Classic Mysteries
“I’ll love you both forever!”
by Jim Carey
My wife Linda and I had a friend, a nice young man, 35 years old, who had had a hard life when he was a young feller. He came here to our home a lot. He always had a piece of junk for a vehicle. My tinkering with them, in my garage, was his main reason for constant visits. But due to the fact that he was here often we became very close.
He was a big strapping guy. He did a lot of things for me as well, and so I in turn did tinkering on several of his vehicles. Nothing major, just odds and ends, to keep them running. He never asked for any money and I offered him money many times.
As the years went by, he met and married a really nice girl and they had a daughter, which made me and Linda proxy grandparents. Then he started having medical problems. First he had bad teeth and as we watched him suffer we made appointments for him and had several pulled out. Linda also had him get a complete physical, which is when we learned that he had a very weak heart. The doctor told Linda that his heart was like that of an 80 year old. Being poor, he couldn’t afford to be operated on, so we did more in the helping them department, mostly in buying his meds. Not big bucks – just a few bucks here and there. I found him a much better vehicle, which we fixed up and he traded and got a really good deal. I was very happy for them.
He had a job at a boat place repairing fiberglass boats. He had saved a few bucks and told us he had bought a 4X4 Dodge pick up, which he was going to pick up in a few days. He wanted to know if he could leave it here, as he lived in an apartment where he couldn’t have it. I told him no problem. In the evening he went to get it as it did run, he stopoped in Belgrade at a gas station to get gas, as his wife was with him in their car. His wife recalled what happened. He got his gas and walked over to her car and kissed his daughter and her and told them both he loved them. He turned and was walking between the building and some other things and fell down, face first. She instantly ran over and tried to get him up, but to no avail. He had a massive heart attack and died on the spot. It was about 8:30 p.m. She called 911 and they came and told her he was dead. He laid there until the wee hours of the morning, about 3 a.m. She called us and I called Jeff, a guy that lived with them. He went there and helped his wife, and Jeff drove home the new pick up. His wife had him cremated, due to no money. She had his ashes scattered at his favorite fishing hole up in Bingham, where he had scattered his dog’s asses.
And that ended that. A few weeks later, I was working in my yard and out of the corner of my eye I saw a shadow walk by me! Very close! Five feet or so away. It was him, and I spoke to him as he just vanished. I called his name several times as there was no doubt in my mind it was him. I told his wife about the happening. She told us his daughter sees him almost every day! She was 4 years old. So I chatted with her and told her to tell her dad that Linda and I loved him very much. A few weeks later, as we saw one another out at a coffee shop, I asked their daughter if she had seen her dad. She said yes, so I asked, “Did you tell him what I told you?” Again she said yes, and so I asked her what he had said. She replied, “He told me to tell you that you and Linda are the only mom and dad he ever really had! He said, ‘I’ll love you both forever!’ And he sees you working on your truck. She told me it’s a big dump truck and it’s blue, with a gray body.”
For me this was proof as he never saw it! So there is something there that can’t be explained.