by Cathy Byrd
I was clearly not alone in my struggle to behave humanely when it came to watching our kids play baseball, as evidenced by the countless times our games were delayed due to boisterous arguments among the coaches while the bewildered young boys wondered why everyone was so upset. It was not uncommon to witness coaches berating their players for striking out or making an error. I once saw a father scream to our team in the dugout, “We’re not here to have fun, we’re here to win.” Such scenes were probably unfathomable to the founder of Little League baseball, Carl Stotz, whose vision in creating the league was to foster cooperation, teamwork, and respect for others. A mother in the stands said it best when she shouted to coaches who were arguing over an umpire’s call, “Who cares about baseball, we’re training young men here!”
In one of our Little League play-off games, the son of the coach who had ridiculed Christian did something that made my blood boil. By the first inning, I could feel myself getting upset when the opposing coach’s seven-year-old son, who was playing first base, heckled the umpire. When the umpire called “ball one,” the boy yelled out to his pitcher, “Don’t worry about it, Jack. That umpire doesn’t know what a strike looks like.” I was most appalled by the fact that the boy’s father did nothing to correct his son and appeared to condone the disrespectful comment.
And then two innings later, the same boy was up to bat and hit a ground ball to second base. The second baseman scooped up the ball and threw it to Christian at first base for an easy out. This is when the coach’s son, who was two years older and much bigger than my son, ran out of the basepath to knock Christian down in an attempt to get him to drop the ball—a tactic this boy used quite frequently. Christian managed to hold on to the ball, but he was taken out of the game with a neck injury. I found myself wanting to ring the kid’s neck and tell the father to jump off a cliff. No matter how much I tried to feel compassion and love for this coach, all I felt was rage.
The following day I sent an e-mail to the League requesting that a warning be issued to the boy prior to our championship game. By trying to single out the boy to get revenge on his father I was just as guilty of violating the principles that Little League baseball was founded upon as the coach whom I had come to dislike. I didn’t like this side of myself, but my acrimonious feelings toward the coach seemed beyond my control. It became obvious to me that I still had a long way to go in my new spiritual practice of love, compassion, and forgiveness. My inside job was far from over, but I was slowly learning that only when the mind is quiet can the heart become open.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
WHISPERS OF THE SOUL
“Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard.”
ANNE SEXTON
At the end of our Little League baseball season in June 2014, I indulged my ongoing curiosity about the life of Christina and Lou Gehrig by going to see Jeroen for another past-life regression. Summer vacation was just one week away, and I was hoping that my second visit to Jeroen would uncover information that would be helpful for our upcoming trip to New York in mid-July when we planned to visit significant landmarks from Lou Gehrig’s life. This is something Dr. Tucker had suggested we do sooner than later because in August Christian would be turning six—the age when children’s past-life memories generally disappear for good. In between visiting Lou Gehrig’s old homes and taking Charlotte and Christian to a game at Yankee Stadium, I also planned to visit the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library in Cooperstown to continue my research.
I arrived at Jeroen’s home at 10 A.M., knowing that our session would probably take a minimum of three hours. This time I was filled with hopeful exuberance, rather than fear, when I knocked on the door. During our pre-session chat, Jeroen warned me that the odds of going back to the same lifetime were slim. In his experience as a past-life regression therapist, none of his clients had ever repeated the same lifetime in subsequent regressions. He said, “Try to go in without any expectations.” After hearing Jeroen’s advice, I let go of the idea of visiting the life of Christina Gehrig for a second time and decided it might be fun to embark on a new adventure.
I took my place on the massage table, and within what felt like seconds, the visual imagery slowly came into focus. Jeroen asked me tell him how I was feeling and what my shoes looked like.
“I feel happy . . . and young.”
When I looked down at my feet, I saw shiny, closed-toe shoes and a long dress with an apron in front and a long tie in the back.
“Who helps you with the tie?” he asked.
“My mom.”
The setting I described was a green meadow with wildflowers, and a lake to my right. I told him it was a party with my family to celebrate summer. I was four years old. I told him I could smell meat cooking and see boys playing horseshoes. Jeroen’s continued probing revealed that I had blue eyes and long, blonde hair, which my mom sometimes put up in a half ponytail.
“What is your favorite food you will be eating today?”
“Kuchen. White cake with strawberries and whipped cream.”
From visiting my husband’s family in Germany, I knew that Kuchen was the German word for cake, but it surprised me to hear the word cross my lips because I had never actually said it before. Through his questioning, Jeroen led me to my home. I immediately saw and described a farmhouse in the woods with a corrugated metal roof; I was sitting at the kitchen table. I told Jeroen I was eating porridge and cake with my mother and father. When Jeroen asked me about my father, I said, “He is a farmer kind of guy . . . cuts wood and stuff.”
Jeroen prompted me to move on to the next important scene in the life of this young girl.
“One, two, three . . . what’s happening now?”
I described myself as a pudgy 17-year-old who was a good student and living with my grandma.
With deep sadness in my voice, I told Jeroen, “My dad lives away somewhere. My mom died.”
“Do you love anything or anyone in your life right now?”
“I want to move from this house. Go live somewhere else . . . It’s hard to leave my grandma.”
“What does your grandma call you?”
“Stina—for Christina—like a nickname. We take care of each other because my grandpa died too, so she is lonely.”
The words came out of my mouth in such a rush that each time I said something, it felt as if I was listening to somebody else speaking.
I described dressing up to go to an outdoor market in the center of town where people sell food. I said I could see “firelights—like little candles in a row.” Then I felt my face blush when I told Jeroen about a guy I liked—an older, adventurous businessman who wanted to move to America too. Jeroen asked where I was living, and I said, “Feels like Europe, like Northern Germany.” I told Jeroen I had some friends I described as, “Older kids who had moved to America . . . They send letters. There’s opportunities there.” A feeling of hope and optimism swept over me as I said these words.
Jeroen prompted me to move away from this scene and on to the next. He then asked what I was looking at or feeling. I giggled and said, “I think I’m pregnant.” I described feeling happy but scared because I wasn’t yet married to the baby’s father—my boyfriend, Henry.
“Is that okay with your families? For you not to be married but have a baby on the way?”
I responded coyly, “They don’t really know yet. We just got to America too.”
I said we were staying with a family who didn’t know about my pregnancy either, and I told him I was “cooking and cleaning to help pay for our room.” When Jeroen asked what we brought with us to America, I said, “We brought a trunk filled with personal things; clothes, jewelry, and some pictures.” I could perfectly see the full-color details of the items I was describing.
This is when he asked about our journey to America. I felt as if I was actually on the boat as I described sleeping on the top deck on a burlap blanket and seeing black steam coming out of the ship. I said we weren’t able to t
ake a shower on the 14-day trip, and we brought our own food to save money. I laughed when adding, “We brought some alcohol too!” He asked if it was a direct trip from Germany or if we had traveled to a different country, and I replied, “Iceland—North, I think.” I described feeling relieved to get off of the boat in New York and told him I had to “sign in.”
“What did the signing-in entail?”
“They wanted your name and your birthday and where you’re from . . . We didn’t have a lot of money with us. We just decided to stay in New York.”
I felt happy as I described finding some people on the boat who spoke German too. I was particularly fond of my new friend Meredith Krueger, who’d made the trip with her brother. Jeroen asked what type of work Henry does. Without hesitation I said, “He works with his hands. Kind of like metal and tools. He might make horseshoes too.” Jeroen asked what I like about New York, to which I replied, “I like the people. I like that everything’s new. They are much happier here . . . I’m happy here.” I felt very content and proud as I spoke about my new life in America.
“So, let’s move forward to the day when your baby is born. Tell me what happens,” Jeroen said.
“We didn’t have a lot of money to pay a doctor, so we had to have friends help us at our house.” When he asked how I felt about it, I surprised myself when the following words came out of my mouth, “Kind of sad, I think.”
“Why are you feeling sad?”
My voice quivered as I replied, “It wasn’t a good birth . . . the cord was wrapped around the neck of the baby.”
I expressed my concern that the baby wasn’t eating and said, “I think it was too traumatic, the birth. If we went to the doctor, I think he would have been okay.”
I said my friends who’d helped with the birth “had done it before, but didn’t really know what to do.”
“It must have been hard for you,” Jeroen empathized.
We were both shocked when I said, “Yeah, it’s a sad feeling to bury a baby.” In that moment, I experienced a deep sense of despair, as if I had lost a baby of my own.
“What was wrong with the baby?”
“He had a fever, but I still think it was the birth. It was just too hard on him.”
I told him that by the time the doctor came to us it was too late, and I reported that the baby had died 12 days after the birth. My heart was heavy when I said, “I just wish we had made a better decision, had some help . . . I think Meredith Krueger helped me.”
I felt the sadness lift when Jeroen instructed me to go to the next important scene for me to look at and experience. After the countdown he said, “What’s happening now?” This time I was a mother and I happily described cleaning my two babies. I said the two-year-old boy would get jealous when I would breastfeed the one-year-old girl.
“But he’s too big,” I told Jeroen.
He asked me what the boy does when he gets jealous, and we both chuckled when I replied, “He tries to sit on my lap.” I seemed confident that the boy’s name was Lou, but when he asked me if I had a nickname for the little girl, I said, “I think her name is Sophie, but I don’t know what I call her.” I described her as petite with blue eyes and skin that was paler than Lou’s. I added, “He loves her too.” When he asked if she was a healthy baby, I replied, “Yeah. She’s skinny. I need to fatten her up.” I giggled.
The line of questioning then turned toward where we were living at the time. I expressed being happy to live in a cheap one-bedroom apartment we’d found outside of the city in a three- or four-story building made of bricks. He asked if my friend Meredith Krueger was still around, and I responded affectionately, “Yeah, she’s a good friend . . . She loves my kids too.” When I told Jeroen that she works a lot, as a secretary, he asked, “How do you feel about that?” I said, “I’m happy for her. I don’t know if she can meet a man because she is so busy.” Jeroen asked if I had married Henry yet, and I replied with a big grin, “Yeah, we’re married.” When he asked about our ceremony, I chuckled while saying, “We just went to the courthouse. We didn’t have a party or anything.”
When Jeroen asked about my life as a mother, I felt a sense of pride and fulfillment when telling him about my day-to-day responsibilities of cooking, cleaning, and taking care of my two kids. When asked about my husband’s line of work, I reported that he was now working at a shop where they make fences. Jeroen asked if we were doing okay with income, and I replied, “We’re okay. I want to get pictures of the kids made, but it costs money.” I was clearly worried about the money, but concluded, “I think I’m gonna do that.”
Jeroen gave the instruction to move to the next important scene, and following the count of three, he asked his usual question, “What is happening now?”
“We had to bury our baby girl,” I said calmly.
Sensing my sadness, Jeroen said, “Oh, no!”
I expressed being concerned about “poor Lou” and said, “He’s just confused. Doesn’t know where she went.”
“How old is Lou now?”
“He is three.”
“What happened to her?”
“She got a sickness, a fever, like a virus . . . a cough.”
Jeroen asked if this was common, and I reflected with deep despair, “It happens. It happens. But I thought she would be okay. We tried everything.”
“What did you try?”
“We tried like special foods, medicines, but we just couldn’t save her.”
I could see the little girl suffering when I said, “Her little body was so hot. It was an infection.” I said she had died at sundown and mentioned having a priest there too. When Jeroen asked how Lou was handling her death, I said, “He just misses his baby. I hope he can have a baby one day.”
“How is Henry dealing with this?” Jeroen asked.
“He is sad, but in the background . . . trying to work. I don’t see him much.”
When Jeroen asked about our relationship, I said, “He is quiet. Sometimes he yells. We’re okay.”
Lightening up the mood, Jeroen asked in an upbeat way, “Who’s wearing the pants in the relationship?” My response was, “He’s not a real strong person, not real communicative. I get to make more decisions . . . He doesn’t have a lot of opinions.”
Jeroen touched again on the loss of my baby and asked if I was okay with showing my feelings. I told him that I cry a lot, but not in front of Lou. I said with conviction, “I try to be strong for him.”
At the end our session, while I was still in trance, Jeroen asked for permission to speak with the “subconscious of Cathy.” He asked me about the purpose of this sequence of events.
“I think there is a picture of Lou and his sister somewhere,” I told him, “Maybe I can find that picture when I go to New York.”
When I left Jeroen’s house, I couldn’t shake the heaviness of the firsthand experience of losing two young children to untimely deaths. I vaguely recalled having read about Lou Gehrig having siblings who had died at young ages, but I never gave it much thought. I knew from the personal experience of my father losing his three-year-old sister to meningitis that death from childhood illnesses was common in the early 1900s. Lou Gehrig’s deceased siblings never seemed important to me until this very surreal experience where the pain of loss affected me deeply.
The first thing I did when I arrived home was look up Lou Gehrig’s family tree on Ancestry.com. The site listed two siblings—Sophie, who was born one year after Lou and passed away at the age of one and a half, and a sister named Anna, who was born the year before Lou and lived only three months. Although it was quite a strange and morbid thing to do, I ordered the death and birth certificates of Sophie and Anna Gehrig. When the documents arrived a few weeks later, it was Sophie Gehrig’s death certificate that caught my attention. It took my breath away when I read the cause of death was “Measles, Diphtheria, Broncho-Pneumonia.” This explained the suffering I had described as well as the high fever and cough.
I read online that Lo
u was the only one of four Gehrig children to survive babyhood, but I was unable to find any record of the birth or death of a fourth child in the Gehrig family. I had a strong intuitive feeling that the mystery sibling must have been the little boy I’d described giving birth to prior to being married to Henry. While under hypnosis I had said we’d kept this pregnancy a secret from our parents and had never given the boy a name because he died 12 days after his birth. I wondered if Christina Gehrig’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy, which I saw so clearly under hypnosis, was in fact real. If so, it must have been a secret she kept from the world—and from her own family—until the day she died. This would explain why the birth order of the fourth Gehrig child has always remained a mystery.
Many of the other details that had come up in my regression were difficult to verify, such as whether or not Christina really had a friend named Meredith Krueger. However, I was able to find documentation confirming that Lou Gehrig’s mother, Christina Facke, had come to America from Germany on a ship at the turn of the century when she was a teenager, exactly as I had reported. I also found out that the journey to America by boat often included a stop in Iceland. It was difficult to find information about Christina’s childhood in Germany, but I was quite surprised to read that she did live with her grandmother. I wasn’t able to determine if it was her maternal grandmother who she lived with, but I seemed very sure of this fact while under hypnosis. My Internet search also revealed that in Germany, “Stina” was once a common nickname for Christina, which I never knew before. I also discovered photographs from the late 1800s of German homes with corrugated metal roofs, similar to the one I saw when describing her childhood home to Jeroen.