Dee S.

My husband and I had just experienced the death of our 1 1/2 year old son Daniel who had been born with a heart condition and had undergone surgery. During his recovery (while still under medication to keep him in a comatose state) a nurse removed his intravenous heart medication which was keeping him alive to enable his heart to regain strength. As a result he died brain death.

Just a few days after his funeral I remained at home while my husband returned to work. On this particular morning I awoke with my husband to see him off to work and decided to return to lay down in my bedroom to rest. I remember the clock radio playing a particular song (which one I have forgotten) and the time being approximately 8 a.m.

The next thing I recall is hearing the sounds of a baby in the hallway just outside my open bedroom door. Daniel’s bedroom was at the end of this hallway. I did not seem to feel alarmed or startled by this but just simply sat up in bed placing my feet onto the floor but remained sitting on the bed bending slightly forward to look down the hallway. There I saw Daniel crawling down the hallway from his bedroom wearing his little yellow fleece sleepers he often wore. When alive Daniel could only crawl as he had not yet learned to walk. As he crawled up to me I bent over and picked him up onto my lap and cradled him in my arms. I was at this point overtaken by emotion and began to weep. Although he had not yet begun to speak more than a few single words while alive he said to me in a full sentence, “don’t cry mommy, I will be back in seven”.

The next thing I was aware of was once again laying in my bed overwhelmed and feeling a tremendous sense of peace and joy with what had just happened. I knew that I had just held my son in my arms. The one thing that I found somewhat strange was that although this experience seemed to take several minutes I awoke to the same song playing on the radio that had been playing when I laid down.

This experience occurred in October of 1984 and though a slight recollection of it passed through my mind occasionally I did not really think about or try to understand what Daniel meant by what he said. It was the experience of having held him that was most prevalent in my mind when I recalled the event.

Following his death my husband and I went through a rough time in our marriage and I planned on leaving the marriage so any thoughts of having another child with him were completely out of the question. It was 1 1/2 years since Daniel had died and my marriage had all but died as well when against all odds I became pregnant. On February 27th, 1987 I gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. From the moment I saw him I was in love. He had the biggest blue eyes that appeared to look right through to my soul just as Daniel’s big blue eyes had. I could not believe how much like his brother he looked. Even to this day placing a baby picture of each side by side you cannot tell which baby is which. This gave me a great sense of peace. Even though I had some belief as well as some doubt about reincarnation a small part of me thought it could be possible that the son I loved so much had come back to me.

It was not until a few years later when I again recalled and was thinking about the morning shortly after Daniel’s death when it hit me with a new awareness. It was not until now that I really focused on the actual words he had spoken rather than on just my emotions of holding him….”I will be back in seven.” Did he already know that I would unintentionally become pregnant and that he would return on Feb. 27th, 1987 and came to me to tell me?