The nightmares were graphic, extraordinarily real and very frightening. They always ended up with me screaming out Ryan! Those nightmares were only part of the depression that I was experiencing eight years ago. I was married to Tony, and I loved him dearly, but even our blissful marriage couldn't take away my strange despair.
As my depression deepened, the illogical feeling of loss grew, the nightmares became more frequent and the questions became more intense. Who was Ryan? Why did I dream about him constantly? In my nightmares he and I were always dressed in clothes from a past time - how could that be?
Then one day, nightmare and reality collided and opened an extraordinary door to the truth. As I wandered aimlessly through a Shopping Mall, shrouded in a haze of sadness, feeling totally cut off from those around me, I passed a butcher's shop. As the meat cleaver fell into a side of beef, I fell unwillingly into the past.
The scene in front of me changed, and a broadsword wielded by a kilted warrior plunged into a dark-haired man. It was shocking in its quickness. I knew that the man who had been slain in front of me was Ryan. When I came 'back' I was hopelessly disorientated and felt I must be losing my mind.
During the following few months while Tony was at work, I lived in fear of myself and of what I might do. One afternoon, to kill the silence that seemed to scream at me, I turned on the TV. Inexplicably the same image flickered over and over again on the screen as if time had stopped. The picture showed the face of Garth Brooks, a country singer, a stranger, and yet in a second, the pall of sadness that had overshadowed my entire life, evaporated.
Tony and I found that life was worth living again for the first time in years. Romance re-blossomed in our relationship. Though the changes in me seemed to be enough, (one effect was that I lost three stone in weight), we were yet to find the link between modern day country singer, Garth Brooks, and the mysterious Ryan. Then one night the euphoria we'd been enjoying was savagely shattered as I experienced another nightmare and witnessed Ryan's death in full.
In the background was a small castle. (Lumley Castle 29th August 1640 - although dates and places didn't seem to match at first, because the main battle with Scotland took place outside Newcastle on 28th August 1640.
I discovered later that the Scottish army had marched on to Durham, which they took on 30th August, and Lumley Castle is in a direct line. Records show that the castle was indeed involved in a minor skirmish, and sustained damage.)
Ryan stood frozen to the spot, armed only with a shield. Soldiers in kilts were running from the cover of a stand of trees, screaming their battle cries, crazed with bloodlust. Ryan was run through, and in his dying moments he reached out to an unseen hand. He stretched out desperately, his blood soaked fingers striving to touch someone. As he reached out he said one final word - Madeleine!
Ryan from the nightmares bore an uncanny resemblance to Garth Brooks from the present.
Another mystery - who was Madeleine? It wasn't until someone suggested that these dreams and visions might be past life memories, and that I might be Madeleine, that I gave reincarnation any consideration. I thought I might go and be regressed under hypnosis, and it soon became something I had to do. As I sunk into a hypnotic trance I was transported back to the 17th Century and finally discovered who Ryan was.
Ryan Fitzgerald was born in Southern Ireland in the early 1600s. Caitlin, his mother, died from overwork when Ryan was just twelve years old. Although he did his best to support his two sisters, inevitably, they succumbed to malnutrition and disease. Ryan fled to England to try and make a new life. (He changed his name from James Ryan to Ryan Fitzgerald to show in defiance that his biological father was Thomas Fitzgerald, (Earl of Kildare) even though that family drove him away.)
Several years later, after finding work where he could on farms and smallholdings, Ryan ended up in Hambledon near the home of the De Port family. (The name De Port came from a regression of another person. It sounded right to me - as the family had French Catholic connections. I never recalled the name myself as I think my unconscious did not want to accept that I had ever been a part of that family). As Ryan neared the estate, he came across Madeleine de Port as two ruffians were assaulting her.
I remembered being Madeleine, the aristocratic daughter of Edwin and Rebecca. Rebecca died when Madeleine was six years old, and her Father remarried four years later. His new wife, Margaret and Madeleine never got along, Madeleine always believing as she did that her Father's new wife had married him solely for his money and position. Eventually an uneasy truce developed between them, but this was shattered forever when Ryan Fitzgerald appeared on the scene.
Madeleine was out riding her horse alone. Hampered by her long dress and riding too fast, she hit her head on a branch and was knocked senseless to the ground. While she was helpless, two youths took advantage of her state and tried to molest her. Coming across the drama by chance, Ryan Fitzgerald drove the youths away, saving Madeleine from disgrace. When she came round and found Ryan watching her she was terrified of him for a moment, but as soon as their eyes met she felt no more fear, only instantaneous and eternal love.
Madeleine took her hero home and was dismayed when her parents treated him like a criminal. Her defence of him was total and unshakeable. Margaret and Edwin could see the danger signs and tried to keep the two of them apart, but it was too late. Madeleine had found her love and would never let him go.
At first Ryan and Madeleine's relationship was based on friendship - for his part anyway. They would sit and talk for hours, totally at ease with one another. But eventually Madeleine wanted more, demanded more, coming to his bed in an innocent attempt to seduce him. Madeleine was totally uneducated in matters between men and women, and opened herself totally to ruination by him. Ryan, being worldlier than her, understood fully the implications and felt unable to take advantage of her. Rejected, Madeleine became determined to make Ryan admit the love for her that she knew he secretly harboured.
After Ryan finally admitted his love for her and asked her to marry him, Madeleine accepted readily. They got married in secret and returned together to face her parent's wrath. Nancy, the cook, was the only friend to Ryan in the De Porte household, and she was the only supporter of his and Madeleine's love, even though she knew the mistress of the house would never accept it.
Margaret and Edwin resorted to all manner of trickery and treachery to destroy the love Ryan and Madeleine felt for each other. I recalled many episodes of the three years that Ryan and Madeleine spent together, on my journey of rediscovery.
It became clear that Madeleine and Ryan could not be parted; save by death, so eventually Margaret brought death to him. The couple were forcibly torn from each other's arms. In desperation they clung fiercely to each other's hands, but their fingers were also pulled apart, and Ryan was taken prisoner.
Edwin used his political clout to have Ryan conscripted into the English army, and sent into battle against the Scots, where he was killed. I had witnessed his death many times in my nightmares and visions.
It became clear that Ryan had been reincarnated as Garth Brooks in this lifetime, as Madeleine had become me, and it was also clear why rediscovering him on the TV screen restored to life, had relieved my depression. But another question remained. What happened to Madeleine after she lost the love of her life?
The nightmare returned only this time it was a vision of Madeleine's descent into despair. Locked in a room for two days and nights after Ryan's disappearance, going insane with terror at what might be happening to him, Madeleine's fate was sealed. Once she was released, she roamed the woodland where she and Ryan used to walk; she laid down in the bluebells where they used to lie together.
She could not live without him, and believing she could see his ghost, she followed him up to the attic. Looking down to the courtyard below and thinking she could see Ryan with his arms outstretched, she jumped to her death.
After this nightmare Madeleine wouldn't let me escape from the emotions it brought to life. I awoke many times with the cry "Ryan!" echoing through my soul. Madeleine's quest was now shared, as I realised that to close the circle for her I needed to reunite her with Ryan. The only way I could do it was to get her to him in his current incarnation - to take her to Garth.
This was very difficult, as he is incredibly famous and well protected in the USA, his home. He rarely travels to Europe, and I'd always been afraid of flying, so my going to America to try and see him looked out of the question.
He was too insulated by management for any requests to meet him to fall on anything but deaf ears, and my quest looked more and more impossible. But I knew that Madeleine would never let me go until I laid the ghosts of her own personal history.
In the meantime Tony and I searched for and found evidence of my past life. We revisited the church where Ryan and Madeleine were married and the house where they lived. I managed to see Garth from a distance at a rare concert in Ireland, and although I was far away from the stage, an amazing thing happened.
Since I was fourteen I'd suffered an undiagnosed abdominal pain, and right after the concert it just disappeared. The pain was in the same place as where Ryan had been run through. I also found out that Garth Brooks has a scar in the exact same place on his body.
With Tony's support and with Madeleine pushing me on, I overcame my life-long phobia of air travel. I boarded three planes in one day with Madeleine giving me the courage I lacked alone, and went to the USA. Meeting Garth still seemed impossible, as he was out of town, and all hope was almost lost. But then I got a psychic connection with him, so that a meeting took place after all.
When Garth approached me I saw his clothes waver and become the clothes he wore as Ryan in the 1600s. As we came closer and our hands reached out, I could see Ryan and Madeleine's hands being pulled apart. As our hands touched, Garth became Ryan on the battlefield, his bloody hand reaching out to Madeleine.
Ryan and Madeleine's hands met. The circle was closed.