My grandfather died when I was three. I have very few memories of him alive, but I have been able to communicate with him since I was around seven. He started coming to me in dreams. Then he made actual appearances in my grandmother's house. He has always been a strong force in my life. He was a mortician, and I am also a mortician now. We graduated from mortuary school fifty years apart to the day. His birthday is 3/26 and mine is 6/23.

I was having trouble with my decision to become a mortician in my second semester in school. I was also eight months pregnant with my first child. I have a friend who is a medium who offered to help contact my grandfather for advice. I was kind of leery at first but I did it anyway. During the session, he told me that I was pregnant with a little girl who would look just like I did the last time he saw me when he was alive.

I told him that wasn't possible, since I had had two ultrasounds that said I was having a boy. He told me they were wrong. He asked me if he could touch my baby. I was not thrilled with the idea but relented. My baby had been moving up until that time, but it stopped moving for the rest of the night. He also said he would leave a kiss mark on her ankle. But I shouldn't worry because it would be gone by the time she was a year old.

The day I had my child I wasn't thinking of that session with my grandfather, until the doctor said, "Oh, no!" I was worried and asked what was wrong. He said, "Oh, it's nothing. Just that we were wrong. You have a little girl instead of a boy." My mind flew back to the night I spoke with my grandfather. As soon as they brought her to me, I pulled back her blanket and searched her legs. My mother thought I was nuts. There on her little ankle was what people call a "stork bite." But it had the rough shape of a kiss mark. It did go away by the time she was ten months old. She also looked very much like me as a child of three. She often mistook pictures of me at that age for pictures of herself.

My daughter has a very strong connection to my grandfather. She used to see "angels" in her room when she was just two. How I learned that they were my grandfather and grandmother is an interesting story. We were in our local grocery store one day when she had just turned two. She was in the seat of the shopping cart looking through my purse. I kept a picture of my grandfather in my wallet as kind of a good luck charm. I had never talked to her at that time about my grandfather and she had never seen a picture of him. The only photo I had of him was in my wallet.

She began digging in my wallet and then announced, "I know who this is!" I looked to see what she was talking about. She was holding up the picture of my grandfather. I was thinking, "Yeah, sure, OK Honey." But I asked, "Who is that?" She said, "He is The Big Johnny." I was astounded. I asked who told her that and she said that HE had. She wanted to know how I had a picture of her angel in my wallet. You could have blown me over with a feather. My grandfather's name was John. So is my father's name. The family called my grandfather Big Johnny and my dad Johnny Boy. My daughter is now almost 11 and she still sees him or feels him today.

Crystal Jiles
empressofmystery@yahoo.com

Posted 3-28-08