Ross Liggins is back with more anecdotes and insights
Most of us have had experiences that we find difficult to explain logically, and I thought I would share some of mine with you. The ‘inner voice’, intuition, gut feeling, call it what you will, that people talk about probably saved my life when I was very young. I was in my father’s rusty old Zephyr during the mid-1950s on my way to school. It was rusty because my Dad wasn’t great at looking after his vehicles and seldom hosed off his car with fresh water after our weekend trips along Muriwai Beach to gather the iconic toheroa shellfish, during which we often drove through salt water and sometimes had to dig our car out of the black iron sand when it got stuck. So the old 1955 Consul was a veritable feast for rust. Anyway, I was leaning against the door daydreaming about whatever a 7-year-old daydreams about, when suddenly a voice in my head whispered, “Stop leaning on the door”. In my dozy state, thinking that my dad had said it, I dutifully stopped my lean, whereupon the door suddenly flew open revealing the fast-moving white centre-line of the road onto which I would have undoubtedly tumbled had I not obeyed that mysterious voice. I grabbed the handle and managed to close it as my dad shouted “Why did you open the door?” I told him that I didn’t and asked why he had told me not to lean on it. He replied that he hadn’t and so we continued our journey to school. Somehow, I have always remembered that event as a formidable learning experience in my life – namely, to take note of that inner voice, especially if I can actually hear it and not just feel it.
Not all unexplainable events stem from inner messages however. Sometimes they seem kind of supernatural, almost spooky. One happened to me after my dad died, when my siblings and I took his ashes to Lake Rotoiti to fulfil his wish to be scattered in the lake in front of the family bach where we had enjoyed many holidays together. Dad’s passion had been fly fishing for the rainbow trout which frequented the weed beds 100 metres off our jetty. I noticed as a kid how, whenever Dad had an argument with my mother, he would slowly get up out of his chair, pour himself what he called a ’tincture’ of whiskey and milk, put on his waders and wander down to the lake to cast a fly at the waiting rainbows. It was his way of avoiding conflict. Anyway, this time it was me getting into my waders and wandering down to the lake, armed not with a fishing rod, but with a box containing my dear old Dad’s ashes. I waded out and stopped at the spot where he used to fish, 50 or so metres out from the jetty, and noticed a rainbow (not the trout) stretching as a straight vertical line into the sky. “That’s pretty random,” I remember thinking as I began to pour the ashes into the lake, but imagine my surprise when, after emptying the urn, I looked down and saw the shape of 2 grey footprints where the ashes had fallen, silhouetted against the white sand of the lake bottom. I felt like leaving the rod out there in the lake just in case he was still there, after another tiff with mum somewhere in their ethereal world.
A similar event happened when a close friend died after a long illness. She knew that she was not long for this world and often joked that when she died she would come back and haunt the hell out of me. One night, my then wife and I were asleep and were suddenly woken by the living room light coming on outside the bedroom door. I got up and turned the light off and climbed back into bed thinking nothing of it. A few minutes later the light switched itself on again. The next morning, my sick friend’s daughter phoned and told me that her mum had passed during the night. Was it a faulty light or a playful spirit? I have often wondered about that.
To be continued …
Words by Ross Liggins
