Harold's Coin

 Uncle Harold and the Coin

Twelve sided like the one from my dream a few nights before, but much, much smaller, the penny- colored coin catches my eye. I stare at it with a certain familiarity and remembrance that my awkward brain cannot yet understand. I am not surprised or amazed as I look down upon it. I no longer get surprised and amazed by these things. I no longer exclaim like I used to, “Oh My God! How is this happening?” I do not spend, then, much time wondering how this small object was able to slip through the many mysterious and twisted veils of human psyche to land so solidly, against this metal grate that a furnace once burned through. In a matter-of-fact way, I guess I was expecting it. And here it is.

Without bending to pick it up, I know what it feels like to hold it.  I know how the weight of it, even in this smaller version, will feel in my palms. I know the bumps of its ridges. I have already traced the many sides of this very shape with my fingers.  I have already held the heavy coin in that other world that exists beyond this one.

 When my eyes were closed and fluttering, when the rest of my body was paralyzed into stillness, and when my mind was more active than it can ever be in waking hours....I came across this coin in its exaggerated form. By my father’s formless and voiceless guidance, and with the amazement and awe I for some reason don’t feel now, I stopped to pick it up.

“Is it old Dad? Worth something, maybe?”I ask without turning around, knowing somehow that he would not be there.

I see my father as the expert keeper and distributer of coins.  He has left many dimes for me in the strangest of places over the years since his passing.  I have a little container filled almost to the top, strategically placed by his picture. It so happens that this strange nickel was found immediately below that little shrine.

Without words he answered me. “It is old but not as old as you think.  It was minted in World War Two. As far as being worth something...You won’t be able to feed your body with it, but it is as precious as gold to your soul.”

“Huh?”

I want more answers but alas, as is with these dreams, my father’s voice and presence fades away leaving me with that knowing that I must remember the details of this weird dream snippet and what was said. I silently promise to remember.

I remember now as I look down at this coin that I know, without any doubt, is from World War Two. I think of my uncle Harold who gave his life to the war effort, dying on the beaches of Normandy in 1944. I can’t see the date below the tarnished head of King George. It is covered with some black clouds of carbon oxide, a natural consequence in copper containing objects. But I wonder if it could be dated 1944? I pick it up and it is like the object is returning home...or I am returning home by picking it up.

I use my thumb to rub away at the spots of patina to see what secrets they are hiding. 1942.  I have a tiny bit of “Wow! This is really happening again,” but both my skeptical, science-loving mind and the part of me that knows things I know I should not know will not let me dwell in awe for long.  With a cool calmness, I ask the shadows from the ether around me, “1942? How is that significant?  Is that when Harold joined the North Shore Regiment?  Is it when he went over seas?  Maybe this has nothing to do with Harold?”  

That last questioning comment stays but for a fraction of a second in my mind before dissolving into the mist.  I know, in some deep poorly understood part of this human...somewhere between the heart that beats in an awkward way and the belly that is always tight with something that will never be diagnosed, this date has to do with World War Two and therefore with Harold.  My father would not have brought it precognitively to my attention otherwise.

I commit myself to research for validation purposes.  The coin, I discover, was made of a copper and zinc combination called Tombac, a change of metal that took place in 1942 to conserve nickel for the war effort. How and what does this have to do with Uncle Harold?  I still do not know.  I do some research to see when the North Shore Regiment was established. That, I learn, was long before 1942.  When were they sent overseas? 1941.  What would have happened that was so significant for this uncle I never met in 1942? 

I ask that question to my father’s photo.  He is sitting in bed with his Ironmen cap on.  Baseball was an intricate part of his and his nine brothers’ lives. I remember sitting at Dad’s death bed, asking Harold and all of his brothers that were with him...to prepare the diamond for a lefty picture who would soon be making his way to the mound.

“Baseball?”

 I instantly recover memories of stories I have been told about how Uncle Harold, especially, loved the game and how good he was at it. He loved baseball more than anything, well next to his love of God, family, and country that is. I recall the image of him I painted so carefully, as if I actually knew him, in the poems and stories I have written about him and to him...all based on the black and white photos I have seen and the stories I have been told that have become a part of my memory. In my words, he is taller than my dad was, handsome with sparkling blue eyes and a mischievous smile.  He is leaning over a base with his hat on, a glove in one hand and a belt buckle pulled a little to the side.

“Baseball?” I ask again. 

And just like that, images from my research pop up to validate this truth.  In 1942, Harold help lead the North Shore Regiment baseball team to victory winning the Canadian Army Baseball Championship. That would have been one of the highlights of his life. Yeah, this win would be significant enough to Harold, to my father, and then to me to show up on a coin I was told I would find.

"Why am I finding this coin now? " I ask again to the shadows hiding in the wisps of ether I cannot see or touch. "And is where I found it significant?"

It was found near a furnace grate...that which brings fire that can lead to alchemy...the changing of metal from one form to another...just as the metal was changed in 1942 from nickel to tombac. There is sun energy, the ancient rishis would say, in copper. Hmm! And fire and heat have the power to burn away many things and transform.

The grate was significant for me personally. You see, I was always terrified, as a child growing up in a big old house...the home Harold helped my grandparents to buy with the money he sent home, a house he once walked through...of the large furnace grates.  I always feared the darkness and uncertainty beneath them. They were the source of many night terrors.  When I began my purification process, samskara release, I came up with a visualization I used in meditation where I would go down through those grates and face what I spent my life running from.  So, yeah...furnace grates are significant to me.

I believe that coin may be telling me that I am releasing more than just my own samskaras...I am cleaning up the karmic imprints of my ancestral lineage. Harold’s death has caused a great karmic knot on the consciousness of all my dad’s family that was passed on down to us. Maybe, the coin came to me in dream and then in reality because it is time to release that knot.

So, I take the coin and put it in a special place to remind me of both the universal significance and the personal significance of finding this coin. Even though things for this human are challenging and difficult in the real world sense...I am protected, seen, loved, and supported in the other world sense.  I really have nothing to fear. None of us do.

Anyway...this dream and then finding the coin wasn’t coincidence as science and psychology will say it was.  This was one of those paranormal experiences meant to make us realize how thin the veil is between dream state and waking consciousness; between the world of matter and the world of ethereal mist. It was a tiny bridge I got to walk over. These bridges are everywhere and all of us can walk over them. 

It is my responsibility now to share this bridge, to share this happening with others so they too can be on the lookout for the bridges that will allow them to see both worlds.

All is well.