In August 2005, I was sitting with Sam and his roommate in their living room watching television. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw “something” move very briefly in the far corner of the room. Nothing was there, but I could tell it had gotten Sam’s attention as well. I asked him if he “saw that”. He smiled and said that he had. What I had seen seemed like a grey “figure” move from one side of the far corner past the doorway leading into the kitchen. We talked about it and concluded that we had essentially seen the same thing.
The following day, I got a call from Sam saying that he had written down a bunch of things that had crossed his mind after I left. He had several notes that he wanted to share with me in person, but was able to give me names over the phone. He gave me three names and they are all people who have passed during my life: William, my grandfather who had passed in June 2000; Don, a good friend of the family that had passed away about 15 years ago; and Brandon, whom is known to my family as “Mr. Brandon”. Mr. Brandon was a very close friend of the family for the past number of decades.
Sam and I met the next night to go over his notes. What was interesting was that Sam and I were new friends at that point and had never really shared deep life stories, but he was able to tell me many details of my family and family members. He accurately described relationships between family members and their function within the family. What was more interesting was Mr. Brandon. Mr. Brandon had been murdered in 2003 from a home invasion. The thieves stole jewelry and not much else. They killed Mr. Brandon and thought they had killed Mrs. Brandon as well, but she survived. She is no longer able to speak or communicate, but is still living. Sam brought up several points about the Brandons. For instance, Sam mentioned a gold ring as well as black onyx rings or pendants, he couldn’t really tell. Sam also kept getting saying this phrase, “the gift that was being given back”. We couldn’t place the ring in our family so researched it in the Brandon’s. We found out that, Mr. Brandon’s 7 grandkids had given him a gold ring with a diamond for each grandchild. It wasn’t until the Brandon family mentioned they had recently taken the grandfathers ring to remove the diamonds and create a gift for each grandchild. The girls were given pendants of black onyx with a diamond in the middle and the boys were given a black onyx ring with a diamond in the middle. A true message from Mr. Brandon of the gift that was given to him that he wanted to give back.
