That Time A Song Triggered Memories From A Past Life

A tale of tears, real love, and dangerous driving

Photo by Liam Pozz on Unsplash

Something kept me from writing these words for the past month. Maybe it’s confusion, maybe it’s the belief that ‘’people wouldn’t understand’’, or maybe it’s because it literally took me a full month to process it. It’s probably a cocktail of all three.

And I’m happy I waited a month because where I thought that the moment I’m about to describe was a peak in my spiritual development, it actually turned out to be just a tiny stepping stone that initiated a whirlwind of much bigger spiritual epiphanies.

Sundays Are For Time Travelling

I was feeling off all morning. I didn’t have any direct reason to — it was a Sunday. Didn’t have much on the planning, had a pretty good night’s sleep, and ticked all the other boxes of a moderately good day.

There was nothing I felt like doing. Should I watch Netflix? Hmm, no. Should I read a book? Nope, not feeling that either. Eventually, I landed on the only option that seemed like a potential mood-booster or at least mind-clearer: go for a drive.

I made my way into the car and stumbled upon a new dilemma. Should I listen to a podcast while driving? Nah. Maybe some music? Not even feeling like listening to music — I’m telling you, that is rare.

You know what, screw this, I’m forcing myself to get in a good mood. Here’s my secret: ABBA never fails to put me in a good mood. So I turned on some ABBA.

As I was driving along, humming along and staring ahead, the song ‘’Our Last Summer’’ came on. I listened to the lyrics as I’ve listened to them a thousand times before already:

I can still recall
Our last summer
I still see it all
Walks along the Seine
Laughing in the rain
Our last summer
Memories that remain

We made our way along the river
And we sat down in the grass by the Eiffel tower
I was so happy we had met
It was the age of no regret
Oh, yes

Those crazy years
That was the time of the flower-power
But underneath
We had a fear of flying

Of growing old
A fear of slowly dying
We took a chance
Like we were dancing our last dance

And boy, did I suddenly break down to the bone!

These lyrics opened a wound I didn’t know I have and I cried harder than I can remember ever crying. I was crying so hard that crying alone wasn’t enough to get the emotions out of my body.

I shouted, shook my hands like a madman, and coughed like some entity that has possessed me finally felt called to exit my body. All while trying not to cause a car crash.

At this point, I didn’t understand at all what was happening. I just felt a wave of grief wash over me, and it didn’t feel like my own grief. How could it be? I haven’t lost anybody. I haven’t had any truly traumatic experiences for years.

Then, memories started popping up that made everything make sense in a split second.

I saw myself. Not myself as in the person I am today, but my essence in a previous life.

I had real love. Real, true, raw, deep, unconditional love that I’ve unconsciously been holding as a sky-high standard in my current life. I could feel the emotions so real and so raw, and I knew that we had the best time when we were together, but some disease had ripped him out of my life way too soon.

I could tell we were really young (twenty-somethings) when that happened, and I could tell I never really found closure in that life. I’m not 100% what year it was and where we were but I had a strong feeling it was in France (which would also explain why those lyrics resonated with me so much at that moment and triggered that memory to show itself).

It was like that morning of feeling off and low was leading up to this moment of processing grief. Like I already somehow knew what was coming.

Feeling all this and seeing all this made me confused, sad, but above all grateful that these memories were presented to me. It’s almost like that scene in The Notebook where the old woman with dementia suddenly remembers her husband and all the wonderful memories they share, and that return of memory gives her the chance to thank him and love him as she did.

In the hours that followed I thought about him a lot. Not in the way you usually think about a guy, reminiscing about his eyes, his laugh, his banter, and personality, but in a way that was completely directed at his spirit.

I felt he was such a good person and I spent a good amount of time thanking him for showing me what real love is, affirming why I’ve been single for so long in this life. I know what real love is, that’s why I don’t settle for anything that does not feel like the love I had in my previous life.

I felt incredibly grateful for this (very confusing) experience and I’m happy that I woke up to it and was able to process some left-over grief that I’ve apparently been carrying around in my body. I definitely felt lighter afterward.

The Start of A Special Journey

Besides the epiphany around my standards of relationships and love, this experience really opened me up to the fact that every life that our spirit has gone through is truly connected to all the others and you take all the lessons from previous lives into your current one. This is always running in the background of your unconscious. I just had the privilege that my unconscious mind passed one memory to my conscious mind.

Since this day, I’ve grown a lot as a person.

I’m studying to become a hypnotherapist which plays a big role in my personal growth but this interest in past lives has grown stronger and stronger because of this experience.

Since the ABBA-moment, I’ve also traveled to one other life where I was a cowboy in Arizona in 1913, but that’s a story for another time.

Just a tiny slice of feedback for the Universe for the next time this happens: maybe don’t show me a shattering memory while driving 70 mph on the highway.

For everyone’s sake: maybe wait until I’ve parked my car. :)