The following is one in a series of real-life unexplained stories. Have you ever had an otherworldly encounter? Share in the comments …
My grandfather, Papa Rosendo (left), was a very sweet man, and I was always his favorite grandchild. After I moved to California from Mexico when I was 20, we would call each other constantly. We would talk and I would play him old folk songs like "Cielito Lindo" and "No Volveré" on a harmonica that he taught me when I was little.
Being a native of México, he wasn't used to sentimentalities like, "I love you." I would tell him, "I love you, Papa Rosendo." He would say, "Okay." I would say, "You have to say 'I love you' back!" He would only reply, "Oh, okay."
One night seven years ago, when I was eight months pregnant with my third child, my grandfather called at 4 a.m. Since it was very early, my husband asked him if there was anything wrong. He said he just wanted to talk to me before going to sleep.
My husband, worried that my grandfather might have been suffering a complication from his diabetes, woke me right away and handed me the phone. Papa Rosendo told me that he wanted to say goodnight, and to tell me that my baby was really cute, that he loved her blue eyes just like her daddy's.
I told him that was going to be really hard to deliver on, since my two oldest children had brown eyes like me, but that we would see. When he told me he had to go, I told him I loved him like I always did. That was when he said for the first time, "I love you too, Sweetheart." I knew he must not be feeling well. I hung up and immediately called my mom in México.
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There was silence on the phone as I explained my grandfather's call. After a few moments she asked who had called to tell me about my grandfather. I appealed to her again to just please go check on him, make sure he was okay.
That was when she told me that my Papa Rosendo had passed away four hours ago. He had been in the hospital completely unconscious, and there was no way he could have picked up the phone.
My husband and I were speechless, his voice was so clear, he was so lucid. My mother said they were waiting until the morning to call me, to make sure my husband was with me when they broke the upsetting news.
I was never scared by my grandfather's phone call, but to this day, it feels like a dream. If my husband hadn't answered, I would have thought for sure I had imagined it.
One month later, when our newborn daughter, Valery, opened her eyes for the first time, they were blue, just like her daddy's.
The first eerie experience happened two years ago, when Valery was 5. We were all in the car, and as we passed a ranch similar to the one where I grew up, she started talking about the party she had gone to. "What party?" I asked.
"Oh, you weren't there, Mama. It was just me, my papa, and a bunch of other people I don't know."
"What papa?" I asked.
"My papa. Rosendo. The one that likes the horses and the cowboy hats," she said.
I asked her where I was during this supposed party. She told me:
"It was a sleeping party. You were asleep but I wasn't. We were having fun and there was music and horses and we danced all night."
"Oh, you had a dream," I said.
"No dream. I was there. He asked me if you still play the music from the stick."
At first I didn't know what she was talking about, but when I realized she was referring to my harmonica, I got chills. I hadn't played that harmonica in a long time. My daughter had never seen it or even knew what a harmonica was. I wanted to cry because I knew that my grandfather wanted me to know he was there.
Looking back, there were other signs, too. When Valery (pictured above on my grandmother's lap) was a baby just starting to walk, she was constantly looking up, smiling and waving at someone who wasn't there. Lots of people noticed this. She would mention obscure or long-forgotten details that in no way she could have gotten from us. Once when I was making tortillas, she asked for hers to be burned. It was so odd. I laughed and asked her why. "My Papa Rosendo likes them like that, too," she said. That was half true — he didn't really like his tortillas burned, but he would always volunteer to eat the ones my grandmother accidentally burned to make her feel better.
When I ask her how she knows these things, she just shrugs and says, "I know."
I like to think that maybe Papa Rosendo is her guardian angel. We are not scared, nor have we felt anything negative or strange other than these little references. Perhaps they are just coincidences, but to us, they are reminders that he still sometimes visits us.
We are flying to Mexico in a month for a visit, and Valery asked if we can bring Papa Rosendo flowers when we visit the cemetery. I told her that my grandfather always said flowers were for living people. She said, "It doesn't matter, because he can see them, too."
So I told her we would.
Story and Images from CafeMom member Betty Saldana (flaquitabss)
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