Grandpas Visit

GRANDPAS VISIT


My son was four years old and I was twenty - four at the time this happened. In general life was hard. I worked for minimum wages, lived in a small, rundown mobile home, and I was sick with clinical depression. Now automatically the fact that I suffered with depression will make most people mark my story down as imagination. But this happened to my son; I was only a witness to his experience.

It was about nine o’clock, dark had just settled in good. The windows were open and the slight breeze flowing through the lightweight curtains was balmy and sweet - peaceful.

I could hear Tony, my son, talking to who I thought was his imaginary friend, “Cowboy Gaby”. Cowboy Gaby had been Tony’s imaginary friend for about six months or so and carried on conversations with him as if he were a real person. At first it worried me until a child psychologist set my mind at ease. But this time Tony’s way of expressing himself was different. He was answering questions it seemed instead of using his usual bossy demeanor he used with Cowboy Gabby.

I could hear him saying, “yes”, “no”, and “okay” and when I entered the room he was standing perfectly still and looking pointedly at something I could not see. He gave “it” his whole attention. He shook his head in a way to indicate “yes” as an answer to another question and then I asked him who he was talking to. He ignored me.

I started to walk to the place where his vision was fixated and Tony became instantly upset.

“No! Don’t go! Don’t go!”, he said loudly. His eyes followed an invisible something out the door. Then he ran to the front door yelling, “Come back, Grandpa! Come back! Don’t go!”

I questioned him, of course, and he described my dead grandfather to a tee. My grandfather died two years before Tony was born. In answer to my questions Tony said Grandpa was asking him to take care of me when I got older, that I would be sick and need him to care for me. That was all they talked about.

My son had never laid eyes on Grandpa but told me he saw him plainly that day. He said Grandpa was bald and had a round stomach. He described clothes like something Grandpa would wear. It all matched.

2

Grandpa and I had been very close before he died and I couldn’t understand why he came to Tony instead of to me. When I asked Tony how he knew who it was he said, “He told me.”




I sent this to NPSED [sp.] on 6-30-09.