SILENT VOICES

IN THE BEGINNING

For as long as I can remember, I have had an instinctive awareness of life after death. Of course, when I was a child this was difficult for me to understand, but on some level I had my own opinion of what happens to us after we leave this earthbound existence, and this was a good enough for me. After I studied science in school in CBS Captain’s Rd., Dublin 12, I came to understand that the brain stores information electrochemically. I wondered: since energy cannot be created or destroyed but rather is converted from one form to another, where does this electrical energy from the body go after death?

For several years my mind was constantly preoccupied with possible explanations as to what happens to this energy and where we go after our bodies “die”. I also contemplated the principle of reincarnation that each of us is born again, and that as a soul each of us decides to temporarily forget our past physical life when we return. What you may find interesting is that a lot of my contemplation and seeking answers happened when I was only between the ages of 10 and 16. Little did I know that what I was mentioning in passing to friends and family at that time would eventually all make sense to me in the years to follow.

I have always been more mature than my friends who are about the same age or slightly younger. As I write, I am 23 years old; but I often feel and act as though I were 30, taking on lots of responsibilities and planning for the future. Planning for the future, ay! Never did I think that I would start my life’s journey along such an exciting road towards the great unknown.

All of my life, I’ve had a feeling of being “different” from most people and of standing out from the crowd. There were many occasions when I thought I “saw” something out of the corner of my eye or “heard” someone call my name, but there was never anyone physically present. My mam never said anything to me about these things till I was almost 21 and had had a very difficult year. Then things began to happen all at once.

During my study of the horticulture course in Blanchardstown Institute of Technology and in Warrenstown, I had to complete a work placement semester. All of us students were excited, as we had the chance to apply for work assignments in America. Six of us from my class decided to apply. After ironing out the inevitable bureaucratic problems, the six of us were off on our journey across the Pond. I was to be placed in California, and the other five were to work together doing landscaping on Long Island in New York. We all flew over together, and I went as far as Ohio with the rest of the lads. We all had to go to The Ohio State University for an orientation process, as the University was in charge of our work placements in the United States.

Before we went our separate ways, we all stayed up late in the hotel on the last night and had a couple of beers. It felt weird knowing that we were breaking the law by having a couple of very low alcohol beers, as only one person in the group was over the American legal drinking age of 21. The next morning I said “Farewell” to my mate whom I’d shared a room with, and I went down to the foyer of the hotel to wait for my taxi. Time almost stood still for me, but in an instant I was in the taxi and the thought hit me: “I’m on the other side of the world and all alone now”. A shiver went down my spine, and for a moment I was in shock.

“I’m on my own”. For the first time in my life I felt really alone. I had never really had a large circle of friends and had always done my own thing, but subconsciously I knew that I did have a core group of a few close friends whom I could always depend on when I was feeling low. Now I realized, I didn’t have the easy close access to these friends. Of course they were just a phone call away, but I couldn’t just keep calling them from a distance of 8,000 miles if there was a problem.

Still, the excitement of being independent and journeying across America began to fill my spirit with joy. A grand new adventure had begun.

Before I left Dublin, I had established contact with the people whom I was to work for in northern California but, when I arrived, the situation wasn’t at all what I had been led to expect.

The plan was that I had to fly to San Francisco and then take a bus from the airport to the Days Inn in Santa Rosa, about 70 miles north. After I got to the bus stop in Santa Rosa, I had to wait for over an hour, as the person who was collecting me (the husband of my new boss) was late. When he arrived I was a little shocked to see a man in his early fifties who looked very stressed and tired. I said hello and threw my bags into the back of the van, and we started our 100-mile drive to Mendocino on the northern California coast. We made small talk, with me not saying much. I had a bad feeling about what lay ahead but at this point I didn’t know why.

After the two-hour drive into the night, we arrived at the house and I met my new boss and their daughter. (I will not be mentioning their names or the name of the business.) They were welcoming, but from the way the wife spoke to me I knew something might go wrong. She spoke to me as if she was talking to a person that couldn’t speak or understand basic English. I always felt that she spoke down to me as if I was thick. Later on, I found out that she actually thought I was. It made no difference to her that, by the time I was on this placement, I had completed a certificate course in horticulture, which I passed with distinction; that I had won the prize for Best Horticultural Theory 2001-2002; or that I was half way through my degree course.

I had been there only four days when I heard my boss talking to the secretary about me. She was telling the secretary that I could only do basic things like water the plants. The boss didn’t know that I heard her say this, and I knew from then on that the suspicion I had of things not being right was correct. From that moment, things went from bad to worse. That morning I went to work very reluctantly. While I was out in the garden, I got the chance to ask a fellow employee what the boss thought of me and told her (the employee) what the boss had said. The employee was shocked. At this point, I was already crying floods of tears.

I next confronted the boss and she was shocked to see me the way I was. I then learned that she expected to get a fully trained person with previous work experience and that she would be able to tell them what needed to be done without providing any further instruction. I had anticipated that the whole idea of my work placement was to learn and to apply the theories I had learnt in college in a practical way. Because of this misunderstanding and lack of communication, I was very annoyed and, without thinking, I said something that she held against me for the duration of my stay. I said that she was older than I had imagined she was. She was in her early fifties, but all I knew beforehand was that they had a nine-year-old daughter. So I had assumed that they were a young couple and that I would get along with them very well.

What hurt more than anything else was that she insisted I had no plant sense or aptitude for horticulture and that I should think seriously about changing my career choice. She said this several times during the 14 weeks I remained there.
(The work placement was supposed to be for seven months.)

In this environment, my emotional, spiritual and physical well-being declined to a dangerously low level. What saved me was having my laptop computer to watch DVDs on, not to mention my phone conversations with a very tired but supportive and loving mother who would get up at 6 a.m. Irish time to talk to me.

For a while this was really my only honest communication with the “real world”. During the first few weeks, I was e-mailing friends and family that all was well, but my mam knew the real story. Of course, getting up early every morning without fail to speak to me was very draining on her emotionally and physically, but she knew how much I appreciated and needed the loving support that only a mother can give.

As time went by, I actually became friends with the secretary. The lady provided a great shoulder to lean on and always had a gentle and supportive word to say. She, too, had had run-ins with the boss. When she saw what I was experiencing she had had enough, and she informed me that after I left, she would leave too. And so she did. She really would have liked to leave earlier, but she didn’t want to leave me alone during this difficult time. We are still friends today and stay in regular contact. She and her partner actually came to visit me and meet my family in Dublin in September 2005.

Even though my emotional well-being at this time was at an all-time low, my spiritual awareness was greatly intensified. I prayed for help like I had never prayed before. I even called aloud for my nana or my cousin, Breda, to visit me. Nana had died in 1993, and Breda died in 2000. One night I went to bed and I had just turned off the light. I was about to close my eyes, when I suddenly heard someone call my name from the corner of the room. I jumped up and turned on the bedside lamp. I knew that no one was physically there; the boss and her family, who lived next door, had gone on a camping trip and I was the only person on the 15-acre site, but I knew someone was definitely there.

Straightaway I called my mam, though I had spoken to her only an hour previously. I told her what happened, and she did think that it was odd but maybe I was just very tired and had imagined it. I started to think that too. So after I settled down again, I sat there thinking about what had happened. Then to my amazement, the phone rang, and Mam was on the other end in a shocked state. She told me that, just after she hung up the phone after our second conversation that morning, my sister, Yvonne, had woken up. Mam was going about her usual morning routine, and Yvonne was preparing her breakfast. As Yvonne ate, she began to tell Mam that she had had a very weird and vivid dream about Breda. Yvonne said that she dreamt she was walking down a street, and she saw Dad’s car pull up and the passenger door open. To Yvonne’s amazement, Breda got out of the car. Breda told Yvonne not to be afraid, and that she has just come back from the airport. Breda continued to tell Yvonne that she had just been over to see me in California and that she had left a message that I would understand.

Mam was astonished! She immediately stopped what she was doing, almost scalding herself with her cup of tea, and called me straightaway. To this day, I don’t know how Breda managed to do it, but she got the message across to me very clearly. One afternoon my boss was annoyed with someone, and she said something that Breda always said, something that I’ve never heard any other American ever say: “You’re cruising for a bruising”. When I heard that I was shocked! I turned back to my work, placed a little smile on my face and knew that was Breda.

All copyrights belong to Declan Flynn.
The book is available from Declan’s website, you can also see what others have said about the book.