Capt. R.E. Ludlow tended to sleep deeply in a hard rain, and dream because the rain muted the noise of everything but what his subconscious mind was most concerned with on a given day … and his subconscious mind on this day wanted to remind him of a vision, fulfilled, for which he was a bit overdue for giving thanks.
Though he gave no external sign to anyone outside his family, the deaths of the captain's two oldest children with their partners had devastated him, and he did not know his younger two children had survived their mother's death at that time.
The advantage of being a hardened soldier, and a West Point graduate: disassociating from pain on purpose, and compartmentalizing it, was just part of the training, and he had 33 years into using it often and well. His children and their partners chose to die in 2018, irresponsibly leaving seven children of their own; he chose to live, gather up his grandchildren, and with the new Mrs. Ludlow get on with Ludlow Family 2.0.
The challenge about disassociating, though, for a person with severe and repeated traumas, is that where one's mind goes is not always completely under control. Staying in reality may be a choice, but loosing one's self from it has consequences. Capt. Ludlow had better control than most, but he knew to pray every time: “Lord, I know You have my six out here … guide me to a better place.”
Capt. Ludlow and Col. H.F. Lee his cousin talked about this often … both had done what they needed to do in order to do what they needed to do, and sometimes Maj. Ironwood Hamilton, who lost both his parents at 14 and picked up the family load right there, joined them. The captain and the colonel had learned how to make coffee with plenty of nutmeg from him.
“The thing is, how you live anywhere is how you live everywhere,” the colonel said. “We were built for the lives we are living, for the responsibilities we have to take up … and it's just not the same for everyone.”
The three cousins sometimes talked about what they had seen out there away from reality, and how it overlapped with reality at times … Col. Lee, widower at 18 years old, had seen his wife and child in a vision of warm light after their death, and so had been confirmed in that giving them up to God was to their joy and someday would also be his own … Maj. Hamilton had foreseen being a mature man, and kind, before he encountered his parents' murderer, and thus, not harming the man but simply bringing him to justice.
But one day, Capt. Ludlow had the story that beat all.
“I'm not sure I'm not losing my mind on this one,” he had said to his cousins, “but I was taking a moment to just zone out after that miserable day in court – but you should have seen the fools at the defendant's table, though! – and I went somewhere in my head that I have five beautiful daughters. Six, y'all! I know God doesn't play tricks on his children, but that was a lot to deal with, since my only daughter is in the ground!”
“Well, you know we were talking the day before, Robert,” Maj. Hamilton said, “and you were telling me how you don't even know how I deal with the noise of Hamiltown with there being 13 of us – Agnes and I have five daughters and six sons, and we were talking about that as you are getting ready to be a household of nine.”
“Yes, you did say that I will get used to it – I will adopt my three granddaughters, so, OK – but five?”
Col. Lee had a different idea.
“Your grandmother and my grandfather are siblings,” he said, “meaning the Lee clairvoyance might be telling you something to keep under your hat.”
Capt. Ludlow remembered this when he found out his younger daughter was still alive – so that made four...
And so, in the day of this rain, the captain in his dream was seeing one young lady and four little girls, just laughing and playing in the rain. Four he could see clearly: 19-year-old Francesca Wainwright, his daughter adopted by his friend Sgt. Joe Wainwright and wife Melba, along with granddaughters eleven-year-old Eleanor, eight-year-old Edwina, and seven-year-old Amanda, but the fifth he could not see clearly … but she was there, and happy as the rest … and then he remembered, and she came calmly walking to him into view just as she had down that country road, God having sent her to him out of the mess that was her biological grandparents' home … .
“Papa?”
Capt. Ludlow opened his eyes to see ten-year-old Glendella Ludlow, the little cousin he had adopted, standing in front of him.
“You called my name in your sleep,” she said. “You said, 'Of course – Glendella!'”
She then was stunned in the radiance of his grin.
“In 2018,” he said, “I had a vision of having five daughters. I found out earlier this year that your Aunt Francesca was my living younger daughter from my first marriage this year, just adopted by someone else because of how my first wife died.”
“I'm sorry; that sounds complicated,” Glendella said.
“It is, and I'll tell you later – but the point is, that let me know I do have four daughters because I adopted my three granddaughters. But that left a question then: who is my other daughter, and where is she?”
Glendella considered this, and then grinned too.
“I'm the other daughter,” she said.
“My fifth, indeed – the Lord showed me then and I just dreamed it again – the vision was true, all along,” he said, and wrapped his arms around his fifth daughter. “I have five daughters and five sons – balanced, like I always wanted!”
Of course, the captain had a total of six daughters and six sons … he had lost two, but then those meant to be added to him had been, and these he would have, all the rest of the way. Later, in private, he wept for joy and gratitude as the wound of his loss healed even more … the family he had been blessed with was more than enough.