

It had to be Puritan times, because I could see my own light blue dress; or was it gray? Regardless of the color, I could see its style, the flare of the waistline, and I immediately knew that I had been pregnant during this time. And Adonis was there.

There was a sheer, fleeting feeling of joy, which could not be summed up into words. It was a feeling of infatuation, but deeper, something that could halt the soul in its tracks. It was love, with a capital L, and sharing it with this spector seemed natural, and somehow, right.

It had been abbreviated, somehow, this feeling. Something had stopped it from occurring. Something had killed it, and this had caused the spector to emit the amount of rage that would periodically take over me, and I had no idea why, considering I was normally so bland and peaceful.

I had been beheaded for my thoughts, for my "different" ideas. Things that were normal to others did not seem normal to me, during this period of time, and I was suddenly and starkly reminded of why I felt the need to keep my feelings hushed. It was dangerous for anyone, let alone a woman, to have such feelings that differed from the puritanical beliefs of that time period. 

What had caused the spector to feel such rage was the fact that, not only had his love been taken from him, so had his daughter, which he had shown me was what I had been carrying at the time of my death. I had been beheaded by none other than my present husband, and this was why my ghostly buddy had carried such hatred; my present husband had taken this man's family from him. 

But we weren't married, which was part of the reason why I had been beheaded. I did not believe in making committments at the time of my death in that time period; I did not believe that women were chattal, to be bartered for, like a sheep or a goat. At that time, it was my firm belief that a woman should be cherished, for from her came new life, from her body came joy, peace, and understanding. And a lot more value than just being the cook, the housekeeper, the bearer of the children. And that's what lost me my head.

When I understood all of this, the spector told me, with an air of sad finality, that this was it, it was time for him to cross. He had originally been drawn to the light within my being, but he realized after some time, that it was who I was to him in a former life that had drawn him to me, and not the light that is within me, the light that is within all of us.

When he said goodbye, it was as though a thousand lifetimes flooded before me, and my eyes were swimming in tears. I could not bear to stand; I realized, with a sudden finality, that this was the love of a lifetime, the love that would never be matched, the love that dreams are made of. I realized that, if I wanted to move forward with the life that I was currently experiencing, I was going to have to let go of the past.

I dropped to my knees as I watched the spirit receed into the furthest depths of my mind's eye, and I saw a brilliant flash. He was holding a female child, with strawberry blonde curls, and they were smiling, the both of them. I did not feel that sense of dragging, of sadness any longer. I could feel lightness, and the incredible lightness of being, as I watched him and my unborn child, as they drew deeper into the light, into the depth of a love that I myself have never felt on this plane, but have known of its existence in ways that others may not be aware. Through meditation, one touches upon this bliss, but it is fleeting. For that one instant, it lasted more than a microsecond, and in another blazing flash of light, the two of them were gone.

It has been more than a week since this occurred. I have had a sense of lightness in my life that I have not experienced for years; actually, I have never felt this light and free. It is as though I allowed a piece of my soul to fly, to be free, to take flight, and with that lightness came a knowledge, something unexplained, that will stay with me for all of time.

It will help me to embrace the life that I am currently in, and it will help me to understand those around me in a way that I cannot explain. You will have to experience this on your own to understand what in the world, or rather, what out of the world of what we see, I have experienced, in order to feel it and live it for yourself.