The Boy Who Knew Too Much

by Cathy Byrd

  Christian (left) and Charlotte (right) at Dodger Stadium.

  Christian (left) meets legendary Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully (right).

  Cathy, Christian, Michael, Charlotte, and family pets in 2013. (Peter Lars © Cornerstone)

  Dr. Jim Tucker from the University of Virginia School of Medicine (left) interviews five-year-old Christian (right) about his past-life memories while playing baseball in April 2014.

  Christian shooting the FOX Sports MLB All-Star Game Pregame Show in June 2014.

  Cathy wearing the required white gloves while viewing documents at the National Baseball Hall of Fame Giamatti Research Center in July 2014.

  Lou Gehrig. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown, New York)

  Christian (left) and Charlotte (right) visit Lou Gehrig’s former home at 9 Meadow Lane in New Rochelle, New York.

  Lou Gehrig and his mother, Christina Gehrig.

  Cathy (left) and Christian (right) at Lou Gehrig’s former home. (Charlotte Haupt)

  Christian visits Lou Gehrig’s graveside in New York.

  Christina “Mom” Gehrig (center) with Ellsworth Hawkins (left) and Ralph P. Clarkson (right) at Lou Gehrig Memorial Little League Field dedication in Milford, Connecticut, in 1952. (Courtesy of Ken Hawkins)

  Six-year-old Christian on the field at Dodger Stadium with Dodgers first baseman Adrian Gonzalez. (Photo by Jon SooHoo/Los Angeles Dodgers, LLC)

  Little League Opening Day 2015. Cathy (top row center) and Christian (bottom row second from left). (Ultimate Exposures)

  Six-year-old Christian on the Little League pitching mound.

  Tommy Lasorda (left) and Christian (right) at Little League Opening Day 2015.

  From left: Christian, Reverend Ken Steigler, Cathy, Charlotte, and Marilyn Steigler (seated) in New Hampshire. (Lori Dickman)

  Cathy (left) and Christian (right) win Lou Gehrig photo in Tampa Bay, Florida in July 2016.

  Christian at Cooperstown Baseball Camp in July 2015.

  Eight-year-old Christian on the pitching mound in September 2016. (Photography by Michael Coons)

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I WILL FIND YOU

  “Don’t be dismayed at good-byes. A farewell is necessary

  before you can meet again. And meeting again, after

  moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.”

  RICHARD BACH

  Dr. Tucker’s words about children claiming to have chosen their parents prior to being born stuck with me and inspired me to call my good friend Tracy for advice. Tracy was my go-to person for all matters in the woo-woo zone. She and her husband, Jeff, were among my most trusted confidants when it came to the subject of Christian’s reported past-life memories. Over the course of our 15-year friendship, Tracy had spent her free time practicing yoga, meditating, and handcrafting beaded jewelry, while I was busy running marathons, working overtime, and juggling social commitments. The fact that we were polar opposites created an attractive force that had kept our friendship going strong over the years. While I had always been a master at keeping my mind and body in perpetual motion, as if taking a moment to slow down would lead to my certain demise, Tracy was a seeker of peace and tranquility. She relied on intuition where I required cold, hard facts. Tracy also happened to hold the distinction of being the only person in my life who even knew what a past-life regression was. Not only did she know what it was, she had actually experienced one before.

  When I called Tracy to say that I was opening up to the idea of undergoing a past-life regression, she couldn’t have been more surprised. I had made it pretty clear to her in our previous conversations that I considered hypnotic regression to be the equivalent of going to a fortune-teller or a psychic—a big shall not in the Bible. Not only was it in direct conflict with my Christian beliefs but it also struck me as complete nonsense. When Tracy had first suggested the idea of having me visit her friend Jeroen, my skepticism outweighed my curiosity. It wasn’t until I heard Christian say he had picked me to be his mother that I actually considered acting on Tracy’s suggestion to contact Jeroen.

  Sensing that I was finally ready to take the leap, Tracy gently prodded, “If you decide to do a regression, you should definitley do it with Jeroen. He is a good person, and I trust him.” After swapping numerous voice mails with Jeroen, I became well acquainted with his Dutch accent and successfully arranged an appointment for the following Wednesday at 10:30 A.M.

  The day started like any other Wednesday morning—waking up at 5 A.M. to ride my stationary bike for 60 minutes, checking e-mails, taking a quick shower, packing lunches, getting my kids fed, bathed, and out the door by 8:15, followed by 45 minutes of volunteering in Christian’s kindergarten class. Without telling Michael where I was headed or what I was up to, I embarked on my journey to a suburb near downtown Los Angeles to meet the man known on Instagram as “Jeroen Is Love.” I figured it would be best to wait to tell Michael about my little adventure until I knew exactly what I was getting myself into.

  To say I was nervous when I knocked on the door of past-life regression therapist Jeroen de Wit would be an understatement. Even though I had skipped my morning coffee, as recommended in the four-page list of pre-session guidelines, my heart was beating faster than normal. Because the guidelines indicated that the session could take up to five hours and would require some recovery time, I had cleared my day of appointments—other than a Dodger game with my family that evening. The exact words in the document were: You will feel as if you have returned from an amazing journey, having visited other lifetimes, and it is best to give yourself some time to fully return to your regular conscious day-to-day reality before attempting any complex mental tasks or strenuous physical activity. Even though I didn’t really believe it, I went along with the charade.

  After a knock on the door, I was greeted by a sweet-tempered man with a broad smile, deep dimples, and twinkling blue eyes that appeared to light up from within. Jeroen lived on the top level of a home, which was built into a hill, and ran his Source Energy Healing business out of the bottom floor. He invited me into the downstairs room, which was sparsely decorated with a couple of chairs and a large massage table—the table where I was possibly going to surrender my consciousness. At that moment I wished I had scheduled a massage instead. Little did I know that I was about to embark on the most riveting journey of hypnotic time travel imaginable.

  I scanned the room for clues about the man who would soon guide me into a trance using Dolores Cannon’s Quantum Healing Hypnosis Technique (QHHT). Stunning nature photographs, shot by Jeroen, adorned the walls, and the room exuded the same warmth as its owner. Jeroen invited me to sit down, and his black-and-white cat took it as a cue to cruise up the back stairs.

  “I don’t normally do things like this . . .” were the first words out of my mouth, as if I was confessing a sin. He listened patiently as I went into a lengthy dissertation on the reason for my visit and my desire to better understand Christian’s journey.

  Then he said, “It’s important to have an open mind and to release expectations you have about the lifetime that you would like to visit. It’s impossible to predict what lifetime your subconscious mind will choose to explore.” Our pre-session conversation turned into more of a therapy session as I revealed how the whole experience with Christian and his connection to Lou Gehrig had me questioning the tenets of the faith I’d grown up with. Jeroen’s lightness of being gently loosened the screws of my tightly wound resistance, and by the end of our discussion, I felt quite comfortable that I was in good hands.

  Jeroen wrapped up our pre-session consultation by saying, “Don’t worry about trying to remember what you are seeing, hearing, or saying because I’ll be providing you with an audio recording of our session together.” He lit a small bundle of sage and waved the smoky mass around the room and then around me. Although I didn’t know the exact purpose of this ritual, I figured it couldn’t hurt. I followed Jeroen’s recommendation to go to the b
athroom because he said I would most likely be in a state of hypnotic trance for a few hours. And then I cautiously climbed onto the massage table and closed my eyes.

  After the hypnotic induction, Jeroen gently asked, “Where are you?”

  Images slowly started flooding into my mind. What started out as a bird’s-eye view of a busy suburban neighborhood with trees, came closer into focus, until I found myself standing in front of an iron stove in the kitchen of what I described as my “not fancy” apartment.

  “What does it feel like?” Jeroen asked.

  “I just get a feeling of being a mother. I keep being drawn to the kitchen.” He instructed me to look at my hand, and I giggled as I described it as “white and pudgy.”

  Lying on the table with my eyes closed, I had the sensation of being in another body, a weighty one. I described feeling “weight in my face, weight in my stomach, in my arms.” At the same time, my logical mind was totally coherent and questioning the validity of the words flowing out of my mouth. It almost felt as if I was two people at the same time—this person in the heavy body I was describing, as well as a skeptical observer. Even more bizarre was that I was speaking in a voice I could barely recognize as my own, using words and grammar that sounded totally different than my regular vernacular. When Jeroen prompted me to look at my feet, I gazed past my long dress and apron and clearly saw myself wearing big, heavy, brown boots, which I said were “for working.”

  “Do you live with any other people in the house?” Jeroen asked.

  “Two men—a boy and a man.” I described them sitting at a table and said, “The man seems like, not engaged. Just kind of doing his own thing.”

  “How do you feel about the boy?”

  I felt a flood of happiness, my face barely able to contain my big smile.

  “The boy, I love.”

  I told him what I saw in my mind’s eye: the boy was wearing boots, high socks, a hat, and pants that went to his knees. I added, “He’s handsome. He is probably like nine years old or so.”

  “How does the boy call you?”

  With a laugh, I replied, “Mama.”

  He then asked how the man addresses me, and I laughed even harder when saying, “Mama!” In that moment, my logical mind was chattering in the background, telling me there was no way that a man would call his wife “Mama.” And yet, even as I doubted, the more sensations and almost visceral knowledge of this “other” life washed over me. (Against all odds exactly one year after this session with Jeroen, I came across a newspaper article from 1933 in which Lou Gehrig’s father was quoted referring to his wife as “Mama.”)

  I told Jeroen that my husband spent most of his time at home and often smoked a pipe while sitting in the big, black chair in the living room next to “an old stove oven.” When Jeroen asked about my little boy a second time, I felt myself beam with pride as I said, “He’s a good boy.”

  “When you’re hugging him, what do you tell him?”

  I mumbled, “Meine Liebe? Like it’s German . . . he likes to have fun and play—works hard.” Jeroen’s questioning narrowed down the location of our home to a suburb outside of New York, not near the water, where we traveled by trolley cars to go into the city. I playfully joked about wearing a lot of clothes, even on very hot days, because of wanting to cover up my heavy body.

  Jeroen then said, “So let’s leave this scene. On the count of three, you will be transported to the next important scene in this lifetime, whatever you consider to be important. One, two, three . . . what’s happening now?”

  In an instant I was transported to a big, grassy parking lot in front of a baseball stadium. He asked what we were wearing, and I said we were kind of dressed up. I described myself wearing a long, floral-print dress, closed-toe shoes, and a white hat with a big brim, and I said my husband was wearing a coat and hat for the occasion.

  “What about your husband? How do you address him?”

  Misunderstanding the question, I answered with a hearty laugh, “He just kind of wears the same thing all of the time. He just wears pants and a shirt and a belt.”

  Jeroen asked again, “How do you address him? How do you get his attention?”

  “Heinrich,” I replied.

  He then asked what language we speak at home and I said, “German, Deutsch.”

  “Where is your boy?” Jeroen asked.

  “He’s playing in the game, so we’re gonna watch him. He’s new though.” I said I was excited for him because he had always wanted to do that, even though I wished he would have finished school. Jeroen and I both chuckled when I said, “The baseball people came in. They got him.” I explained how they had come to his college and watched him play, then I reiterated, “They got him!” When Jeroen asked if I was familiar with the game of baseball, I told him how my son and his friends had played baseball with wooden sticks as kids.

  Each time Jeroen asked a question, I was treated to vivid 3-D imagery of what was happening around me, a high-definition virtual reality. He asked if we had special seats, and I said, “Kind of; not too close.” I explained, “He’s on first base, so when I sit on that side, I can see pretty good.”

  “And what team does he play on?”

  “It’s the Yankees,” I replied, “they have on the short pants—like knickerbocker type pants.”

  When Jeroen asked me what the uniforms looked like I said my son was wearing a white, pinstripe jersey with the number four, while the other team was wearing red jerseys with short, gray pants. This is when my logical mind kicked into high gear. Was I simply reciting information I had come across from my prior research on Lou Gehrig, describing images I had already seen? After all, I knew from my hours and hours of research that Lou Gehrig wore the number four and played first base for the Yankees. Then I surprised myself when I began describing and experiencing things from totally out of the blue that I never could have known.

  “Do you guys have any snacks while you’re watching the game?” Jeroen asked.

  “Yeah, we have these nuts. They cook these nuts that we can eat. They’re pretty good.” He asked if they brought them to our seats, and I responded that we had to “get ’em.”

  “Are you drinking anything?”

  “Maybe a cola,” I replied.

  My use of the word cola came as a big shock to me, even under hypnosis, because it’s not a word I had ever used before. I was completely dumbfounded when my later research revealed that roasted chestnuts were sold at the front entrance to Yankee Stadium and all dark-colored, carbonated beverages were described as “colas” at the time.

  When he asked me what the scoreboard looked like, a crystal-clear view of it popped into my mind. I said it was a big, black sign in the distance with “numbers that have to be changed . . . like a person does it. It’s not electric.” Jeroen then had me fast-forward to the end of the game, and I heard the roar of the crowd, cheering for the win. I was beaming with pride when I said, “He hit one over the fence.” Adding, “He’s a gentleman. He’s humble.”

  “Do you ever talk to the people who run the team or have contact with them?” Jeroen asked.

  “Not too much. Some of the players visit sometimes. He lives at home.”

  “How old is your son?”

  I blurted, “Twenty-two.” (I later found out that even though Lou Gehrig was signed by the Yankees in 1923 at the age of 20, his first season playing for the Major League club was two years later when he was indeed 22 years old.) When Jeroen asked what we do after the game, I said we went to eat some food and drink a beer in the city. Our entire dialogue was in the present tense with me speaking in the first person as Lou Gehrig’s mother. As I answered Jeroen’s questions with my eyes closed, I could see the action unfolding in colorful moving pictures in my mind.

  Jeroen guided me to leave this scene and move on to the next significant scene in the life of this woman. Bam! There I was back at Yankee Stadium, but this was a very different feeling because it was the day my son was retiring from baseba
ll as the result of a medical issue. The sensations came rushing in. As I remarked that the loud popping sounds coming from the cameras were hurting my ears, I could actually feel the pain in my ears. I told Jeroen the loud noise might be coming from the flash, even though it was daytime, not nighttime. (I later read that flash photography was commonly used in daylight hours during the 1920s and ’30s, and I was surprised to learn that the flash was created using an explosive powder so dangerous that the loud pyrotechnics led to the death and disfigurement of many professional photographers during this era.)

  When Jeroen asked where we lived, I saw the home and described it as a “bigger house” that “sits on a hill,” and said our son had bought it for us. In response to Jeroen’s question about my son’s age, I said he was now 39. (My later fact-checking revealed that Lou Gehrig was 36 years old when he gave his “Luckiest Man” speech on July 4, 1939.) I sounded distressed when I said, “His body is sick . . . He can’t run. He can’t hit . . . but he’s still a gentleman.”

  “Do the doctors know what’s going on with your son?”

  “Not sure, not sure. But he’ll be okay.”

  “So you’re not too worried about it?”

  With complete confidence I replied, “No. He’s gonna be okay.”

  My logical mind was in total disagreement on this one because I knew that Lou Gehrig had died shortly after his retirement from the Yankees. But lying there on the table, I felt a mother’s confidence that her son was going to be okay.

  I told Jeroen my son was now married and described his wife as a “funny lady.” I said, “She doesn’t like to come to our house so he comes by himself.”