A Whoa Moment

English: Shad fishing on the Pee Dee River, Image taken by me, released under GFDL Pollinator 03:07, 24 Jan 2004 (UTC) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Daily Prompt: Whoa! What’s the most surreal experience you’ve ever had?

I gave this prompt quite a bit of thought before I decided what to write. Truth is, I’ve had numerous surreal experiences, but the one that sticks out in my head the most happened quite a few years ago and some background information must be given.

My (paternal) grandfather was from an area in South Carolina that used to be called Sampit. I’d grown up about over an hour away from there and had only met a few of his people (at my father’s funeral when I was 7, and then at my grandfather’s funeral when I was 17). Now, I look like my father spit me out of his mouth, I don’t look anything like my mom (my mom says that it’s because God knew that he would be taken from us early and we are his legacy).

When I was in my late 30’s I lived in the Pee Dee area of SC, probably about 2 hours from where my grandfather’s people were, and I’d gone to meet a few friends in Columbia to hang out. A woman there was a psychic, she had her own psychic business, etc and before I knew who she was she came up to me and began talking to me about the 2 men in my life that I’d lost. An older gentleman who had salt and pepper hair and was a stout man with a wonderful smile. And a younger man with dark curly hair with a touch of red in the front who was so very proud of me. They were both around me, they were both proud of me and loved and missed me very much. She said they shared a name that started with an “M,” but they were called different names. She had a message from them: (Needless to say, this spooked me. I felt like I was in a movie or script. It didn’t feel real, but it was real. I remember pinching myself to make sure I was awake.)

The message was: Be true to yourself. We are with you. You can and will find happiness but first you have to let the past go.

Okay, enough of that. I was spooked. I’d had an ex that I’d gone back to, and we’d been back and forth, back and forth for years. It was not a healthy or a happy relationship, but try as I might I could not seem to let go and move forward. (It would be a few more years before I was finally able to do that.) She apologized if she’d scared me, I told her I wasn’t scared. I’d always known that my father and my grandfather were with me, but the message had spooked me. How did she know? I wondered. She must have felt my apprehension, and said, “Their message not mine. They wanted me to convey how much they love you and how they’re watching over you but that you have to learn to let go and move forward so you can find real happiness.”

Now maybe the message was more about letting go of the pain I still felt so many years later over losing them, or maybe it was about the ex, could have been both.

The next morning I checked out of the hotel I was in, and drove back towards home. I stopped at a Waffle House off of the interstate in the Pee Dee area and sat down at the bar part since I was alone. A few moments later an older couple came in and sat down beside me. As I was ordering my breakfast, I noticed the woman staring at me. Then as I began to eat my breakfast she still kept looking at me with a perplexed look on her face. Finally, she asks me, “Where are you from?” I tell her. “Do you have family in __________? ” I answer that I do, that my grandfather’s family is from there. She says, “Was your grandfather a B______? I say, yes. And tell her who my grandfather was and she immediately says, “We called him Bubba and I had the biggest crush on him when we were in elementary and middle school.” Now this woman had grown up with my grandfather and his siblings. She knew them by name and nicknames. She said how handsome he was, and how disappointed many of the women were when he married my grandmother. I almost fell out of my chair. She said she’d known the moment she saw me that I had to be a B____, the resemblance to one of my great aunt’s and my grandfather was uncanny.

It was really cool meeting someone who’d grown up with my grandfather, but the whole weekend was completely surreal. I still find myself thinking about how weird the whole thing was.

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