My Grandaddy

Christmas 1997 will remain in my memory for a very long time if not forever. We were spending Christmas with my mother. (Daddy passed away July 31, 1994). We had finished lunch, opened the presents and were loading up the car to return home when my daughter heard a scream coming from behind a row of hedges that runs from the corner of the house to the lake's edge behind the house. She and I walked around the hedges following the sound. There on top of a retaining wall stood her son and my grandson three year old Ricky. He was soaked from head to toe. We were so relieved that he was all right since the water behind the retaining wall was a good foot over his head, that it didn't dawn on me to ask him any questions. However, later that afternoon it hit me that although the red mud is a bog at the water's edge Ricky didn't have a single bit on him. Also, he had brand new cowboy boots on and even though he would have had to climb a retaining wall made from railroad ties to get out of the water there wasn't a scratch on the boots. Two days later Ricky came to visit and I asked him how he managed to get out of the water that day. He replied, "Him just picked me up and set me on the ground." I asked him "him who?" He crawled out of my lap and went into his aunt Tiffany's room and came out with a picture of my daddy and said,"my grandaddy, him just picked me up and put me up on the ground". (By the way, Ricky is named Ricky Ray (Hugh) after my Dad.) This was strange enough but two days later Tiffany was talking to my mother and told her what Ricky had said. Mother told her that two days before Christmas a friend of hers called and told her that something was going to happen on Christmas day but not to worry about it that we had a very special angel watching over us that day.

I've often felt that daddy was there in the house and this, for me, validated my previous feelings.