A Promise Fulfilled
Richard Carpenter, OH, USA
January 2002
My grandmother was dying of lung cancer in 1976. She lived in Ohio. Her niece, who lived about 200 miles away in South Kentucky had just given birth to her first child. Although she had promised she would make the trip to see the child, cancer took her life in early 1977 and she never made the trip and never saw the child.
Several months later, the niece was in bed and awoke early in the AM hours as she heard her newborn child making some noise. She sat up in bed and raised herself up against the back of the bed and turned on a small night light. Her bedroom had a clear view into the child's room although she could only see crib. The child's room had a small night light also.
As she stepped out of bed and took a few steps, her view of the crib changed. She literally froze in her tracks unable to move. She saw a woman in a large white dress hovering over the floor beside the crib looking down at the child. As the niece looked closer, she was sure it was my Grandmother who had died a few months earlier. The one significant feature difference was that my grandmother had red hair. The woman, now wearing the white dress, had beautiful white hair. As "my grandmother" stood momentarily over the crib gazing, the child's mother still was not able to believe what she was seeing. She actually "pinched herself" to make sure she was awake - which she was. At that moment, the woman, still hovering over the child, bent over and kissed the child and then disappeared.
The child's mother (who is my great-aunt's daughter) believed without a doubt, this this woman was my grandmother. Again, she stated the only thing that was different was the color of her hair. She said that she had promised several times before she died that she would make the visit to Kentucky to see her child, a visit that never happened in her mortal life, but a promise, nevertheless fulfilled.