(Please view my previous posts if you are just joining me and have not read the first side of this saga.)

As I walked toward the tombstone on that summer day the matted grasses that covered the graves felt spongy beneath my feet, and with each step a smell like hot hay wafted upward. My mother stood beside me, her fist pressed hard against her mouth. “So you think that this was you?” she asked, as I traced the lichen encrusted letters of our names with my finger. I nodded, though I knew our bodies weren’t there. My husband’s was buried an ocean away, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Mine had been swallowed by the sea.

It had taken me nearly a century to come home to this small village in Cornwall, England. It was a journey undertaken with no roadmap or chart to guide me. Nothing, except vague memories, and a voice.

This is my truth.

——————–

Justin once quoted Emily Dickinson, who said “the truth must dazzle gradually, or every man be blind.” That was certainly the case in my life.

Sometime before I was born, I was summoned. I was filled with anticipation as I appeared before the being of light, who I have always called the Guardian. We were at a great height I sensed was characterized by knowledge and not necessarily physical altitude. He glowed with an effervescent love and authority as he mapped out the life that lay ahead of me in thoughts without words.

But it wasn’t the one I had anticipated.

I resisted, pleaded, but his authority was absolute. Finally I acquiesced. He then gave me a sense of compensation, and then images: pumpkins and a rail fence, and a house within a copse of trees at the end of a sloping drive.

I was sent to the Forgetting.

But I didn’t forget.

Somewhere, down deep, I remembered.

—————-

I was born on February 22nd, 1954, in Toronto. I was a sensitive child who imagined I could feel the vibrations of the rocks and the trees. I was sometimes overwhelmed by an inexplicable sadness, which mystified my parents as I was born into a privileged, loving home. I spent my summers on Georgian Bay – a huge inland sea – and that great expanse of water both enthralled and challenged me.

My father was a highly intelligent entrepreneur, and an atheist. Unlike in Justin’s family, in our household there was no place for religion, as my father held that doctrine was created by man to control man, and any self-respecting person would not be led by the nose to believe such nonsense. So despite his encouragement of free thought, there was no place for a shy, sensitive girl like me to admit to my own feelings.

It seemed to me that I was at odds with all the other children and adults in my world, who appeared to live on the surface of life. But when I was twelve, while at a pajama party in the basement of my friend’s house the ouija flew under my hands towards the ceiling and I knew then that there were forces beyond those that we could see. Still, I kept my feelings secret.

I was still very young when I first heard the Moody Blues. But the depth of the sound, the complexity of the music touched a chord, as it did so many of you. These were people who looked deeper, I thought. But I soon realized that I was straining to hear one particular voice – Justin Hayward’s.

Hearing that sound – the particular vibration of his voice – was like being in a deep dream, with someone whispering to me to wake up. There was a strange comfort in that sound, and yet angst. And something more: a deep, mature love.

I’d been kissed before. By boys whose tongues in my mouth felt like eels trapped in a bucket. But I’d never experienced the passion I felt when I heard that one voice.

I remember staring at the album cover at a man I didn’t recognize. He was a man, I was only a girl, and his maturity and fame frightened me. We were worlds apart in every sense. Still, I struggled with the feelings that surged inside.

I felt like I had amnesia. There was something back there that I couldn’t remember and his words were torture.

“Don’t deny the feeling that is steeling through your heart, Every happy ending needs to have its start.”

“High above the forest lie the pastures of the sun, Where the two that learned the secret now are one.”

“Weep no more for treasures we’ve been searching for in vain, ‘Cause the truth is gently falling like the rain.”

Vague memories of the Guardian and his light flickered but were never fully realized. I was aware how ridiculous it would sound to anyone I might confess these strange feelings to. I wasn’t the type to hero worship. There were no posters on my walls. So what was happening to me?

When I was sixteen the young man who would become my husband twelve years later kissed me for the first time. In a flash of certainty I knew – I knew – that he and I had been together before, that we would be together a long time, but that there was a turning in our future. A turning. I fell in love with him in the certainty that it was meant to be. Whatever the turning was, it was meant to be too.

But I was more confused than ever when the vague shadows of the past still haunted me.

I yearned for England. I studied art and design at the University of Western Ontario because it was in London, and the fact that my residence room overlooked the Thames River – not the River Thames but a facsimile – satisfied some need. Art history gave me a chance to delve into the past in search of something I couldn’t identify.

Because despite all, the feeling that Justin Hayward and I were connected somehow continued. As you all know though, events in our lives can trample our loftiest dreams. My parent’s divorce and the tragic death of my younger sister forced me back to earth. I remember well the last moments when the dream of eternal life and love faded away. I was listening to Blue Jays. Justin sang “somewhere, on this crazy island, a familiar stranger sleeps so far away.”

It struck me that I’d been stupid, naive, to imagine a connection. Of course it wasn’t possible. He was referring to England, not the world, as an island. I was a person of no consequence. I couldn’t be the recipient of so strong a love. Why would I be?

A switch had been turned off. Looking back, I think it was always meant to be so.

————————

Though Justin was gone, the feeling of a connection to the past never faded, and on my first trip to England I knew I’d come home. I searched for the house within a copse of trees at the end of a sloping drive, without remembering why. My Canadian accent kept slipping into an English one, despite my struggle to stop it.

Over the ensuing years two other past lives came back to me – one in the thirteenth or fourteenth century in a Celtic land, the other in eighteenth century France. To those who maintain that these types of memories are just fantasies, I say this: You conjure a fantasy like a story; you re-live a memory. You are in it, experiencing the emotion directly.

Years later I learned that, if I’m correct in all of this, those lives had direct connections to our present ones.

My husband and I were married in a half timbered church (hard to find in Toronto) on December 28th, 1982. Justin and his wife Marie were married on December 19th, 1970. I believe that in our former lives we were married December 25th, 1911 and I’ve wondered if somehow that winter wedding begged to be re-enacted in both our minds. Or was it just a year end tax break?

Our wedding allowed me to play out the past that still eluded me. I designed and sewed my gown to mirror the Edwardian period (still a mystery to me) and eighteenth century France.

But I married my husband with my heart full of love for him, a love that would endure despite all.

When our children were born I had no time to contemplate anything other than the pile of clothes to be washed and the toys to be put away. If my father had known of my prior feelings he would have said “It’s about time. I thought you were smarter than that.” But he never knew. I was afraid to admit who I was.

Life continued like that until one day in late October 1992 when everything started to change. It had been a rough year with many deaths in the family. But my young sons and I set out for a nearby farm to choose Halloween pumpkins. The day was overcast and cold – the fields were soggy from relentless rain but as we were about to leave, arms loaded with half rotten pumpkins, a sparkling sun broke through and lit up the bales of hay and pumpkins the farmer had stacked against the rail fence which circled the field. My little sons clamoured up onto the fence and I took a mental picture of them among the bright orange pumpkins. I remember it vividly – more so because of what happened next.

When I reached home my husband handed me the phone. It was my old friend telling me there was a Moody Blues concert at Massey Hall in Toronto on the 6th of November. They’d bought tickets, but if we could get some, would we like to join them?

I’d never seen the group in person and it had been years since I’d thought of them, but a curious excitement passed through me. I called Ticketmaster. “I’m sorry,” the agent said, “but that concert’s sold out.” I was shocked at my disappointment. Reluctant to hang up, I engaged her in conversation, expressing surprise that they were still touring. Then I heard the tap of keys. “Hold on,” she said, “two tickets just came up in the balcony. Do you want them?”

When we entered Massey Hall we passed under the shield shaped sign over the door and I noted that the shield was the ancient protector of the heart. Odd, I thought, that I should think that. We expected to be seated far from our friends, but as my husband and I inched along towards our seats I heard a familiar laugh. Among the 2,765 people in the audience, we were seated right beside our friends.

Something else happened that night. I couldn’t sit back in my seat. My eyes were riveted on the man in the hawaiian shirt in the middle of the stage. Ugly shirt, I thought. It didn’t suit his complexion. But I knew he was deeply troubled. I could feel it.

I did everything possible to stay in the theatre when the concert ended. I stood staring at the empty stage, mystified by the intensity I felt. That night I lay in bed trying to recall his name. At two in the morning I found myself on my knees on the cold basement floor, leafing through the old albums. Justin. His name was Justin Hayward.

The next day my husband brought me home a gift: The Moody Blues Greatest Hits. I played it incessantly over the next months.

Strange things began to happen. My father called to tell me that the Moody Blues were on PBS – “At Red Rocks. I remembered you liked them so I thought I’d just let you know.” My father never called. He hated talking on the phone.

My eldest son, a real truck sort of guy, while I was selling the jewelry that I made at a local church bizarre, insisted that I buy him a pewter pin of a transatlantic ocean liner – the old fashioned kind with the huge funnels. “Why would you want that?” I asked. He shrugged and said, “I don’t know. I just do.” I said no but my mother relented. That pin was never seen again until a crucial moment some weeks later.

It was April 14th, 1993, just before midnight that I sat in the darkness with my head draped over a steamer, feeling overcome by allergies. I had earphones in my ears. I was listening to the tape my husband had given me. “I Know You’re Out There Somewhere” was playing.

They’re looking for someone, I thought. And then, in a flash that felt like lightening streaking through my brain, the words “It’s me.”

IT”S ME.

In the next shivering moments everything began to fall into place, like a giant jigsaw puzzle being pulled together of its own accord. Thoughts, memories, tumbled over each other to settle into their slot. The Guardian reappeared in my mind, as if the memory had never been shadowed.

And then it struck me: the rail fence and the pumpkins, like the picture given to me. When I came home, the phone call about the concert. No tickets and then there were two. The miracle of sitting right next to our friends. The angst I felt watching Justin Hayward, the sense that I could tell what he was feeling.

It had started again, just as it was meant to. I shuddered with cold and heat and confusion and certainty.

But mostly I felt awe.

——————

I was raised to believe that there was no God, no heaven, no afterlife – just space and science. In the days, weeks and years that followed I knew there was more. I felt a state of grace, as if a hand was guiding me.

The full sorrow that had been suppressed all those years now came out in torrents. I hid in my car and in the garage to conceal the outpouring of grief that I seemed to have no control over. I still didn’t know how we had died in that previous life, but I felt sure it had been traumatic and I was just now letting that sorrow out. I wondered about the sudden onset of the allergies. I’d heard it said that allergies are the manifestation of unshed tears – a bit of a stretch I know but the thought did come to mind.

Then one day I stood in the kitchen while cartoons blazed in the family room adjacent, and in sudden frustration, cried out in my head “What happened to us?” In a voice that wasn’t mine the answer shot through my mind. “Titanic.”

For a second it all seemed right, until my heart sank. The Titanic. The subject of tabloid fantasies. Who would believe me now?

At that moment the blare of cartoons ceased and a news reporter broke in. “Breaking news. At this time a passenger ferry is foundering in the China Sea. Passengers are being put into lifeboats.”

I looked down and there on the island counter was the pin my son had wanted so desperately and promptly lost. A transatlantic ship. The funnels. The prow. All those portholes.

My first thought was that we’d been on our honeymoon. A feeling had passed over me years before while I embroidered my initials on a pillow slip. I’d done the same for a trousseau.

Shortly after that I looked out the window while I tucked my youngest son into bed, and there, framed by the window casing was a sepia portrait of a man smiling at me. He was in Edwardian dress, and the British flag hung behind him. A moment later he was gone, and I was staring at the leaves of the crab apple tree.

I went to read my son his bedtime story and there on the pile of library books was one I’d never seen before. “Did you choose this book?” I asked my little boy. He shook his head no. I read the strange story of a Japanese man who was thrown from his boat into the frigid water, and who swam among the icebergs, trying to be rescued.

In one of the days that followed I went outside to see a clear blue sky, devoid of all clouds except one. It was in the perfect shape of England, complete with all its rivers.

I would say this was all just imagination were it not for the feeling I had throughout this period. It was as if I was living half in my life, and half in another world. I would be grocery shopping and pause. “Why are you stopping Mommy?” my eldest son would ask. “Oh, nothing sweetheart,” I’d answer. “What kind of cookies would you like?” I couldn’t tell him that I knew in the next two seconds that the song on the musak system would be one of the Moody Blues. How strange it was to act normally when my mind and heart were exploding with the possibilities.

When I went to the library to look up the sinking of the Titanic I learned that it had struck the iceberg twenty minutes before midnight on April 14th, precisely the same time and date the thought had hit me, eighty one years later.

Justin knew that there had been a change. His vibration came to me regularly. I can only describe that sensation as an effervescence that bubbled throughout my entire body and mind. I could feel it approach from inches away and then fill every cell with joy. Always these words came into my mind: I love you too. I can only believe that it was love in its purest form, the kind we all experience in the afterlife, and in those most precious, rare moments in this life.

Soon, our deaths and the struggle to be heard.