I dreamed that I was in a restaurant in Northern Virginia --
it was a restaurant I had actually been to once. Johnny was there,
we were seated across a table from each other in a dimly-lit
booth. I was angry with him because he had let me and his family
believe for so long that he was dead, which obviously had not been
true. I also was angry with him for coming back into my life
now...I was married, I had children. Johnny explained that he was
there to explain it all to me. He told me that the longer he went
in Vietnam, the more disillusioned and upset he became over how
the war was being handled. After his best friend Ernie (whom he
had grown up with) was killed the end of January 1968, Johnny said
he felt he was going crazy. By the time he got the word about
Ernie, Johnny's battalion was enduring the Siege of Khe Sanh which
lasted over two months. It was over in early April of 1968, and
the Marines were then sent out on patrols in the surrounding
hills. Johnny said he had decided to just get out, leave.
On one of the days when they encountered some combat, he
came across the body of a Marine who had received severe head
wounds. Johnny said he took this opportunity to exchange all his
ID with this dead soldier, and that he then continued for a while
in Vietnam under this assumed identity. When I asked him "Didn't
someone see you do this?" he told me that "Buddies don't 'rat' on
buddies." He continued with his story: he had left Vietnam not too
long after this incident. Upon arriving in the States at San
Francisco, he went AWOL -- still under the assumed name of
the dead soldier, who was buried as Johnny. He said he went to
Mexico for a while, and then to another country where he requested
entry into a monastery he knew about. He said that he now realized
he had been really "crazy" and that what he had done had been
wrong, but at the time he was convinced that, because his life had
been spared while so many friends including
Ernie had died, that he should spend the rest of his life
praying for their souls. He also felt he should come out of the
monastery, that he needed to see his parents again and make right
what he had done wrong. He was hoping I could help him with all
this.
The dream began to fade at this point, it seemed as if I
was coming up, up, up from some deep place...I could hear Johnny
telling me that his name in the monastery was "Brother Narciso"
and that the name of the place where the monastery could be found
was "'Arrivilas" (I knew at the time that I was missing something
at the first part of this word).
[I made some attempts to check out this story. The USMC
Historical Division told me that it would not have been impossible
for a soldier to exchange ID and assume a name as this Dream had
described, the Marine Corps has heard of stranger things that in
fact were true. The name Brother Narciso and place Arrivilas
continued to puzzle and haunt me because I didn't know how to
check them out.]
2. First ADC -- late April 1993
While riding the Metro train from Alexandria, VA in to
Washington, DC to work one morning, I was sitting with my eyes
closed, about half-asleep. All of a sudden, I got a brief but
extremely clear visual "flash" in my mind -- I saw Johnny
running...he was a slight distance from me and running toward my
left. He was wearing fatigues, carrying a rifle in his left hand
and holding his helmet on with his right hand, and had something
strapped to his back. Others were also running. Behind them, I saw
geysers of dirt
flung in the air from explosions of some kind. And Johnny
was laughing! At the same time I had this "flash vision", I
received a jolt of emotional feeling about the scene, and it was a
feeling of crazy, incredible joy and good humor. It was gone as
quickly as it came, and left me feeling very confused, because the
last thing I associated with Johnny in Vietnam was a "good time".
It did not make any sense to me, especially because it did not
reflect MY feelings about Johnny in Vietnam, either.
3. Second ADC -- May 30, 1993
During the whole spring of 1993 I had been doing my best to
recall memories of Johnny. I would often sit at home or on the
train to work, close my eyes, and replay in my mind some of the
times we'd had together, trying to bring his face clearly into my
memory-view. On this day, a Sunday, I was sitting on my sofa and
closed my eyes to relax a few minutes and recall one of those
memories. Instead, I again got a "flash vision". I saw Johnny
facing me, standing a little to my left. He was wearing fatigue
pants but was bare above the waist. When I looked at him, he
turned his head as if to direct my attention the direction he was
looking, which was to his left (straight ahead for me). Behind him
was a wide, shallow river. In the middle of the river, turned
sideways so as to face upstream, was a wooden cart and two oxen (I
thought) hitched to hit. There were a couple of people in the cart
who were wearing conical straw hats. On the opposite bank were
trees and a few other people standing around as if waiting for
the ones in the cart to finish crossing. As I looked at
this tranquil scene, one of the oxen stomped its hoof -- I clearly
heard the "kerplonk!" sound of its hoof striking the water, and
for a brief second I smelled the musty scent of the river water.
Then the whole scene blinked out and was gone.
[A year later, in May of 1994, I was contacted by a man who
had been one of Johnny's best friends in Vietnam and who had seen
my request in a publication seeking men who had known him. In one
of our conversations, and without mentioning how I had the
information, I described the above river scene to him and asked if
it sounded like a place he remembered. He told me it did, that in
fact, along this river was where Johnny had been wounded his first
time -- sunbathing by the river until suddenly they were
fired upon by artillery hidden in the trees on the other
side of the water.]
4. Third ADC -- June 16, 1993
While taking my morning shower, I suddenly recalled
watching Johnny play basketball -- a Junior Varsity game that my
7th grade teacher wanted to see, so he took the whole class to the
gym for it. In recalling this memory, I also remembered how
embarrassed I had felt when I realized that I could see his
underarm hair when he raised his arms out on the court. Just as I
recalled this, I suddenly had the sensation that my lips were
pressed against his neck, I could taste and smell his
basketball-sweaty skin! Immediately, there followed a very clear
"flash vision" of Johnny just finishing his shower in the boys'
locker -- I could see him from his chest up, he was just turning
off the shower tap, and his hair was soaked and dripping, his eyes
squeezed shut with water running down his face. Then I saw his
hands coming up with a white towel, which he rubbed over his face
and hair and around the back of his neck. I saw his face emerge,
his hair sticking up in little "spikes", and he flashed a grin.
Then it was gone.
5. Fourth ADC -- November 6, 1993
A Saturday, and I was up early in the AM. Sitting on the
sofa, writing a letter to a close friend and trying to describe my
thoughts about Johnny. By this time, I was well underway in
investigating his death, including trying to find out all I could
about monasteries in Spain (going back to that Dream in 1986 and
finally figuring out how to follow through). I had just written in
the letter how odd and strange it felt to live so many years after
he had died, all the things I have experienced that he never got
to experience. I summed up by writing: "It is an abomination to be
alive without him," and then sat back to light a cigarette and
think what I wanted to say next. I lit the cigarette, it was the
first in a just-opened pack. And my mouth was suddenly filled with
a wonderful, sweet taste -- I thought: "Sweet!" Then I recognized
the taste -- it was
Sandalwood perfume. Sandalwood is my most favorite scent,
ever since I first smelled it in high school. This cigarette
tasted like Sandalwood perfume smelled -- and quite strong!
Puzzled, I sniffed the pack, but it didn't smell like Sandalwood.
I sniffed my purse, but it did not smell like Sandalwood either,
so obviously I had not spilled any perfume into it or had a leak.
I did have a small jar of Sandalwood perfume in my bedroom but had
not used it in some time. I had just been in the kitchen, so I
went
in there, too, and sniffed the things I had touched. No
scent. Came back to the sofa, the cigarette still tasted like
pungent Sandalwood, and its smoke was perfuming the air. Well,
what had I just been doing? Writing. I looked at the letter paper
and saw what I had just written...."It is an abomination to be
alive without him." And then I suddenly realized that I had next
thought "Sweet!" In the instant, what came to me was that Johnny
had somehow read what I wrote, and somehow made my cigarette be
perfumed
with Sandalwood to tell me that what I had just written was
"sweet". The thought hit me that maybe he was sitting right there
beside me or something, and I leaped away from the sofa in
shock...standing out in the middle of my livingroom, shaking all
over, and then I burst into tears, staring at the sofa. The
cigarette -- it was still lit and sat burning in the ashtray! I
leaped back to the sofa and grabbed up that cigarette and took a
deep drag and then began wafting the smoke over me with my hands.
About that time, my housemate got up and came out to the
livingroom. Quickly, I handed him the cigarette and said "Try this
and tell me if you notice anything." He took a drag on it, looked
at me and said with much puzzlement, "Barbie, it tastes like some
kind of perfume. Why is that?"
In nearly 14 years of smoking this same brand of
cigarettes, I have NEVER had one taste like any kind of perfume.
Nor have I ever tasted perfume in these cigarettes since that one
time.
[Besides Sandalwood being my favorite scent, I have since
learned that Sandalwood is the incense used in Vietnam for
funerals and burials.]
6. Odd Things
After this early-November ADC experience, I began to notice
my two cats behaving strangely at times. One or the other or both
would gaze at some spot in "mid-air" with intent interest, even on
occasion climbing onto a table or other high spot so that they
could get closer to whatever it was and sniff at it. My theory
began to be that Johnny waspresent, and that the cats could sense
or see him although I couldn't.
7. Fifth ADC -- November 14, 1993
By this time, I was ready to really know what was going on.
Before I went to bed that night, I had a "little talk" with
Johnny, addressing him in my mind as if he could hear me. We'd had
a telepathic connection when he was alive, and the things that
were happening had so much the same feel that I had to believe
that somehow we were in contact, but to me this meant it was most
likely that he had to be alive somewhere, perhaps after all in
that monastery. I had to know. And I thought that if he could
"send" me so many different kinds of manifestations, then perhaps
he could also "come
and see me", like astral traveling (if he had been in a
monastery, he'd had plenty of time to practice). I told him that I
wanted to see him.
After I had been asleep about an hour, I woke up to hear a
crackling sound like electrical fizzing at a faulty outlet or
someone crumpling cellophane. Actually, I was asleep but awake in
my dream and not realizing it was a dream. I sleep with my right
foot outside the covers, and I felt a hand lift my foot up gently.
I knew it was Johnny, although the room was so totally dark I
could not see him. I felt him sit down on my side of the bed and
then lean over me so that his hands were on either side of my
shoulders as I lay there. No words had been spoken. I
wiggled my arms out from under the covers and reached up my hands,
and I could feel his neck and shoulders, but I could not see him
at all. I ran my hands down his arms, and then down the sides of
his waist to his hips. That was when I was startled to realize
that he was apparently not wearing any clothes -- he was shaking
with silent laughter...his joke, to appear to me finally, sans
clothes but invisible! I became very prim with him, told him I had
asked him to come because we needed to have a serious talk and I
could not have that kind of talk with him unless he was dressed --
would he please go get some clothes on and then come back so we
could talk?
He seemed a little regretful that I was not appreciating
his joke as much as he did, but I sensed he understood me and that
he would return. Before he left, he leaned down and kissed me
twice -- not in a romantic way, but very firmly, and I sensed that
he did it this way because he wanted to make sure I could feel it.
Then he was gone, and in my dream I fell back asleep again.
And was wakened shortly again by the crackling sound and my
foot being lifted into the air. This time, I could see him -- he
was wearing something like a one-piece coverall that seemed to be
dark brown. I got out of bed and we sat together on the side of
the bed. Suddenly I was tremendously excited -- he was really,
really here! It was just a miracle, something magic! If he could
come here and visit me, what else could he do? My mind began
racing wildly...gee, could he snap his fingers and turn something
into gold? All of a sudden, I picked up from him that he was
feeling uncertain and shy...he was not "magic", he could not do
things like that, and my thoughts were making him start to worry
that he would not be "enough" for me, that he was somehow going to
fail me. Immediately I was remorseful...it was just that it was
all so amazing to me. He must never think that he, himself, just
being there, was not much more than enough for
me.
And now, we must talk. But then I noticed that he had a
small streak of something just above his upper lip. I touched it
with my index finger -- it was blood! I said, "Johnny, you have
blood there, are you hurt?"
He wiped at his upper lip with his hand and looked at it,
then kind of grinned and said, "Oh, it's nothing. Just before I
came back here I was over in Soldier Grace horsing around with
some of the guys, must have gotten bumped on the nose."
Just then we both heard a noise outside the window in the
parking lot. It sounded like breaking glass. Johnny asked, "What's
that?" I got up to look out the window, saying, "Oh, sometimes the
neighbors are a little noisy."
And then I woke up -- Really. There was indeed a sound of
breaking glass outside, someone throwing a bottle. I wrote down
"Soldier Grace" so I wouldn't forget it -- the sense I got from
his words was that this "Soldier Grace" was a kind of spiritual
therapy/recreation place or condition that he and other soldiers
who had died in Vietnam had access to.
And because I understood that Soldier Grace was a spiritual
place, this was
a pretty big hint that Johnny was truly dead and not in a
monastery, even
though we never did really talk.
8. Sixth ADC -- week of November 15 - 20, 1993
My TV reception had been just terrible for about 2 months.
Some kind of interference was frequently causing lines in the
middle of the screen and "staticky" noises that would come in and
out and block the sound. The same thing was causing static on the
radio. My housemate and I had tried everything we could think of,
such as plugging these devices into other wall sockets, even by
extension cord ot sockets in another room.
On the Sunday after having that marvelous visitation dream,
it occurred to me that Johnny had gone to electronics school while
in the Marine Corps and had been a radio operator in Vietnam --
maybe he could somehow figure out what was causing this problem
with the TV and radio and fix it. Nothing ventured, nothing
gained. So, I sent him a mental message, describing the problem as
I saw it, asking him to try to take a look and see what he could
do. I set a timeframe, telling him that if the problem was fixed
in 2 days, then I would know he had done it.
By the end of the second day, the TV and radio were
interference free, and I continued living there more than a year
with never a repeat of the problem.
9. Seventh ADC -- February 14, 1994
Two days previously, on Feb. 12th, I had finally talked
with someone who had known Johnny in Vietnam. This was the man who
had been his Commanding Officer when he was killed, and this man
became the first of several of Johnny's Vietnam friends whom I was
able to find and talk to. This officer had been only a few feet
away when Johnny had received the mortal wounds that he died from
an hour later. After this phone conversation and the details he
provided, I could no longer continue to think or believe that
Johnny might somehow be really alive in a monastery somewhere. It
was depressing to have that hope crushed, but on the other hand I
was not very surprised...I knew it had been a longshot.
This day was a Monday. When I left work at the end of the
day, I had to walk a long city block to get to the Metro station
to catch the train home. Since the phone call talk with the former
commanding officer, I had been puzzling over that Dream of
1986...why did I have such a clear Dream conversation in which
Johnny had told me he was in a monastery? Obviously, he wasn't in
one. As I walked down the street, I was asking these questions in
my head, and...lo and behold, I started "hearing" answers!
This "hearing" was not with my physical ear -- I was
thinking those questions in my head and another voice was coming
in right on top, so that there were "two voices talking at the
same time" in my head, and one of them wasn't mine!
It was Johnny. The substance of the conversation, which
lasted about 40 minutes, is as follows:
I wanted to know why he had talked to me about being in a
monastery in that Dream. His answer: "Well, being here, is pretty
much like being in one." We talked about the day he died -- he had
been so badly wounded because he had removed his helmet moments
before the mortar exploded and he was struck in the head with a
large fragment of it. The reason he had taken it off: it was a hot
day, and he was feeling the heat...he knew he really shouldn't
remove it, he was being very careful and cautious because he only
had 5 more days to go before coming home...but he also did not
want to appear to
the other guys to be "ridiculous" about being
cautious...and for himself, he did not want to let fear rule him
to the point that he wouldn't even do a simple thing like take the
helmet off for a couple of minutes to help himself cool down...so
he took it off. He now refers to himself as "Brother Narciso" in
sarcasm, since he feels he was just like Narcissus of Greek
mythology, so involved with his own image of himself that he
didn't do what he needed to do to survive. In the brief talking we
did about this, I sensed that he could hardly stand to think of
it, to think about what he did that basically caused his death. He
really was not ready to talk about it.
We talked about the fact that we were now conversing
"mentally", basically
I supposed it was telepathy but wondered how it worked. He
was not sure
himself, he thought maybe something like radio waves.
Things he said indicated he was at that time very hung up
on what he was missing in this life -- he spoke about missing the
physical enjoyments. But he also said that some true pleasures of
being where he is are that one does not have to be afraid of
anything, and that there are tremendous possibilities there -- he
seemed excited about those possibilities, indicating that there
are so many of them that there seems to be no limit.
He had not done much exploring of them yet.
Other things about the Dream from 1986...I wanted to know
where he came up with the idea of telling me he had exchanged his
ID with a dead soldier, was it something he had seen someone
actually do? He said: "No, I actually did it. In a way. There was
a dead soldier, wasn't there? And he was buried with my name. But
here I am." He wouldn't answer all my questions about the details
of the dream -- he said: "If I tell you everything you want to
know, I'll lose my 'mystery' for you, and I know you -- if I lose
my mystery for you, you won't care about me anymore. So, I'm going
to keep that from happening. You're a smart girl, you'll figure it
all out sooner or later."
He told me he had been trying to reach me since not too
long after he died. He wanted me to know he was there. But he
couldn't get my attention because I turned away from thinking
about him. In time, he decided the easiest way to reach me would
be by dreams because then my guard was down, so he went to work to
cook up a really good one that would get my attention and appeal
to my curiosity (he knew that was the key), and the Dream was it!
But then, eventually, that kind of backfired because the more
I
pursued trying to find him in a monastery, the more I was
tending to interpret things he was showing me to mean he must be
alive. He kind of backed off a little, because he did not want to
be the one to tell me he was not "alive" the way I was hoping. He
knew I would find out in time.
I could feel his emotions, and he was angry with himself
about getting killed, and very much wishing things were different,
that he could be with me here in the right ways. I couldn't stand
feeling his pain about all of it, and so I started trying to get
him to look at the positives, I guess. For example, I mentioned
his best friend Ernie...surely it was good to be with Ernie? His
response: "Oh sure, but I was never counting on spending
eternity with HIM!" I also pointed out that, had he lived,
who knows how happy he would have been here...for example, he
might have found himself in a frustrating job and with a bad boss
harping at him all the time -- to this he said: "Are you hearing
yourself? I can't believe you are trying to tell me I'm better off
dead!" (I got a mental image with this, of him standing with his
hands on his hips in annoyance.)
One of the things I brought up was that I would like to be
able to prove that he was really communicating with me, because
otherwise, if I mentioned it, people would think I was crazy. He
said (with humor): "But I thought you'd do ANYTHING for me --
what's so bad about being crazy for love?"
He informed me that he can't read minds, but he can tell
what *I* am thinking about, or people he was very close to here.
Mostly he does not pay attention, he tunes out on things he can't
participate in.
He said that time over there moves very slowly compared to
here -- minutes compared to years (that was an example, not
exactly how it works). This raised another concern to me. He said
that my spirit will always be 19 to his 20, this is how it seems
to him and how it will seem for us when I come over. But,
realizing that he can SEE me from there, I suddenly thought about
getting old and wrinkled and him seeing that. He said, with gentle
amusement: "Would you feel better if I promise to close my
eyes?"
This day was Valentine's Day. After departing the Metro and
while walking to my car, I commented wistfully to him that I
wished he could dedicate a song to me on the radio. He said that
actually, he could do that. He'd already thought of it and there
was one waiting for me. I worried that I wouldn't know what song
that might be, and he said, "Oh, I think you'll know." I got into
my car, started it up, turned on the radio. Just before the next
song played, I felt a little "nudge" in my mind and turned the
volume up. The song was "Good Vibrations" by the BeachBoys, so
extremely apt to how we had just been communicating. Vibrations.
This experience was the beginning of communication that by
now has lasted 5 years. Most of our conversations or shorter
exchanges are of a personal nature, comments to each other about
various things. We continue to "give" each other songs from the
radio -- at his end, this is a convenient medium through which he
can more fully express things in words to me. For want of a better
word, I call our communication "telepathy", and it is not easy to
do at my end. It requires stilling all my own mental chatter and
thought, and yet holding what I want to say to him or ask him,
then being totally still in my mind until he "comes through" -- I
can't actually say that what I "hear" is words...it seems more
like what I pick up are his emotions which seem to translate to
words as if through some kind of interpretive barrier. This
requires concentration on my part, a kind of "balancing" as if my
mind is holding its breath, and it is a strain and tiring.
He is helping me with a book I am writing about our
relationship in the past and the effects of his death on my life
afterward -- this will hopefully one day represent a perspective
on the effects on family and loved ones here from loss of someone
in the Vietnam War. And I am helping him write a book about his
work on the Other Side with Vietnam veteran survivors still living
here.
I believe we do go on.
