[The day after Carrie Collin's past death recall, A Union Soldier in the Civil War, was posted, she was contacted by Loretta Miller. Loretta remembers dying as a Confederate soldier. Because of this remarkable "coincidence, we decided to publish the two stories together.]

I have always been a writer, but often I was stymied as to why I felt such a compulsion to keep a pen and paper nearby. As long as I had a pen, I felt okay. It was just something that I found myself doing, throwing a pen into my jacket pocket, for instance. There was no logical reason for it.

Then one evening, while I was trying to write a story that wasn't coming together for me, I suddenly had a vision. Now I know it's called a "spontaneous recall," but for a long time I didn't have a name for it. Suddenly I was aware of myself lying against a huge boulder.

I looked down and saw that one of my hands was bandaged with narrow strips of cloth, but the tape or pin that held it fast was gone and the bandage itself was dirty. However, that wound didn't have my attention. I was bleeding from a larger wound to my chest/abdominal area that I knew was fatal. I realized that I was dying. I lay in a thicket of trees about 50-100 yards away from a clearing that looked like a wheat field.

The field was filled with soldiers engaged in battle, all clad in gray uniforms. I, too, was in a gray uniform, and reasoned that I was a Confederate soldier. I heard muskets firing and people shouting in the distance, but I was alone. No one knew I was there, dying from a wound that made it impossible for me to move. I was weakening very quickly, and my all-encompassing concern was that I was unable to tell my loved ones my final thoughts, just how much I loved them. I had nothing to write with, and so I used my own blood to painstakingly write out a message to my wife and children. I died at peace, knowing that my thoughts weren't lost, my feelings weren't left inside me to go into the spirit realm unsaid.

As the vision concluded and I again became aware of my surroundings, I knew that what I had just experienced was myself in a different lifetime. It was simply too clear, too vivid to be anything but a spontaneous recall. And above all, it answered the question as to why I feel compelled to write, to tell people I love just how I feel. I realize now that we live in the moment, and that in the very next moment one of us may have passed on. I don't want to regret the fact that I had not expressed my feelings to them.

I believe my battle was in Gettysburg; I recall seeing very large boulders around me. The vision was a way to help me understand my current life, and I wholeheartedly appreciate it. It was an answer to a long-said prayer.

Loretta Miller

scripttv@earthlink.net

Posted April 15, 2004