Firstly I must apologise for what has not been written. Some things it seems are best left unsaid and some I felt as though a restraining hand had been placed upon my shoulder when I came to say certain things as though I was being quietly but firmly told I must not reveal what I saw to you or to anyone. I hope you will understand.
Secondly I feel that I have failed in my task of adequately describing many of the things that are so clear in mind but so hard to convey to paper. I wish I was artistic if so I would have painted you pictures of many of the scenes, particularly those of the time I spend with crystal / diamond,
while it would have been impossible to see anything but the surface impression and a little of the inner light I would have been even as an artist unable to convey what I experienced.
I think I'll stop listing and just let my thoughts flow.
If I had been a poet perhaps it would have been possible to give you that insight that only a poet can to the mystic qualities of many of the events I experienced. But I'm not so there is little point in dwelling on such opportunities that I might have had, had I been a different person.
There are many parts of the tale that I fail to fully understand. When I think back to the Roman soldier and the railway arch I really don't think even now that I understand what it was all about or why I experienced it, the soldier himself almost in my mind's eye as I reflect on it seemed to have a comic book look to his movements that I failed to capture in my hurried description, he was more like a cartoon joke, dishevelled with dust rising from him and around him as he clanked away. What was it all for or about? If I don't know then I doubt if you will. The only thing I could take a stab at is that my experience moved from something of the concrete world that I know and slowly became something else. As to the darkness of the cave and the water I have my own ideas as to what was going on but I honestly don't feel brave enough to even begin to suggest what I think it was about and I worry I have made it sound like a toilet bowl. It wasn't. It as nothing like that although as I tried to write down that mysterious experience I kept getting the feeling I was describing a giant toilet bowl. I hope that didn't come across to you as you read it, it troubles me that I might have failed you in that respect and done a great disservice to you in relating it as I have done.
There was also an episode in the experience that took place in wood/forest and another in a tunnel but my internal editor seemed to stop me writing about them. Were they significant or just a confused part of the memory of the experience. That may be why I left it out. Perhaps also I do not understand even now the significance of that particular part of the vision/experience. I could draw no moral or lesson or point from the experience. I also had a very strong and vivid experience of flying in that floating way I described out round Scarborough Bay which was a thrilling experience as I rose very high and learned to manoeuvre myself. My time in the birch wood was lengthy, it was similar to the woods I have seen in the cold Eastern parts of Russia where a more primitive natural life still exists, or again like those who walk with the reindeer in Northern Europe and know no boundaries. It was a fantastic time living in the woods, wandering, living, being alone and at one with nature. Then there was the room which I entered and had to step down in to. Once there, there was no way out and yet I was unafraid and felt at home. It was an old fashioned room, rather scholarly with a coal fire and over stuffed chairs and oil lamps for light. It was a warm dark room with dark aged wood dominating the atmosphere. Because these extra scenes if you like never formed part of what felt like the narrative I left them out, I only mention them in passing to indicate to you that there was much much more that I could have written but none of the above seem to me give me at least any insight into what was happening and it was almost as if they happened in a different place and yet were an integral part of the tale I have to share. Maybe I have left something very important out of the story.
My own personal theory is that they were the dreams I stated that I dreamt during the experience and I tried to indicate them in the narrative by use of the words 'I dreamt a dream' or whatever phrase I actually used as it escapes my muddled head at the moment, and I know if I pause long enough it will come back to me but time is not an asset I can claim to be on my side. I think I was right to leave them out of the narrative as they formed no part of the real experience but were my brain trying in its dreaming to make some sense out of the emotions and experiences that flooded in each day and therefore have no real substance. I don't think it is possible to dream within a dream. I am having a moment of doubt as I explore this idea in my head that perhaps the whole experience was a dream. Not that dreams need necessarily be just plain figments of our mind in REM sleep, dreams can be much more than that. If I don't die on the date stated and if my final proof to you is false then you will know I dreamt it all, I unfortunately will not know if you verify that the experience or at least part of it anyway was real.
I would like to put a firm date stamp on when this occurred but I think I have already written about this and it would be foolish to repeat myself like an old man retelling his favourite stories over and over again. One day I knew nothing of any of this and the next it was there in its entirety and yet it was several days before the narrative formed in my mind in a shape that I thought it was possible to put into words. Yet the timeframe of the narrative itself and as I recall it took place over as we measure it many months, perhaps even years but on this point I really would not like to commit myself.
Now I come to an even stranger thought, was this a vision of that which is to come like the Ghost of Christmas Future in Dickens' A Christmas Carol? Must it still happen to me? Will I live it again when I die? Is it the journey I will take when at last my body grows still and cold and life departs? Is that it? A future unalterable and set in stone. Or can I alter it by actions presently taken? Has writing it down altered my future beyond death? Was that the point of experience, a vision to warn me of what was to come, or have I already in some way that is not readily understandable been there and lived through it in reality. Was I lifted out of time in order to see all the scattered images of my life laid before me, did it all happen simultaneously and it is in thinking about it and writing it down that it takes on shape and form and serve out its function?
I wish I had these answers to give you but I cannot with certainty do anything other than present you with what I have seen inside my head. You must make of it more than I can. You will have time when you have transcribed it all that great luxury denied to me of being able to spend a great deal of time pondering it all and searching out and asking questions about the tale itself. It is conceivably possible that quantum physics or cosmology or some branch of science will even provide a framework in which it is possible for such events to happen. Did I pop out of this universe to another and back in again? No, that is fanciful, I fear, not something that can be applied here, nevertheless I leave it sticking to the proverbial wall and you can dwell on the idea at leisure or tear it down from that wall and toss into the fire or file under insane ideas.
So where am I now? Is that enough reflection? I'm not sure, I keep getting this sinking feeling, a real feeling of unrest that there was something else that I have forgotten about. Something important. You know that feeling when you've left the house and you wonder did you lock the door or turn off the oven. Or like the feeling when you find yourself standing in a room wondering why you are there and trying so hard to remember what it was or when, at least for me, you start a sentence and halfway through you realise you have forgotten what you are talking about - maybe that's just me and not a common experience at all.
I think I have it. I'm not sure if this is it or not. I will know more certainly if I write this down and the feeling goes away. All my adult life I have been troubled by the same dream which comes in many forms but nevertheless is the same dream. In essence I am in a place where I can find no way out or more accurately no way of reaching my destination or imposing order on events. I might be in a hospital
and need to get to a certain room but no matter how hard I try or how many corridors I travel along or floors I go up and down I am always prevented in some way from getting to my destination. It manifests itself in many ways. Sometimes I will be trying to organise worship in a Church and nothing will work out, I have no service book or material, microphones don't work, people leave in droves and no matter how hard I try I cannot ever get any semblance of order out of chaos. In other words no matter what I try to achieve I fail, I am lost, caught in some kind of freaky loop out of which there can never be an exit. Every dream I ever remember having has been along these lines all my adult life. I am a dreamer of vivid dreams and they seem so real even when I wake up I feel as though they have been real experiences, so much so I have casually pondered if the dream world is in fact real and we live two separate existences. Now I am in kooky land I know but I want to share that with you so that I can say quite clearly to you this was a very, very, very different kind of experience and while it might read like the dream of a madman it had no hallmarks in any way of being a dream, it was something other than that something more than anything which falls in to the realm of normal experiences.
I think it is a post death experience, a journey I am in fact still to undertake. Is that too weird for you to handle? It is for me. My mind ties itself in little knots even trying to frame the question never mind trying to understand what that could possibly mean.
So Adam I have left you with this. Left you with my memoir, which was yours long before I was preparing to die. Today has been a good day, I almost feel like I am getting better but I have seen that often and more likely intimates the very brief time I have left. I know you will remember me writing these words for you are in the other room as I come to the end of my final notebook. You will have though no doubt I have been dotty, secretively scribbling away in corners, huddled over my little books preventing anyone from seeing that which is being written. You may even be angry with me as I am writing this, thinking to yourself why isn't he spending time with us when it is so short. If my proof is correct and what I saw accurate for some reason it will be many years before you ever get to read this which I don't understand as that is not my stated intention. So if you are reading this shortly after my death then nothing I am going through will be contained in this book. In fact it will be rambling cancer driven insanity served with lashings of tripe.
I wonder if that for me is a clue to timescale. Bear with me a little, if what I will end with that is my proof, is accurate perhaps when you read it it will be at exact same time that I see you doing it? Maybe I will literally be watching you from above at that very moment. Nice idea, comforting even, but not likely to be the case since I also saw my own death at exactly the same time as I saw the proof I am able to give.
Still it was a pleasant thought. I am writing to you now as though this is a letter for my tale is done and I am reluctant to bring my discourse with you to a close. I know I will weep when I write the last words in this notebook. I don't think I can bear to stop talking to you. My eyes are filling up now as I get a real sense of what I am leaving behind so soon. I don't as I write this want to go. I want to bin these notebooks and stay with you all and never have the pain of separation. Even with the powerful vision and all its wonder and promise, and that place I will reach in the end, even with all that awaiting me right now in this very moment I am overwhelmed with sadness as I hear the voices next door and hear you chatting to your Grandmother. Nevertheless I must draw to a close. I won't give you the proof just yet for those will be my very last words and you will have reached the end of all that I have written and when that moment comes all that remains is for me to place them in the secret compartment of the suitcase where you will find them one day in the future and all that will be left is for me to turn my face to the wall and wait to die.
I hear the clink of cups. I think I smell toast. I am coming now from my labours to join you, I can think of nothing better right at this moment but to come and join you both, the loves of my life, and share in a little dry toast and a cup of milky sweet tea.
Tomorrow I will return to this for the last time and share with you any last thoughts that come to me through the night and at last draw it all to a close with my offering to you of the final proof this has not been a dream. I hear your voice so young and clear and bright with vitality. I hear you Adam. You are coming to call me for supper. In a moment your face will appear in the door, your bright perhaps over bright smile will encourage me to come and you will look into my bedroom and see your Grandfather propped up in bed closing his notebook and putting it down. I know you will offer to help me get out of bed and I will be grateful for that simple act of kindness and once up and steady on my oh so thin legs I will slide the notebook underneath the pillow and ask you to give me your arm.
You will be gracious and I hope you never lose that, not ever.
And as you open the door as I predicted, I lift my hand to signal to you that I will be just one minute more and I smile at you over my glasses. Will you remember that moment among all the other ones?
****
It is now the middle of the night and you have gone home and I am writing quietly in bed your Grandmother beside me gently snoring. Partly it is pain that keeps me awake but mainly my reluctance to draw this to a close for when I pen the final words I must stop and leave it all in other hands.
I feel as though I have run a great race and am approaching the finishing line which is just around the corner out of sight but most certainly there. I think I have said all I need to say but not all I want to say. You can see I hate partings, I've never been any good at them. I remember once waving your Grandmother off on a train when we were courting and waving madly as the train disappeared in the distance and round a bend and standing there wishing it would come back and then turning away in tears as the pain of separation overwhelmed me. I am a sentimental man easily moved to tears. Beneath the exterior I put a defensive wall around me to keep me safe and stop me from crying. I am sure there is a word for that among the medical profession. Anyway my dear sweet boy I must now present my proof.
When I looked down through the cones of light in the plain of darkness I saw not only the time and place and date of my own death but I also saw you so much older than you are today reaching this last page in the notebook and decoding these final words. I saw you in a room with a fire burning brightly. I sensed as I looked it as towards the end of the year perhaps early December I can't be sure but it was definitely the early part of winter. You are standing beside the fire facing away from the window. I can see a date but only partly over behind you on the wall. All I can make out is 11. But I can see your clock, an old fashioned Westminster chiming clock from the middle of the twentieth century. It is going to chime the half hour soon. You read this and start to look up you will see the time as eleven twenty five.
The Next Stage
As I translated this I was shocked to my core. It is hard to tell you what I had been thinking as bit by bit I uncovered the writings in these notebooks. Remember you are able to read this as one account. I had to struggle to decipher this word by word and often the meaning of the words would be unclear until such time as I could go back over my notes and read them again and notice the odd mistake and go back and check. But for what it is worth as far as memory recalls it this was the time of his actual death although the Doctor didn't come to verify it for another half hour so I can't in anyway prove the veracity of that part of his story. However the Death Certificate clearly indicates the 27th October. He was wrong however in the detail about tubes. There was nothing around him at the time. He wasn't expected to die that day. None of us had been called to his bedside. Only my Grandmother was there in the room waiting for him to wake up when she realised his breathing had stopped and his pallour had taken on the sheen of death. She could vouch for the exact time of death because she had been dusting the wall clock at the time when she felt something change in the room. Obviously what he saw in this
vision as he calls it was accurate in essentials but not in details. This of course causes me to wonder how much of his experience falls into the same category of being correct in essentials but perhaps less accurate in the details that his mind filled in for him? Like one of those puzzles designed to trick the eye where you fill in what you think you see until it makes sense to you. I have the benefit over you of having read to the end of his tale and I am pretty sure that the experience is correct in essentials but what he describes is what his brain allowed him to see in order to make sense of the events occurring around him or within him.
As for his proof to the time at which I read it, he was far removed from the truth. It was the middle of the night when I finally translated it the last part and was in fact in bed. Naturally I felt both deflated and confused. My next task was to type it all up. Once that was all done and proof read I printed it out and decided to read it through from start to finish. I was sitting in my armchair by the fire when I began reading. It was a typical chilly December day and a wind found its way into the house and sent a chill across my legs. Without stopping reading I stood up with my back to the fire to warm up. Reaching the last page I glanced at the clock and then at the calendar. My jaw did drop then as it corresponded to exactly what he described. So much so I looked towards the corner and upwards searching for some sign of his presence. There was of course none.
Inner Legacy Page 10