Grandmere's Gift

Witness: Isla
Location: Louisiana
Date of Encounter: 1968

I was told my Grandmere (as we say in Cajun for Grandmother) was always "odd." She passed away when I was seven, but I can remember as far back as three years old her always telling me, "Cher, you got the gift, I done give it to you. Now, use it, I tell you." Of course, as a small child I never knew what she meant. But, my mother, being a fundamentalist minister, always told me not to listen to her because she practiced voodoo mixed with Catholicism and she was crazy. About six months after my Grandmere passed away, I came down with scarlet fever. I remember lying on the couch and my forehead burning. My mother came in to the room to check on me. The rest of the story I overheard my mother relaying to my Aunt the next day. She said she came in to see if I was okay and I sat up and said to her, "Barbara's here," and pointed to the corner of the room. "Barbara who?" she asked, "there's no one here but you and I." 

"Barbara Richardson," I said. She told my aunt in this frantic phone call that I overheard that minutes before she had come in to check on me she had received a phone call from the family of a lady in our town who had just been killed in a car accident. A lady I did not know, and could not have known. The call was to ask my mother to pray for the family. The lady was "Barbara Richardson." I have done as Grandmere asked since then, without the blessing of my mother. Many a "Barbara" so-to-speak, have come to see me. I have since learned of my spirit guide, my Great-Grandmere, who has been with me all my life, and I no longer fear the unknown.