Three years ago my daughter died in a head-on car crash. She was driving and my two grandsons (4 and 6) were in the back seat. They lived with my husband and me, and I babysat for her while she was at work. The week prior to her death, I remember asking her if she would be around to take care of me when I got sick again and neared my death (I have had cancer in the past). My daughter answered, "Momma, you're going to outlive me."

That week my grandson, Travis, began having nightmares during his noon naps. He would wake up crying and tell me that his mommy was going to leave him. I tried to assure him that Mommy would never leave him. But he held my face and said very seriously, "No, Grandma! An angel told me that my mommy is going to leave me!"

My daughter didn't seem too concerned when I relayed this to her. She was trying on outfits for a date and settled on a pretty white dress. While I took a few picture, she spun in the dress and said, "Momma, don't I look like an angel?"

The next morning she didn't show up to leave the kids with me, and I got a call that she hadn't turned up for work either. Next came the call from a trauma nurse telling me about the wreck. She said that my daughter was in surgery in a town an hour away where she had been flown to a trauma unit. I rode in the ambulance with Travis to the hospital. But by the time I got there, our daughter had been sent to another hospital over 300 miles away. I told my four-year-old grandson, Travis, that I needed to go to the big people hospital to check on Mommy, but he said, "No, Grandma, Mommy died. She's gone now."

A few days later, as I was on the way to the newspaper office with Travis to put the obituary notice in the paper, he started singing, "Over here, look over here, I love you." He repeated this verse many times so I asked him about his new song. He looked at me very seriously and said, "I'm singing to Mommy. She's right over there. Can't you see her, Grandma?" That evening, in a very quiet house, I heard my daughter's voice very loud and clear say "Mommy" just like she was going to ask me for something. I turned, fully expecting to see her, but she was not to be seen.

The picture I took of my daughter spinning around in her white dress shows a wooden cross on the wall near her head. The cross is made of dark wood and is on a dark paneled wall. But in the picture, the cross has a golden glow! All of this has left me with a new outlook on death.

Ronda Delange Please respond to: John