My First Memory!
I’
As I walked through the kitchen door of my relative’s home on my tenth birthday, I had a feeling of immense dread... like I had experienced the worst nightmare that anyone could have ever imagined.
My stomach felt like it was in my throat... To say the least, I felt extremely sick.
It should have been really happy day. It was anything but.
Besides feeling sick, I felt afraid... really afraid. Of what, I did not know and would not for more than forty years.
For breakfast, I forced down pancakes which should have been a real treat. My family was not well off, so cereal was my normal morning meal.
I didn’t remember going to the lake that day.
As a matter of a fact, I didn’t remember anything else that had happened in my life after I woke up lying on the grass with a severe pain in my foot.
How did I get there? What happened to me?
I can’t to this day remember what happened next.
Was I taken to a doctor or a hospital? My guess is “No!”
The year was 1953 and in those days, that was not the usual practice. You took care of such things yourself.
At least, I would not have been cold. The day was the 2nd... the month was August and I will never be able to forget the terrible pain in my foot. What I could not remember though, was how it got hurt.
Later, I learned I had stepped on a broken piece of glass at the bottom of the lake... where I drowned. Yes! I had been dead long enough to have lost the first ten years of my life.
Memories I have never gotten back.
This year, I will turn 80.
Do I miss not knowing about those lost years?
No! Not really. The cliché, “You can’t miss what you never knew you had!” comes to mind.
What, however, I did miss was not knowing!
“Why I had drown?”
Over forty years later, I wish I had not started to remember. It would have been a lot better if I hadn’t... Maybe!
The fact was, I deliberately drowned myself! I had committed suicide on my tenth birthday... something I’ve had to live with ever since that day.
Why had I done it? What had happened that was so horrifying that would have cause me to do such a thing?
I didn’t take much of an imagination to figure out what had happened. I was no longer a pure innocent child, something that will scar me for the rest of my life.
It destroyed my two marriages and fills me with fear that a third one, "No matter how much from time to time I wish I could find someone... Loneliness is highly over rated" won't be possible, even though I now understand why I never liked to be touched.
My second marriage ended in November 1998.
I have not been on a date since.
In retrospect:
I am grateful for the experience because, like many others, I have seen Jesus, our Lord and Savior and the love I felt from Him can not be put into words since our language has no such words to explain it.
It is beyond overwhelming.