Exercise 9 First Retrieval Exercise.
[recreated from notes made with eyes closed during the exercise]
I somehow knew the guide I had attracted was male, though I didn’t have clear image of him. I thought his name was Charlie, or maybe Ernie. I saw an image of a black bench, placed near an inner door leading into a bar, or a restaurant, or a pub, somewhere in London. The bench was black and smooth (later it occurred to me that the black smoothness might be horsehair) covered with some kind of lacework, or crocheting, or something. Very colorful.
The handwork had been made by a woman in whose presence I was. Her name was – Angie? She looked to be in her 70s, wearing a black or dark dress, long. I knew that she had spent her life in that room, more or less. She was one of the proprietors.
I asked her if she knew that she was dead. “Oh yes,” she said, she knew. She was staying around because she was attached to that colorful cloth, which she had made. She had no family left. She had died peacefully and alone in her old age, in the ‘40s after the war. I got 1947. She knew she had died, but hadn’t gone on because she had no afterlife beliefs and so had nowhere to go. She said, under questioning, that she was okay with staying there, though she was getting bored, and missed her husband Charlie. She had lived with Charlie 50 years. At about the same time that I realized that guide Charlie was the same person as husband Charlie, she perceived him for the first time.
“Well, Charlie, I didn’t see you there!”
So was she ready to go on? “Yes – if it’s really Charlie.”
“How could I demonstrate it to you?”
“Well, I’m becoming persuaded that it’s possible by the questions you ask – and by the fact that you are here, too.”
Before they moved on, I wanted verification if possible. I asked her name, and got “Cooper Thestlewaite.” My doubter kicked in, thinking “Alice Cooper?” (I was misremembering the name I had gotten, Angie, as Alice.) In response, I got the name “Elize.”
Charlie had died in a bombing in 1941. He was a street warden and a collapsing wall fell on him. He was already in his “late years” — 50s or 60s, I gathered. And was Elize in her 70s? She said she had added to her age as she felt the years pass! So when had she died? In 1961, I think she said, or it might have been that she was 61 when she died. Neither of those conjectures square with her having lived with Charlie for 50 years!
I asked if she knew when is it now. She said, “Later.” [than when she died] “Don’t know when.” I asked for proof that I visited you? She said, “Tea Caddy, Stoke- on-Trent. China from pottery.” That didn’t sound very evidential. I asked again for proof, and she gave me what I took to be the name of their place, the “Meat Pie Inn, London.” When I asked Charlie, I got “: ___ Horse Inn, Lombard Street, Ealing, London.” (Is Ealing in London?)
I asked, “Can I help you?” and she said, “You have done, dearie.” I was moved to say, “Bless you my dear. Go ahead then, and I will follow.” They were going to the England of their youth, to an idealized version of the countryside, so that they could have a chance to live a long-held fantasy. They both know that they’re dead, they just want to play out the fantasy first I thought, “Well don’t you both look nice?” They had changed to be as they must have been in their early 30s, maybe. She is not pretty, but pleasant. He is slim, sharp featured, but kindly.
I told them to enjoy themselves, but remember, that they can go on when they want to. Charlie knows. The key somehow was the knitted thing she put on the black – horsehair?—bench and cared about. That’s why she stayed there rather than elsewhere
I liked this one. 😊