Thanks EB for the Memories.

When I started my teaching career in the early 1980s at what is now Thomas University, I had a good number of adult returning students, mostly women. Most of my thousands of students are fondly remembered as groups, and a few are remembered as individuals. Such was a student I will call EB. EB was a returning adult woman, married with children and seeking a life change. She wanted to be a counselor of some kind, undefined at that early stage, but she had a clear goal. She did indeed become a counselor. Because she was older than most of the other students and I am rather a social person, we often talked after class about this and that. I learned about her children in broad terms, and in fact her daughter was a student of mine much later.

Why did EB stand out? Hard to say exactly, but two things made her indelible to me. One was a conversation we had one day after class, as we were talking about spiritual things. She was comfortable enough with me to ask if I believed in paranormal events, and I said not really, but had had a few experiences that I couldn't explain with rational science. I described my one and only Out of Body Experience (not on drugs or anything else) and we talked about it. She then shared a vision she had and the outcome. She told me she had “seen” her pantry floor covered with broken jars of home canned green beans. She had no broken jars in her pantry. Sometime later, she gave some jars of beans to a friend who then had an accident on the highway and broken jars of green beans were all over the trunk of the car. She was convinced that she had “seen” this ahead of time, but didn’t anticipate the event. This bothered her as I recall.

The other thing about EB was her voice. At times when she spoke I heard two voices, not one. Very unusual and only from her. This was not a few times, but many. I even went to an ear specialist to get a checkup and was put through a number of tests including a brain scan, and all was normal. It was her voice I was hearing, not some pathology of mine. I have no idea what that was all about, but clearly I have never forgotten it.

So where does all this lead? A few days ago I heard from her daughter that she is in hospice for untreatable cancer, and is close to her end. I have not seen here for many years, but her personality and quirkiness have left a deep impression on me. Her passing will be a sad thing for the family she leaves behind, but if she was right about paranormal things, she will be around in one way or another for a very long time. I would welcome a visit myself.

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