I died once...

   I died once.  I was just a few months old.  My mother and I were staying at her parents home, when I became sick.  I stopped breathing and turned blue.  They say I swallowed my tongue.  Though I don't know how I could have done that.  My eyes rolled up into my head and I went limp.
   My grandfather was an ex-marine and he took charge.  He swept me up into his arms and carried me outside away from the women.  No one knows exactly what he did.  But he brought me back to this world.
   When we came back in.  I was soaking wet and screaming at the top of my lungs.  My mother and grandmother said it was the sweetest sound they had ever heard.
   When asked what happened all my grandfather would say is he pulled my tongue out of my throat and threw a bucket of cold water on me to shock my system.  I don't know if he told them everything.  He always tried to protect us from the ugly parts of this world.
   They say when you die and come back, you bring something of the other side back with you.  I couldn't tell you if that were true.  I was too young to know what was normal and what was not.  It was all normal for me.
   As I grew I started to realize I could tell when things were going to happen, like when it was going to rain.  I would smell and feel the rain coming, even on  a bright sunny day.  My friends and I would be playing when I would announce we need to head back to the house before it started to rain.  They would laugh and point out there was not a cloud in the sky.  It is coming within the hour, I would say.  And it did.  The weatherman was right 60 percent of the time, I was right 100 percent.  I didn't know why I could feel the rain on a clear day or not feel it on a cloudy day.  I just could.
   I also had knack of getting along with all kinds of animals.  Even the dangerous dog that was tied up by the shortcut home.  No one could get near him.  I could.  I would look him in the eyes and talk to him.  He would listen.  I would pet him and tell him to let my friends pass.  He would lick my hand and step out of the way.  Some people have said it was because I showed no fear that he allowed me near.  Maybe so, or maybe he understood me.  You would have to ask him.
   He wasn't the only one.  A friend and I went to one of her friend's house.  She had a cat who would not go near anyone by her owner, not even the girl she had lived with for the first 8 weeks of her life.  While we were all sitting at the table, the cat creeped into the room,  jumped up in my lap, licked my hand and went to sleep.  The owner was amazed.  Dogs in a frenzy would stop and listen to me, when they would ignore their owners.  Animals in the woods would come close and sit by me.  I don't know why, they just would.
   As I grew older I noticed other things.  I could tell when someone was upset by their voice over the phone.  But I have been told others can do this too.  That it is because on the tension in the voice.  Maybe it is.
   After a while I didn't need to hear them to know if something was wrong.  All I had to do was think of them.  I knew what someone was doing and thinking.  I didn't even know myself how I did this.  It would just pop into my head when I thought about them.  I would call them and find out they were thinking about me. 
   I could tell the sex of the unborn child of a friend.  I was more accurate than a sonogram, but only with people I knew.  I could not walk up to a stranger and feel the child's sex.  At least not yet.
   I never knew this was unusual.  I thought everyone could do these things if they tried.   To me this came naturally.  Maybe it was because my great grandfather was one of the most powerful Medicine Man of all the Cherokee tribes. 

From Cherokee Museum

   But I didn't know this.  You knew, but you never let on.  You didn't want me to feel different from everyone else.  But I was different.

   Yes I died once, but I came back.



©2010 Pamela Jo