Even though most people cannot remember things from when they were very young, I have a few memories starting from age 2-3. While most I am not sure if they are real or generated by stories I was told, some I am absolutely positive ARE very real. One of these is from when I was about 3 or 4 (not sure exactly). My father died when I was about 18 months old. My mother, step father, baby sister and I were living at my Meemaw's house and sharing the three rooms upstairs. Around this time I started having a recurring dream of a man's head coming towards me form the foot of the bed. I would be lying on my back and look at the place where the wall meets the ceiling on the wall directly across from the wall where the bed was positioned and would hear something and then see the head float towards me as though walking towards me through the bed and me. I would scream and then my mom or step father would come in and comfort me, telling me the normal things such as it's ok , it's just a bad dream etc. But the head would just come back the next night. After a while of this happening, not sure how long it really was but it seemed to be forever in my young mind, I started staying awake to see where he came from so I could tell my parents where to look for him so they could make him go away. I never could figure it out he seemed to just appear and disappear right where I saw him.
One night, I either didn't hear him in time or had finally drifted off and didn't wake up in time, because the next thing I knew he was right next to my bed, and it wasn't just his head, it was the whole person. I opened my mouth to scream but right as I did that he put his finger to his mouth in a shushing signal and no sound came out. He took my hand and then we were standing on what seemed to be a cloud. The only way for me to describe this is if you've seen the old sitcom Bewitched, and remember scenes where they are standing near a cauldron with fog swirling at their feet. This was where we were complete with cauldron. He was looking into the cauldron and I asked what he was looking at. He motioned for me to come and see and even though it was above my head, I was then looking down into it. It was like watching through a window at my mom rocking my baby sister to sleep. He then told me he had been trying to talk to my mom but she didn't hear him anymore. He said he wanted to take us with him to protect us from all the "bad stuff". I said ok but we have to bring "my baby". He then told me that he would not be allowed to bring her because she was not his family, to which I replied that I wasn't going anywhere without my baby. He seemed very sad and tried to talk me into it saying that he didn't want to have to leave me there because it wasn't going to be good, but I was very adamant. He then tucked me back into bed and kissed me and told me he would never leave me and he loved me. After that I never saw the head again.
Years later I was talking to my aunt, my father's sister and was telling her about this and before I could tell her where I lived when it had happened, she asked if it was while I was living at Meemaw's. She said at that time both her and her sister had had dreams that my father kept calling them trying to reach my mother but she never answered the phone, and asked them to tell her to listen for him. I then told my mother all of this and she told me that at that time she had also had numerous dreams similar to my experience.
She said that in her dream she was in this large house and there were a lot of bedrooms. She kept opening doors trying to find me, but couldn't find me. Finally, she came to a room that she recognized as her own and she started to get dressed to go on a trip with me and my dad. She was packing and dressing and knew that in another room someone was getting me dressed and packed even though she didn't know where or who. She kept asking everyone that passed where my father was and was told that he was looking for her but was having trouble getting through and that she needed to think about him real hard and block everything else out. When she tried to do that, all of a sudden she could only think of my baby sister. She then started looking for her but knew that she couldn't take her, just me. Then she said she decided that she didn't want to go if she couldn't take both of us with her. The last part she said she dreamed only once then she never had the dream again. My mother was married to my step father for 18 years and he was an abusive drunk and drug abuser. He made our life a living hell for many years. To this day I think that my father knew that this was how things would turn out and was trying to protect the family he had left behind and that if we hadn't said no he may just have taken us with him.
Sun Apr 20, 2008 4:20 pm
