Hauntings: Validation Of A Loved One From The Afterlife

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October 6, 1974, death came to snatch our 42 year old father away.  It was sudden.  It was a shock.  The day was beautiful.  No one could have guessed it would end tragically.  Working on his jeep that was not cooperating that day, he jumped into the driver’s seat, turned the key and began to back the car down the steep driveway to take it for a test drive.
As he began the descent, the brakes gave out.  He could not stop.  Leaving a cloud of dust behind him, he was about to meet his fate.

Watching from the kitchen window, mom noticed he had held the jeep door open.  She believes he wanted to get a wider view of a neighbor’s house at the foot of the road, to keep from slamming into it.  He turned the jeep toward the open field (right before the neighbor’s house) after he cleared the tree- lined road. It ended with dad falling out of the open jeep door, when the jeep tipped over on its side, landing on him, after which the jeep flipped back up on all four wheels.

Mom watched helplessly, as did six of my siblings.  Mom called the ambulance and then ran to him.  He was alive, but only briefly as mom prayed and looked him in the eyes that spoke to her as if saying…”I’m O.K.”  She slipped his head gently onto her lap, and then he died in her arms I was away in Connecticut where I lived with my husband of three years.  I was only twenty-one, I was the second oldest of eight children.  My mom was only forty years old, and now a widow left alone with six children.

My brother Bill, a year older than me,  also recently married, lived in Pennsylvania, not far from our parent’s house.  He was called and rushed to get to there.  He was not told that dad had passed.  As he approached the house, he noticed an ambulance on the opposite side of the road with no lights flashing.  He figured all was well, and they were bringing him to the hospital. But when he pulled up the driveway, he found mom and the others in tears and shock.  It all happened so fast. 

When my mom called me in Connecticut, I heard her crying as she said simply, “Can you come home right away?  Your dad’s gone.  He’s gone to be with the Lord.” I was numb, and could not believe it.  We had just visited my parents a month ago, and I never dreamed it would be the last time I saw my dad.  I remember he’d asked us to stay a day.  We did, and I’ll be forever grateful.  But now he was gone.

My husband held me, and most of what happened after that was a blur.  After throwing things in a suitcase, my husband  and I were on the highway heading toward the saddest day of my life. When we arrived, the silence was deafening.  My family had been through a day of emotions that I was not a part of.  They were drained.  I was lost.  The reality was harsh.

During the night, my mom let out a loud wail.  She screamed “June!” Dad was a junior, so everyone called him June.  We all ran to her, got her out of bed, and hugged her. We brought her into the kitchen and read scriptures from the Bible to comfort her.  It was a long night. The years went by.  We found ourselves talking about our dad and the memories we shared as a family of ten.  We would often sing hymns after church for dad, as mom played her guitar. Lying back in his recliner, eyes closed, he’d say… “Sing pretty for me.”

Though short in stature, my dad seemed larger than life.  He was about 5’8” and weighed approximately one hundred seventy five pounds, but made up for it in character.  His energy was palpable.

He had a great sense of humor and would often dance with us girls and swing us around and do a “dip.”  He would often sneak up on us and scare us at any given time.  He was the “life of the party,” as the saying goes, for all who knew and loved him.

Once, he told mom, “I couldn’t stand it if one of these kids died before me.”  He was always worrying.  He lived a short but full life.  He was in the Marines during the Korean War and witnessed the Atom bomb while it was being tested in Nevada and got a hellish glimpse of a future he knew no one would want to experience.  We moved to Connecticut in 1961, for a better life.  Work was scarce in Pennsylvania at the time.  Manufacturing jobs were plentiful in Connecticut.  He and two of my uncles found jobs and homes for their families. 

Our lives changed forever.  It was a great sacrifice for mom and dad to leave their native home to give us a better life. For eight years, life was good.  Christmas was especially wonderful.  Dad and mom could not afford to give us much until now.   Christmas eve, dad bought the tree, we all decorated it together.  While mom baked pies and stuffed the turkey, we would sing Christmas Carols as we decorated the house with the tackiest of trimmings.  These included a fake fireplace, red and green streamers crisscrossing the ceiling, topped off with a huge red paper bell in the center.  These would prove to be the “best” family years that we would share as a whole.

Dad felt it was time to move back to Pennsylvania.  He and mom wanted to go back to their roots and build a house.  This was dads dream for us.  And now he was financially able to make this dream a reality. My future husband and I just began dating, and were not happy about being separated.  But it all worked out.  He visited every month, and we became engaged two years later.  We married in 1971, and I moved back to Connecticut with him.

We visited my parents often, and then the tragedy of losing dad happened. Mom remarried three years later.  It was a tough adjustment.  We managed to accept it. We all went on with our lives, and every October sixth, we “remembered” that terrible day. But the year of 2005, my brother Bill, my sister Carol and I forgot for some reason.  Dad was about to “remind” us.  That year, I just happened to be visiting my sister Carol on October sixth.

Bill went into his garage to retrieve some Halloween decorations and while he was rummaging through things, he felt the urge to pull out the tool box mom gave him that had belonged to dad.  He’d only ever looked through it once, many years ago.  He opened it and began to pick up various tools, reflecting that dad had held and used them.  When finished, he put it away.  Later that morning, he went to moms, to help her with a plumbing problem.  When he knelt down next to the tub I the bathroom and turned his shirt sleeves under, mom noticed and said, “Hey, your dad used to roll his sleeves under like that.”

“No kidding,” Bill said.  “I never even noticed.” Then she left for a few minutes, and came back with dad’s release papers from the Marines. She said she’d like him to have the papers.  Bill thanked her. Later, as he was driving home, it suddenly hit him that it was October sixth.  He told Carol and me about it that afternoon on the phone.  As we talked, Carol and I were surprised that we too had forgotten that this was October sixth.
 

Later, Carol and I decided to go for a drive in the county to see the foliage.  We drove deep into the mountains, with no houses around, all the while talking about dad and the experiences Bill had earlier that day.  I said to Carol, “Remember when we would go for Sunday drives with the family and dad would say, ‘Hey, who wants a custard?’  Then I went on to say, “Wouldn’t it be funny if we saw a custard stand?”  And just as I said it, I turned my head left as if being directed by some force, and there was the biggest ice-cream cone displayed on a big building, with a window below it.  

Excited now, we made a beeline for the place, parked the car and jumped out.  Just then, a strange came out of the building swinging his right arm around and over his head, yelling “What’r ya doin over there?”  He was joking of course.  Dad did that same gesture many times and said those very words in just the same way as this stranger did.  We were dumbfounded and convinced that dad’s spirit came to us that day.  We were like giddy teenage girls and went directly to the custard window to purchase cones.  We giggled as we held the cones up like glasses of wine, and smashed them together and said “cheers!”  We were ecstatic We know God allowed dad to “come through” for us that day.  It was a wonderful experience. Now each October sixth we talk about that 2005 visit.  We would love to have another. Mom told us later, that she just assumed that Bill remembered the date, which was why she didn’t mention it when she handed Bill dad’s Marine release papers. Dad lives on and we know he’s ok and his personality has not changed. If this had happened any other day other than the anniversary of his death, we probably would have chalked it up to “coincidence,” but it happened on October sixth, and that was our validation.

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