Daizy Talks to Grandma
April 15, 2003, started out like any other day. My wife Rowena works nights and was just getting home at 7:45 a.m. as I was getting ready to leave for work at 8:00. On the way to work, I would drop our boys off at school and take our three-year-old daughter Daizy to “Grandma’s house” so my wife could sleep.
Rowena always called her mother, Pedrita Pepino (“Pedie”), in the morning to wake her up so she could watch for us and unlock the door. On that day, she got the answering machine. So she tried again a few min- utes later, and still no answer. I asked Rowena to come with me and check on her mother.
After dropping the boys off at school, we went over to Pedie’s house. Daizy didn’t want to get out of the car. I asked Rowena to go in and check on her mom. I had a gut feeling something was wrong.
“She is not breathing!” I heard Rowena scream.
I went in and found my mother-in-law dead in the bathroom. Rowena was sure she was still alive, but I could tell she had passed on. Still in shock, I called 911. The emergency crew was there within a few minutes.
As the investigators collected information, I tried to get Daizy out of the car. She still didn’t want to come out, so I got in the back seat with her. I hadn’t said anything to her about her grandmother.
“Grandma die 11 hours already,” Daizy said in her three-year-old voice.
I was shocked. Not only does Daizy know nothing about time and hours, she didn’t even know what “die” meant, besides seeing a dead goldfish or a squished bug.
One of the investigators came out by the car, and I rolled the window down to talk with him. After answering his questions, I told him what Daizy had just said. He gave me a funny look.
“You know, according to my observations, that is just about the time it happened—10 to 12 hours ago,” he said.
“Maybe Grandma visited Daizy,” I said.
He agreed. “It could be very possible. Children sometimes can sense things that grownups can’t. Maybe Grandma came to see Daizy after she passed on.”
We didn’t move anything in the home until after the funeral a week later. I was taking down photos from the wall when I noticed the clock I was about to take down had stopped at 9:25 p.m.—exactly 11 hours before the time we found Pedrita. The clock then started to work again, and is still working as I write this.
I was convinced that Daizy really had contact with her grandma. But that wasn’t the end. A few days later, Daizy said, “Look Mama, Grandma is outside the win- dow.” When Rowena looked and saw no one there, Daizy said, “Oops, Grandma is gone. She went back in her box” (the wooden urn with her ashes in it).
Another time Daizy told us that Grandma was okay, and she was “cooking fish” (Daizy’s favorite meal, which Grandma used to cook for her). And once Daizy said that Grandma was sleeping with her glasses on, then she took her glasses off and went back into her photo on the wall. Daizy said that she wanted to give Grandma a kiss, but Grandma said, “No, a hug only.”
Daizy still talks to Grandma’s photo on the wall, and even answers questions that she said Grandma asked her. —Dan Dehnke, Blaine, Wash.
