Echos Of The Soul

My father thought if a rooster crowed on your doorstep there would be a death in the immediate family. I do recall as a child before we had a phone this happened one hot august afternoon as the family was sitting on the front porch churning ice cream, and drinking lemonade. Daddy jumped up ordered my mother to pack a bag and took off for North Carolina explaining he needed to get to his Dad, by the time he made the five plus hour trip his father had passed away. He said he had been having feelings of dread for some time and should have left sooner so as to tell his father goodbye.

That was my first realization that our family has a "gift", or a "curse". Depends on who you are talking to. We were not ever allowed to tell a dream before breakfast. If a spider dangled in front of you, it meant bad news. Daddy would interpret dreams, and sometimes he just refused to say. I have always thought my subconscious is the reason that I don't dream, for fear of what it might mean. I am all but certain I must dream I just don't ever recall doing so.

In my immediate family like my dad, we seem to have feelings of apprehension, or dread, when this happens it is certain something untoward will occur. My first feeling of this nature I was in the 3rd grade I woke up because my friend John Robert was at the foot of my bed trying to wake me up but when I came wide awake no one was there. About an hour later we were asked to join in a search for John Robert and his father as every morning before school they went crabbing in the river and had not returned at the usual time and neither could swim. They were pulled from the murky waters 2 days later both had drowned ...it was thought John Robert was trying to start the engine and fell overboard, and his dad tried to save him.

This will give you what my father refers to as the "heebie jeebies". My mother had her own thing she seemed to know when one of us needed her I had a brother that was 21 years older than me when I was about eight or so he was married and had a small child I often would stay with them when school was out they lived about 20 minutes on the edge of town one day my brother and his wife drove a neighbor to the hospital to deliver a baby and by nightfall they had not returned there was no phone no close neighbors just as the moon was rising my parents pulled up in the drive way my dad insisted on coming to check on me as my mother couldn't get me off her mind. My brother and his wife had broken down and were sitting along side the road waiting, when we drove up to them.

This is but one of the numerous times something of this nature would occur, after a time we failed to think anything out of the ordinary when such things happened.

In later years, I was visiting this same brother that had moved to North Carolina. My sister and I had gone together, and bought ourselves a little knock around car had I been in Georgia at the time I would surely have been with my sister riding around with her, and a friend in which case I would be in the back seat as the friend that spent the most time with us was my sisters girlfriend, and I would've let her friend sit up front. This night at 11: o'clock I felt I should call my sister, but I couldn't ever get in touch with my family. The next morning my brother informed me that my sister was taking someone home the night before, swerved to miss a dog and flipped the car, the backseat was thrown through the rear glass, but no one was hurt. Had I been with them, I would have died or at least been hurt badly as the seat was mangled,as I might have been.

There had been times over the years when my husband and I had words, and I would walk to the end of the driveway which was about a half mile to the road ,to find my mother sitting there in her car, saying I felt you needed me,and we would spend time talking then she would be on her way,to others this might seem odd.

Other things have taken place most of which you might find hard to believe so I will keep some of this
beyond explanation  to myself.Just so as not to have the men with the little white suits show up at my door.

Once a young man my dad thought a lot of invited my sister and I to the river for the afternoon,when he arrived to pick us up my dad said neither of us could go and gave the young man no explanation.

That young man drowned that afternoon saving the life of the girl that did go to the river with him that day.

When mamma was almost 70 and still lived alone another of these “heebie jeebie” events occurred. I was about 80 miles away with my family at the coast in a cabin I was asleep on the couch when I heard the screen door open, and my mother called my name I sat up, and I was alone my husband and kids had let me nap, and had gone fishing. The next morning someone came to the cabin from the marina saying I needed to go home my mother had been hurt but, she was OK. When I arrived home, my youngest brother was there he lived 120 miles from us but during the night he “FELT” mamma and just got in the car made the 120 mile trip to check on her he walked all thru the house she wasn't home he found that quite odd, as it was the wee hours of the morning and her car was in the yard, he then started to leave and have breakfast at a local coffee shop then at a decent hour he would check with some of us, to see what was up. Thinking he was just being silly about this trip, and the “heebie jeebies” as he hadn't ever had them before. He got in his car started to back from the drive, and thought just in case I should walk around the premises, and he did so finding my mother in the back yard with both feet broken where she had been since about dark the night before. He called an ambulance and no one ever questioned how he came to be 120 miles from home at 3 a.m.,and just happened to show up in my mothers backyard. Another silent echo you think?

Some people say this is intuition and that all people have it to a degree, and if you will listen to it, you may just keep yourself and ones you love from harms way.

Once when my daughter was very small I had to open the restaurant, and she was too sick to go to the day care, so I took her with me until we opened, and then I was going to drop her off at a friends to babysit her then I would return to work. Who knows why things happen as they do in life. Some call it fate others Say the Good Lord watches after us. At any rate as my daughter and I were leaving to take her to the sitters a man in a car pulled up beside of our car on the drivers side and was rolling his window down as if to ask me a question I told my daughter lets just get in on your side of the car and I'll just crawl over, which she thought was a lot of fun, but I didn't “feel” right about getting to close to the man in the car, and we drove off. When I returned from the sitters, everyone was outside in the parking lot the man in the car pulled up beside an older lady asked for directions when she opened her window to explain he stabbed her and killed her taking her purse, which had, just, a few dollars in it.

If not for the “heebie jeebies” it could have been us. We were, in fact, on the news for several evenings though I did not disclose why it was her and not me.

My father never owned an alarm clock, and neither do I, if you knock on your pillow 5 times before retiring, and ask someone close to you that is dead to wake you at a certain time you will find yourself awake at that time. I am not certain if you do not have the “gift” if this will work for you. I think you must be able to hear the “echo of the soul” of the person you loved that is dead, but you will not remember the sound nor will you be alarmed you will simply be awakened by what my father called the "silent echo of the soul" of the person who is waking you up.