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Riki's story
My wife and I
lost our beloved 21 year-old daughter, Kristy, to an automobile accident in June
of 2004. The pain seemed more acute as this was our second child who had been
taken from us. In 1984, our 2 month-old daughter, Katy, was born premature and
we were never able to bring her home from the hospital. While the losses seemed
more than any parent should have to experience, our spirituality has matured
thanks to what I believe are benevolent spirits who have provided numerous signs
of hope. I certainly believe that Katy and Kristy are among the spirits who
guide and protect us today.
In the summer of 2002, after completing a lack luster freshman year at Penn
State, Kristy decided to take time off to work and contemplate her future
plans. She lived one year with friends, and then decided to come back home to
live with us in 2003 in order to save money. That same year, my wife and I
decided that my father, who was 87 years old, could no longer live in his
apartment alone, and we decided to move him into our house as well. During
2003, all four of us had an opportunity to get to know one another once again,
and it was truly a blessing. However, during that same year I experienced
numerous psychic phenomena that I believe were intended to prepare me for
Kristy’s death. In our bedroom we have a couch against a wall with large
windows. On several occasions during that year, I awoke in the middle of the
night and saw an image Kristy lying on the couch as if dead. The image
naturally disturbed me, but I tried to dismiss it as a consequence of an over
active imagination. As a very young child of three or four, I used to see human
shadows at my bedroom doorway as if they were watching me. These images always
frightened me, but as I grew older, I not only stopped seeing them, but
considered them a part of my own imagination. Now that I seemed to be
experiencing these phenomena once again, I tried to dismiss them as symptoms of
stress (i.e., I was working on my dissertation research, and was running into
difficulties). I began to notice many other things, but mostly it was a feeling
that something greater than myself was beginning to dictate events.
On June 1, 2004, I was working on my research in my study. Kristy was late from
work and I was a little peeved at her for not calling to let me know why. She
had a bad habit of not letting us know where she was or what time she’d be home
and it used to drive us crazy. That evening, I experienced a phenomenon that I
can only describe as a waking daydream. While sitting at my desk, I heard the
door open and saw Kristy at the doorway of my study. I was about to get mad at
her, when she said “I love you dad.” Of course, I couldn’t stay mad at her
after that comment, and she turned and walked away. I did want to let her know
that I was concerned however, so I got up and tried to follow her, but she was
nowhere to be found. Not more than an hour or so later, I heard a persistent
knocking at our front door. Thinking it was Kristy I opened the door but my
heart quickly sunk when I saw that it was a deputy sheriff and county
paramedic. She had been killed just hours before in a head-on collision.
Needless to say, the grieving process was slow and painful. Life itself turned
to gray and there seemed to be little purpose left in life. But the signs kept
coming. The old reliable clock radio on my nightstand began to turn on by
itself. Butterflies, which Kristy adored, were everywhere. The most amazing
phenomenon happened about two months after her death. It had to do with a
certain doorbell. When she was in high school, I had placed a battery-operated
doorbell in her room to help wake her up for school. She had a terrible habit
of just switching her alarm clock off. On these occasions, I would ring the
doorbell to get her up. The bell was cheap and it had only only two audible
tones. After Kristy’s death, my wife and I had placed the doorbell next to her
picture in hopes that she would give us a sign of some sort. One day, we were
joking, saying that Kristy hadn’t learned how to operate the simple bell.
However, that evening the bell did ring! To our astonishment, however, the bell
rang a tune that had eight, not two, different tones. The doorbell wasn’t
designed to play more than two tones! Obviously chills went up and down our
spines, and we were convinced that Kristy had heard us. During the year after
her death, the bell rang eight more times!
While the phenomena I mentioned above have proven to me that there is definitely
spiritual life that continues long after death, it is not the most amazing part
of this story. My wife and I have always loved children. We were both in our
late forties when Kristy died, so the possibility of having more children did
not appear to be an option. That is until one day I happened to be watching a
news program about surrogacy – something I had never heard of before. After
discussing this possibility with my wife, we decided to hire a surrogate to
carry our baby. One thing led to another, and during the entire process we felt
a great spiritual presence in everything we did. We even visited George
Anderson, who amazed us by telling us we were planning another birth, and that
Kristy was supportive and encouraging. In June of 2007, three years to the
month when Kristy passed away, we were blessed with not one, but two babies; a
boy and a girl, both healthy and extremely loved. When my sister and her
husband heard about what we had done, they also decided to go with a surrogate,
and have been blessed with twins that were born just this month (December
2007). So out of the tragedy of losing KT and Kristy, came not only our twins,
but also my sisters. Four new lives.
Life for me is about overcoming obstacles and persevering when all seems
hopeless; …because there’s always hope. After suffering such losses I
wish I could say that we’ve been through enough and that nothing bad will ever
happen again, but I don’t think that’s what life is about. With every new life
challenge I can only hope that my faith and spirituality will strengthen and
grow; …maybe that’s enough.
Riki
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