Editor’s Note: This heartwarming story about reincarnation gives us goosebumps. Wayne was a firm believer that we are eternal beings having a temporary human experience, and he believed that children “come into this world in a state of perfection. […] Before they have been exposed to all of the lesson that focus on their limitations, they are a grand source of wisdom and inspiration.” Wayne included this grandmother’s amazing story — and many others like it — of a young child having very specific memories of having lived a previous lifetime as someone in their current family, in his new book, Memories of Heaven.
I am, among other things, the mother of three children — two daughters and one son. I grew up in a strict Christian religion in southwest Virginia and went on to be a hippie chick, so the belief in reincarnation was not something I had even heard about.
On the evening of November 27, 1987, I was involved in a car accident that resulted in the death of my two-and-a-half-year-old son, Nathan. I cannot say with words how dark my world became in that moment, and it stayed that way for several years after, because in that darkness was the only place I thought my son existed anymore.
After a couple of years in the darkness, I reflected back on the day leading up to Nathan’s death, as I had done ten million times before. At this point I think something inside of me was hoping for some sense of closure, even though, intellectually, I didn’t know what I was looking for. I did need to accept the idea that Nathan was gone and he was never coming back, though.
As I worked at this acceptance and started examining things, I knew without a doubt that that was the day Nathan had chosen to leave his physical body—there were too many “coincidences” to dismiss his death as an “accident.” After a time of seeking acceptance, acceptance was found. And I came to see how intricately connected and interdependent everything and every event is.
There is no better reward in this life than having grandchildren. I know grandparents say this all the time, but it is so true. You think you could not possibly love anyone or anything more than your own kids, and then the grandkids come and you just think your heart is surely going to burst with all the love you experience. My eldest daughter had a son, then my youngest had a son soon after, then my eldest had another son then another son, and then nothing—it was as if the well dried up, but I really wanted a granddaughter.
A few years later I moved to a new city, and my youngest daughter came back to West Virginia with her husband and son. It wasn’t long after that she announced that she was pregnant. I was ecstatic—I already cherished this baby because I just knew it was my granddaughter. That was confirmed on Friday, April 13, 2008, when my Butterfly, little Kayla Bug, came forth into this world and she was just perfect.
I adored and cherished her, but it was not easy for her mother or me—this child cried for a solid year, and nothing we could do would console her. But then Kayla became a happy child and the very light of my existence. We had bonded even while she was in her mommy’s tummy, but that bond only grew stronger and stronger with time.
One day I was picking up Kayla and her two brothers for a weekend at Ganny’s and Pap Pap’s house. My daughter and her husband were moving and needed some time to pack without kids. While I was there, my daughter told me that she’d noticed Kayla watching her take down a baby picture of my son, Nathan. She said to my daughter, “I play with him. He flies.” My daughter said that she got the chills, and I must admit I was very moved by this information. Yet what happened next is still a mystery to me.
As I was backing out of the parking space, Kayla announced, “I am a girl.”
Noticing the differences between boys and girls had been a new thing with her of late, and so I simply agreed. “Yes, Kayla, you are a girl. Isaiah is a boy, and Blake is a boy.”
“I used to be a boy when I was a little baby like Blakey,” she quickly informed me. Okay, I thought, let’s get to the bottom of this. I also knew that I had to be very light and jovial with my questions so as not to lead her in any direction. So I replied, “You were? Well, if you were a little boy when you were a baby like Blakey, what was your name when you were a little boy?”
Without hesitation, she chirped back in her three-year-old pronunciation, “Natan.” Well, now she had my attention on a whole new level, but I couldn’t let it show, not even in the subtlest of ways. However, I still wasn’t convinced of anything just yet because she has an older cousin named Nathan, and she just worshipped the ground he walked on. It would only stand to reason that if she imagined being a boy, she would choose her cousin.
With 99 percent confidence in my prediction that she would give me the name of her auntie and my eldest daughter, I asked the next question: “So, when you were a little boy and your name was Nathan, who was your mommy?”
Again the answer came without hesitation. “You were, Ganny,” she said, in a tone that conveyed that I was being completely silly to even ask that question.
I have never asked her anything more about the time when she was a little boy named Nathan and I was her mommy; today, she is a little girl named Kayla and I am her Ganny. Although I do prefer her description of who I am to her in this lifetime. While coming home from day care one day, she piped up from the backseat to ask, “Hey, Mommy, do you know what my Ganny is?”
Her mom replied, “No, Kayla, what is your Ganny?”
And the answer she gave will be with me, stamped on my heart and soul, for all of eternity: “She is my Lady Bug.” And so it is and ever shall be with the Lady Bug and the Butterfly.
I can’t explain how she could play with that little boy in the picture—my son, Nathan—and also embody his soul. I just can’t explain that, even with all I now believe about reincarnation. I suppose that is one of those details I will leave to the people who speak in deep voices as they channel the saints and spirit guides. But, then, the Butterflies never need to explain such things to the Lady Bugs.
