The Car

You may, or may not, believe what you are about to read. However it is true. All the facts are as they occurred and accurate to the best of my memory. They may seem separate to you while your read them but, in my understanding, they fit together. To some, my conclusions may appear wild speculation, but not to me. This is not the Twilight Zone.

First the facts, starting with the most recent and working backwards:

Fact 1:

"Not long ago I was lying awake at three in the morning, my eyes closed, wondering how long it would be until I fell asleep. I don't know how it is for you but, at times like that, my mind wanders without any conscious guidance from me. Suddenly it pulled up an image of a friend's red M.G. sports car. His car was old and the slowest sports car I've ever encountered. But I had no car and envied his. That was back in 1963, so the car probably dated from the 30's or 40's.

While I was remembering that car, a sudden rush of memory came back to me about another car. The memory was so warm, so filled with delight it was clear that the car was important. It was a black sedan also built in the 30's or 40's. It had running boards and the hood hinged from the middle. I had a motor memory of how hard it was to steer. That delightful memory had come in a rush. It was quickly replaced by a wave of sadness at the fact that I'd had to lose the car. I knew that I couldn't keep it but the memory of losing it was as bitter now as it was then.

But when was then? For some reason I couldn't remember why I had to lose it. Then I began to wonder when I'd owned it. Nothing leaped readily to mind so I began to go through all the cars that I'd owned. I couldn't place it in the sequence. I couldn't remember when I'd owned it. I switched to all the places I'd lived to see if I could link the car to one of them. I couldn't.

That memory was so strong that I knew it was real but I couldn't remember where and I couldn't remember when.

Fact 2:

The memory of something that couldn't be placed where or when had happened to me once before.

When I was eighteen or nineteen I was in the pub one evening with some friends. I went up to the bar to get another drink and happened to look at the person standing beside me. He was about my age and, as our eyes met, we both smiled in recognition. If felt so good to see him again. I had a genuine warmth of affection for him and he felt the same for me. But I couldn't remember where or when we'd formed our bond of comradeship. Neither could he. We went through all our schools, camps, clubs and places we'd lived. There was no match we could find. Finally, frustrated, I went back to my friends without a resolution. Neither of us could remember where, we could not remember when.

Fact 3:

For some reason, as I lay there in bed, my wandering mind attached to a time in my early teens. A Sunday afternoon and I was walking back home after Sunday School. As I walked I had the sudden impression that I was a pilot at the controls of a fighter plane. I could feel the joystick in my hands and my thumbs ready to fire the machine guns. Probably it was only for a few seconds but it was so real that the sensation has stayed with me for over sixty years.

Fact 4:

When I was a young child - probably six or seven years old - from time to time during the day I was overwhelmed by the feeling that I was not real. That I was a character in some man's dream and one day he would wake up and I'd cease to exist. I would just vanish with the dream. The feeling was very strong and often came in moments of crisis when I rather hoped he'd wake up so I'd avoid the consequences of whatever was happening.

Fact 5:

Again, when I was young, many nights I would have a recurring dream, or rather, a recurring nightmare. I would be walking along a country road and would notice that there was a small ditch on the other side of the road. It was too narrow and shallow to be dangerous but I knew that I had to keep away from it. However, as I walked, some force kept pushing me closer to it, however hard I tried not to go. And, as I got closer, the ditch would get wider and deeper. With a sick feeling I knew that I'd fall into it and that would be the end. Fortunately, I always managed to wake up, trembling and sweating before I fell.

Fact 6:

I was born in England during July 1945 between the end of the war in Europe and of the war in the Pacific. I grew up passing bombed out homes every day on my way to school. The war and its effects were very present.

***

Those are the memories. The facts. Now to how I found they fit together. Speculation? Perhaps. But it all works for me. It started with a question that led to others.

I was born just at the end of the war, just after thousands of young men had died violently, long before they should have died. Was it possible that the soul, spirit or ghost of a young airman had fought the inevitability of death and, somehow, had managed to take refuge in me, bringing with him his memories and his fears?

Was the person I met in the pub someone also, born just at the end of WW2, another man who had this invisible essence of a pilot, unknown, inside? I think that the warmth of the connection that I'd felt with the stranger at the bar was just the sort of comradeship that would come in the mess of an airfield where the pilots met every evening to drink, play darts, tell bad jokes and laugh too loudly knowing, but never saying, that the chances of being there the next evening were slim.

Had "my" pilot a black sedan car that was his pride and joy and his bitter regret, as he was shot out of the air, was that he'd never drive it again? Was that car parked beside the barracks until someone else took it away?"

Was my childhood impression of being in another person's dream an unconscious realization that an older soul was sharing my body and might take it over?

Was that recurring nightmare of falling into the bottomless ditch his nightmare?

Was it his continuing struggle to keep away from death as he continued in me?

The dreams stopped. I have no memory of falling into that chasm but did that other spirit grow weak and disappear as I grew? Yet there's the memory of that black car. The memory that came just last year. It's not my memory. Is it a sign that he's still there, somewhere within?

Now I don't know if I'm just me or I'm someone else as well.