|
REPLY TO THREAD
|
|
Subject
|
A true story about my son
|
|
User Name
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Font color:
Font:
|
|
|
|
|
|
Original Message
|
I have been on GLP for a long time, and while I have contributed here and there, I am mostly a lurker and a reader. I assume going in that whatever I am about to read has a large dose of nonsense, and then let the thread try to convince me to consider realities beyond my contemporary mental model. GLP has made me more willing to consider, and even embrace, experiences that are not easily explainable.
Which leads me to share a story of my almost-4-year-old son. This is all completely true. No roleplay here.
Almost a year ago, my son Daniel, then just turning three, began to speak to us of his friend "Nick". While Daniel generally tests well above his age range, his speech skills have been slow to develop, so it took us a while to clearly identify the name as Nick. He explained to us that Nick was the father of "Poppy" (my wife's father, who Daniel sees frequently), and he did so with the wonderment that a 3-year-old has that his Poppy might in fact have a father himself. The first stunner was that Poppy's father, long deceased, was in fact named Nick, something even I did not know.
Over the next several weeks, Daniel relayed conversations with us that he had with Nick, and in the course of the conversations, he revealed facts that he simply could not have known, including some concepts that should have been completely foreign to him. For example, he stated that Nick had told him that there was a special Superman stamp waiting for him within his Poppy's stamp collection, and Nick told him he could have it. This from a child who had no idea of what a stamp is, much less a stamp collection or that his Poppy ever had a stamp collection. Nonetheless, contrary to expectations that he owned such a stamp, when his Poppy went into the attic to look at his old collecting albums, he almost immediately flipped to a page covered in Superman stamps.
There were other similar incidents that left us feeling shaken, but after a few weeks, Daniel stopped bringing up Nick. A few months later, I actually raised the subject, and Daniel did not acknowledge and seemingly had no recollection of having a friend named Nick.
Then, two months ago, my wife found out she was pregnant with our fourth. Not on purpose. Daniel was our first, so it's been a pretty constant pipeline since his arrival, and while we love our children more than anything else, we were still feeling pretty apprehensive. Daniel quickly grasped that we were expecting another brother or sister for him, and deducing that the baby was growing in Mommy's belly, Daniel named him/her "Mug". Daniel still sleeps in our bed, and when going to sleep, he would often tell his Mommy that he loved Mug and was happy.
Last week, my wife lost the baby. It is not our first miscarriage, and unlike our initial struggles to bring a child into the world, it is with enormous guilt that I confess that our sense of grief was tempered by a sense of relief. We were not sure whether we could handle four toddlers under five, and, naturally, we wondered whether our apprehension somehow contributed to losing the baby.
It was with this heavy heart that we went to bed last night. Just as Daniel was about to fall asleep, he turned to his Mommy.
Mug isn't in your belly any more, Mommy, he said. But don't be sad, Mommy. Nick told me that he had Mug, and he gave Mug to "Flower", and she gave Mug to Nana's Mommy and Daddy. Did you know Nana had a Mommy and Daddy? Nana's Mommy smelled beautiful.
Then he feel asleep, a luxury that did not come to my wife or myself for quite a while. Nick's name has surfaced again, as well as Nana's Mommy and Daddy, who were both long deceased before Daniel's birth and virtually never discussed. But my wife recalled that Nana's Mommy was renowned for wearing perfume, so the smell remark made some sense.
We couldn't understand the Flower thing. We both heard it that way, but with Daniel's speech difficulties, we thought maybe we had misheard. In any case, no one in our family has a name that sounds like Flower.
But then it dawned on my wife. Poppy's Mommy, Nick's wife, was named Rose.
My wife and I don't know how to respond. My wife finds it kind of creepy that our son is potentially talking to the dead. I find it humbling and miraculous, and I sense the words weren't Daniel's at all, but someone else's, filtered through Daniel's language, but given to us to ease my wife's sense of loss.
I don't know if others will find the story as extraordinary, but I wanted to document it for myself at least.
[Edit: There is an update on Page 2]
|
|
Pictures (click to insert)
|
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | | | Next Page >> |
|
