I get quite a few phone calls from people who have lost things (mainly cats) but am not too sure of my degrees of accuracy because they don't always call back.
A few yrs ago my partners mother called me because she'd lost an expensive gold bracelet that her kids had bought her. She said she'd had it on in the morning, gone to the garden centre and spent the rest of the day replanting her front borders. I saw the bracelet in soft green piled fabric. The carpet all through her house was green and she looked over every inch of it, then dug up the garden. A week later she claimed insurance on it and bought a new one. Six months later she rung leaping up and down with excitement. She'd put on her old green dressing gown and the bracelet was in the pocket.
Just before xmas a close elderly friend rung very upset. Her adult son had placed a small cardboard chocolate box in her care while he was in hospital. She'd put the box in her bedside cabinet and clearly remembered giving it back to him after he'd recouperated at her home from his surgery.
He had no memory of her giving the box back. She said he'd bought the box out from England as young teenager and always kept it close. She'd thought the box held sentimental memories for him and had never looked inside it.
He told her that in the box was an original transcript of song written and signed by a famous (deceased) singer/songwriter. It is worth a lot of money and he was distraught that it had gone missing. He lived in a small flat and they'd both gone through everything and couldn't find it in either house.
She adores her two bachelor sons and would walk over hot coals for them. Talk about pressure!!
I was helping a friend move house when she called and was in the midst of chaos and told her I'd have a look when things had settled down. Driving home later in the day, I got a clear image of it.
I saw it in a narrow vertical part of a shelving unit with wide horizontal shelves along side. The shelves were a light coloured laminate. In the vertical shelf were two large hardcovered books. The box was on its side between the second book and what looked like a file. The file was on an angle in the shelf and had warped enough to conceal the box. When I rung and told her she said there isn't any shelving that fits that discription in either house.
She rung the next day in tears to say she'd found it in the spare room. The shelving was above the wardrobe and she hadn't thought to look there because she hadn't used it for years. The file I saw was a soft covered photo album. Her son must have put it there and forgotten.
A few times when I was doing telephone counseling for Lifeline I found myself standing in the callers body and could walk them through an immediate situational trauma. It happened spontaneously. One minute I'd be sitting in my booth in the office, the next I'd be standing in them. I'm not sure how that happens.
Lally
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