October 25-31 Edition
Line To Heaven 1
Anthony Vanaria felt guilty about his father’s death. He was
a medical emergency instructor for the New York City Fire Dept., but he can’t
even save his own father from a fatal heart attack.
But that same night, he had a dream
so vivid he’d remember it throughout his life. In the kitchen, his father and
his uncle, who died the year before, were playing cards.
“It’s really nice,” his father said
when Anthony asked how he was. “You’ll find out someday.” Then his father and
his uncle went inside a door that wasn’t there and Anthony woke up.
Wishful
thinking? But shortly, when his mother told him she can’t find the insurance
policy, his father appeared again in his dream. It’s in a strongbox in the
attic, said the fantasy. The next day, Anthony found it, just where his father
said it would be.
Six
years later, Anthony was facing the most agonizing of human dilemmas: his
mother had been in a vegetative state for months, and it was up to him to take
away the life support. Painfully, he made the decision and he let her go. “I
walked around with the worst grief I could ever imagine,” he recalls. “I felt
like I couldn’t save my father’s life and that I had killed my mother.”
His guilt drove him to desperation. Finally, he couldn’t
stand it any longer, and he went to the medium Johnny Edward. As he and his
wife walked up to the front door, a car pulled out of the driveway with the
license tag 222 – the same number her mother, born February 22, kept showing
her after she died. A feeling of being “overjoyed” swept over him as they
entered.
“I felt like I was attending a
reunion.”
Anthony’s
parents came through Johnny, assuring him that they continue to love him,
joking about the hidden tattoo he got in their memory, and sending their love
to their grandson Anthony III. The baby is due for months yet, and they haven’t
told anybody that if it’s a boy, they’d name him in honor of Anthony’s father.
“She
says she knows you did all you could for her,” relays Johnny, and Anthony
started to cry. “Her brain was gone and she thanks you for what you did; it was
the right thing.”
An
unanswered question was tugging at Anthony. During his wedding reception, as he
led his mother for the traditional mom-son dance, expecting ‘Mr. Wonderful,’
the song she chose, the DJ instead played “Wind Beneath My Wings” by Bette
Midler – the favorite song of his parents.
He became upset and later scolded the DJ who said, “A man came up to me
and said that’s the song you wanted.” They searched for the man but there was
no trace of him; the DJ described the mystery requester, and it fit Anthony’s
father perfectly.
Now
Anthony asked his father, through Johnny, if that was him. Yes, came the
answer. But, he insisted, is it that particular song? But that was all his
father said about it. Later, in the car,
Anthony felt a sense of comfort and his parents’ loving presence. As he started
to drive, he turned on the radio, what came on was ‘Wind Beneath My Wings.’
Wind Beneath My Wings
Bette Midler
Anthony
and his wife started to cry, and he had to pull over. “I looked up in the sky,”
he recalls, “and thanked God and my parents for the beautiful gift they gave
me.”
To Be Continued Next Saturday
See my story behind my story in Cross Over
March 12, 2014,
Wednesday
Sorcery has seemed to touch my life in the last few weeks.
I'm going through events with a sense of the inexplicable yet
inevitable, all shrouded in mists that cloud men's minds.
7 comments:
"My view of the afterlife is that it's made of different levels, depending on how spiritual a life we live." ~ John Edward
"If I ever had a line to heaven,
I swear I'd call you there,
and if I ever had a line to heaven,
I swear I'll be there tonight..."
"Did you ever know that you're my hero
and everything I would like to be?
I can fly higher than an eagle
'cause you are the wind beneath my wings..."
"He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Photos courtesy of lisavproulx.wordpress.com, lifehopeandtruth.com
The union of the snake is on the climb,
moving up, it's gonna race, it's gonna break
through the borderline..."
.
“She says she knows you did all you could for her...”
.
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