Grandfather and Lifesavers
by: Angel Friend Jackie

Saturday Ramblins, Vol. 1, No. 3 (May 30, 1998)

My dad and my son died about two years apart. What happened between their deaths are circumstances my family and I have never been able to explain.

My son worked hard and played hard and he didn't rest enough. Late one night he fell asleep at the wheel of his car and ran off the road and into a tree. He was badly injured. His tongue was nearly cut off and had to be reattached, and his leg was broken so severely that it had to be pinned and have a rod in it.

During the accident, a power pole was damaged and all the electricity to the area went off. The power company sent someone out to investigate the problem and discovered the accident.

My son was found some 100 feet away from the car. Because of his injuries, he could not have walked from that car. While investigating, the police asked if he was alone, and he said that a man had helped him out of the car because he couldn't walk. They looked for the man a long time while emergency personnel flew with my son to a hospital.

There was no evidence that anyone had been with him, in the car or at the scene, before the power crew arrived.

When my son became more lucid, he described what he remembered. He said he woke up and didn't know what to do because he was trapped behind the wheel and couldn't move. A man with a fuzzy face came and effortlessly picked him up and set him on the ground and then he just walked away. The man said he would call for help. My son remembers the man calling him a "knucklehead," a favorite expression of my dad's. My son thought the man could have been his grandfather.

The second day he was in the hospital, I went to my son's room and found a pack of flavored Lifesavers on his table. When he woke, I asked him where they came from and, he said, he did not know; that none of his friends had brought them.

I got chills that wouldn't stop. My dad always brought Lifesavers to us when we were sick or in the hospital. It was a simple gift but his, exclusively.

My son's accident happened between my dad's death and his own. Although my family and I have never been able to explain the lifesaving act described by my son, I believe they are together now, with my dad calling my son "knucklehead" for being so careless—but in a loving way.

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