An old woman dying

[Gypsy8]

When I was just three years old, I was running ahead of my mother, who was carrying my baby brother, along the lane cutting through our farm to another farm, where my mother would care for the neighbors cats and plants while they were on vacation.

As I squatted down to watch a long line of ants going somewhere, I suddenly found myself over a small house with a slanted roof covered with junk, and outside the open door of the house stood a man and woman in strange clothes. Their arms were crossed, and they looked grim.

Then I was inside the house, where a very old woman lay in a bed just inside the open door. I knew she was dying. She was reaching out toward the door, and between moans, was pleading for help.

The next thing I knew, I was in the neighbor's kitchen with my mother, and was asking why she and my father had let that old woman die. She obviously didn't know what I was talking about, and I was upset all day, so my dad took me back down the lane to show me there were no houses or people anywhere.

I've often wondered if I'd seen a previous life in that old woman. The house, the man and woman, and the old woman were very familiar to me. As was the junk on the roof, although it was all things unknown to me until I was quite a bit older.

 

[BriarRose]

I think you had psychic experiences earlier than most. It sounds to me as if it may have been a past life recall. I wonder what it was about watching a line of ants that triggered the memory? My guess would be that you had done the same thing in the PL in question. Did you experience deja vu a lot as a child?

 

[argonne1918]

I also think it was a past life memory. Maybe crouching down somehow triggered the memory. Has this happened to you before? Or since?

 

[Gypsy8]

I was a very curious child, and that day I had been checking out everything along the way. It was Spring, and in 1940 there was an abundance of the lesser life form for me to watch. As I watched the ants, a big black bug with its backend sticking up walked over the ants and I'd turned slightly to watch it moving toward the field at the side of the lane.


It was at the other side of that field where, when I was going through old photos taken the year my parents bought the farm, which had been just months before that day, that I found one of that field, and there was a small shed at the far side of it, like the one I'd also seen, off to one side in front of the house. And there were pine trees on the hill just behind it, and a few on the flat area where the field began. The house had pines behind, and a few to the side of it where the hill went up.


Among the things I saw on the roof of the house were farming implements, barbed wire, and at the front, a horse collar. There was a small chimney sticking up through the center of it all, with thin spirals of smoke coming from the it.


Everything I saw was so crystal clear. It was as real to me as looking back as I was running down the lane to make sure my mother was still coming had been.


When I was ten, my dad plowed that field, and we all walked behind to pick up rocks. The plow turned up a lot of pieces of broken dishes, molten glass, bits of pots and pans and such. And I found a pink cupid cameo there. So I know people had inhabited the area at one time.


I didn't have any other experiences like this as a child, at least none that I remember. This one, and especially the old woman, has never left me.

 

[Misty8723]

Was it possibly an out of body experience where you actually travelled to where the old woman was dying? That was the first thought I had while reading your account.

 

[Gypsy8]

I know about out of body experiences, but don't know if that's what I had. Over the years I've relived this experience many times, and the one thing that has struck me about it is how like it is to recalling a memory. There's one particular memory of myself when I was very ill with an ear infection I'd gotten after having scarlet fever, later in the year when I was still three.


From above, I see myself leaning against the side of the chair where my mother sits, with my head on her lap. Then I move away, and wander listlessly over to my parent's bed, aware of my sister sitting at the side of the room, reading. I lean against the side of the bed and lay my head over on it, my arms hanging at my side. And then the County Nurse walks in and picks me up to take me to the hospital.


I've never talked to anyone about how they recall memories. I've spent a lot of time just thinking about things that most people never think about, and realize that we might all do such things differently.

 

[BriarRose]

A past life memory does feel like a current life memory, although, as you said, Gypsy, people do experience them differently. I wonder why the old woman was storing "junk" on the roof? Your comment about thinking about things made me smile. If we are thoughtful people, those of us over 55 have done a lot of "ruminating" about things others don't consider.

 

[Gypsy8]

From my view of the place, I'd say everything was stored on the roof of the house and the shed because there wasn't any other place to keep it. But then I never saw the horse that would wear the collar, or pull the plow either. It could have been behind the house in a corral among the trees, I suppose.


I've often wondered what about the old woman had caused the couple outside to leave her to suffer alone, and from the crud on her pillow, in her frizzed out hair (she did have a very long braid that hung over the side of the bed) and her nightgown, why she hadn't been better cared for.

 

[tanguerra]

...Then I was inside the house, where a very old woman lay in a bed just inside the open door. I knew she was dying. She was reaching out toward the door, and between moans, was pleading for help.
The next thing I knew, I was in the neighbor's kitchen with my mother, and was asking why she and my father had let that old woman die. She obviously didn't know what I was talking about, and I was upset all day, so my dad took me back down the lane to show me there were no houses or people anywhere.


I've often wondered if I'd seen a previous life in that old woman. The house, the man and woman, and the old woman were very familiar to me. As was the junk on the roof, although it was all things unknown to me until I was quite a bit older.

Hi Aged Gypsy,


Sounds like a past life memory to me. What does it mean to you?

 

[Gypsy8]

Hi Aged Gypsy,
Sounds like a past life memory to me. What does it mean to you?

I've spent the better part of seventy-three years pondering that. One of my younger thoughts was that I'd perhaps I'd been somehow taken over by the spirit of the old woman because it had remained there, and wanted someone to know what had happened to her. Now I wonder if she'd been buried in the area. It was one of the few areas I and my siblings never explored for some reason.


Later on I began to believe I might have been the old woman, and had even gone through old records of the farm in the courthouse deeds in my hometown, but time constraints kept me from getting very far.


Because of how familiar she was to me, as opposed to the people outside, I tend to believe she was one of my past lives.