Love, Loss and the Lessons Left Behind
BEING BEN
Chapter 21: A Soul Beyond Time
As a Jewish family, much of our teaching took place around the dining table, where the core tenets of our faith were passed on to our children. These lessons were rooted in good intentions, grounded firmly in the here and now, and laced with stories of morality, resilience, and tradition. But there was another layer to our lives, one not easily explained by doctrine alone.
Mike and I shared a deep appreciation for Kabbalistic thought, the mystical side of Orthodox Judaism that ventures beyond the tangible into the unknowable. Kabbalah teaches that the world extends far beyond what we can see, feel, or touch—that there are mysteries woven into the fabric of existence that defy explanation.
Our own lives were no strangers to the inexplicable. Over the years, we’d encountered phenomena that left even our rational minds searching for answers. The most enduring mystery of all was Julie, the ghost who came with our house. Julie, a woman who had tragically taken her own life there long before we bought it, wasn’t an ominous presence. She was more like a shadow—unobtrusive but unmistakably there. She drifted silently through the upstairs bedrooms, occasionally appearing as a flicker of movement at the edge of our vision. We never feared her; in time, she became almost like a quiet, unseen member of the family.
It was against this backdrop—where the ordinary and the extraordinary coexisted—that I found myself standing in Ben’s room one night when he was just five years old. He had called me in, his voice calm but unusually serious for a child so young.
“I’ve gotta ask you something,” he said hesitantly , his blue eyes wide and luminous in the dim light.
I braced myself. Many of Ben’s deep, complex questions were delivered this way, and while I was ready to tuck him in and head for the door, I knew this wouldn’t be a simple goodnight.
“What’s that?” I asked, already distracted.
“What does our religion say about reincarnation? What do YOU think?”
The question hung in the air, impossibly heavy for someone his age. At first, I thought he might have overheard something or picked up the word in one of the books he was always reading. But the look on his face told me this wasn’t idle curiosity. This was something deeper.
I stopped cold. This wasn’t going to be an ordinary conversation.
“Well,” I replied carefully, trying to summon a satisfying yet age-appropriate answer, “I think we’re cool with it. Why do you ask?”
Ben tilted his head, giving me a look that said he wasn’t impressed with my casual response. “Because I’ve been here before.”
“Here?” I asked, my confusion growing. “Where is here?”
He rolled his eyes—already an expert at expressing his frustration with grown-ups. “Here, Mom. On Earth. I’ve been here before. I died under a bridge.”
The statement sent a chill through me. A child with no access to the internet and strict and limited access to television was talking about death with the certainty of experience. I sat down on his bed.
“Tell me more,” I urged softly.
He sighed deeply and began his story. It started during the dark days of World War 2.
From his tiny blonde head came a vivid, chilling story, recounted with detail that far exceeded anything I could attribute to imagination.
Before I had married or even thought of having children, I’d traveled extensively through Europe, immersing myself in the art and architecture of its cities. Amsterdam held a strange fascination for me, one I couldn’t entirely explain. My father, a pilot during World War II, rarely spoke about his service, but I’d picked up bits and pieces over the years. One story involved his reluctant participation in bombing raids over Amsterdam, a mission that haunted him long after the war ended. His regret over the destruction of the city’s ancient buildings seemed, I thought, to explain my own inexplicable connection to the place.
Now, sitting beside my son, I was hearing details that aligned far too closely with history to be dismissed.
Ben described a city in Europe that he couldn’t name but clearly remembered. He spoke of planes, deprivation, and the terror of sheltering under a bridge during a bombing raid. His recollection included specific details about the war and the city—things no three-year-old could know.
“What was the name of the city?” I asked carefully.
He paused, searching his memory. “I don’t remember exactly. I think it started with an ‘A.’”
“Amsterdam?” I whispered.
His face lit up. “Yes! That’s it. Amsterdam.”
Amsterdam, 1940s. The air was thick with tension and fear, punctuated by the distant hum of aircraft engines. For those on the ground, each sound was a harbinger of destruction. The once-vibrant canals and streets, teeming with life and commerce, had become shadows of themselves, shrouded in an oppressive silence interrupted only by the wail of air raid sirens and the distant rumble of approaching danger.
As Ben began to speak, his soft, faltering five-year-old voice seemed to come from another time entirely. “I was… hiding under a bridge. It was so loud, Mom. The planes… they were everywhere, and I knew… I knew the bombs were coming.” He looked at me with those wide, haunted eyes that seemed far older than his years, and I found myself transported to that moment he was describing.
“What did you hear, Ben?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.
He paused, searching for words. “The air—it was shaking, like it was alive. The planes… they made this sound, like a big roar that wouldn’t stop. People were screaming, and the ground kept… jumping under us. I could feel the heat from the bombs, even though I wasn’t right where they hit.”
I shivered as I imagined the scene he was painting. “Were you alone?”
“No,” he said, his voice trembling. “There were others—kids, some grown-ups too. We were all squished under the bridge, trying to stay quiet. But…” He swallowed hard, his small fingers clenching the blanket on his bed. “I couldn’t stop crying, Mom. I was scared. So scared.”
Tears welled in my eyes as I tried to hold myself together for him. “What happened then?”
He looked down, his blonde hair falling over his face. “There was a really big noise—like the world breaking in half. The bridge… it shook so much, and I felt something hit me. Then… fire. Fire everywhere. My hand… my legs… they were gone. I remember the water. It was so cold. It hurt to breathe.”
My chest tightened as I realized he wasn’t describing a dream or some fleeting childhood fantasy. This was something deeper, more visceral. “How did you know it was Amsterdam, Ben?”
He thought for a moment. “I didn’t know the name at first. I just… remembered the streets and the water and the houses all stuck together. But when you said Amsterdam, I knew right away. That’s where it was.”
I pressed further, my voice trembling. “Did you see the planes, Ben? Did you see the people?”
He nodded solemnly. “The planes were black, and they came in a straight line. I heard the bombs falling before they hit. People were running everywhere, but there was nowhere to go. I saw a man… he was trying to pull someone up, but the bomb hit them before they could get away. And the bridge… it broke apart. That’s the last thing I remember.”
I couldn’t speak. For a moment, we just sat there in silence, the weight of his words pressing down on me.
When I finally found my voice, it cracked with emotion. “Ben, do you think… do you think you were a soldier?”
He looked up at me, his blue eyes full of something I could only describe as ancient wisdom. “I don’t know, Mom. I was just… there. I didn’t want to be, but I was.”
The room seemed to spin around me as his words sank in. My father had flown bombing raids over Amsterdam during World War II. Had he been part of the destruction that killed my son in another life? The connection was too staggering, too incomprehensible to grasp fully.
For weeks after that conversation, Ben would occasionally return to the memories, describing them in startling detail, as though they were fragments of a puzzle he was still trying to piece together. But over time, as happens with so many children who recount past-life memories, the images faded. His mind turned to more immediate concerns, leaving me with the unanswered questions, the lingering sense of wonder, and the unshakable belief that some connections span lifetimes.
Yet for me, the experience remained—a haunting glimpse into a life, a connection, and a story far larger than I could understand. It felt as though Ben’s memory was not just his own, but part of an unbroken thread woven through the fabric of time—a chain of events, lives, and moments stretching endlessly backward and forward, linking us all in ways we could never fully grasp. His words were a reminder that history is not merely something we read about in books but a living, breathing force, flowing through each of us, connecting past, present, and future in a seamless, eternal dance.