Observations placeholder
Christina sees her dad in a yellow shirt and fedora
Identifier
007909
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Proof of heaven – Dr Eben Alexander
Susanna's late husband, whom I will call George, had been a patient of mine with a brain tumor. In spite of everything we did, he died within a year and a half of diagnosis. Now Susanna's daughter was ill with several brain metastases from breast cancer. Her prospects of survival beyond a few months were remote.
It wasn’t a good time to take a call-my mind was completely absorbed in the digital image in front of me, and with mapping out exactly what my strategy was going to be to go in and remove it without doing damage to the brain tissue around it. But I stayed on the line with Susanna because I knew that she was trying to think of something-anything-to allow her to cope…..
"Dr A," Susanna said, "my daughter had the most incredible dream. Her father came to her in it. He told her everything was going to be all right, that she didn’t need to worry about dying."
It was the kind of thing I'd heard from patients countless times-the mind doing what it can to soothe itself in an unbearably painful situation. I told her it sounded like a wonderful dream.
"But the most incredible thing, Dr A, is what he was wearing. A yellow shirt-and a fedora!"
"Well, Susanna," I said good-naturedly, "I guess there are no dress codes in Heaven."
"No," Susanna said. "That's not it. Early on in our relationship, when we were first dating, I gave George a yellow shirt. He liked to wear it with a fedora that I also gave him. But the shirt and hat were lost when our luggage failed to arrive on our honeymoon. He already knew by that time how much I loved him in that shirt and hat, but we never replaced them."
"I'm sure Christina had heard lots of wonderful stories about that shirt and hat, Susanna," I said. “And about your early times together."
"No," she laughed. "That's what's so wonderful. That was our little secret. We knew how ridiculous it would sound to someone else. We never talked about that shirt and fedora after they were lost. Christina never heard one peep from us about them. Christina was so afraid of dying, and now she knows she has nothing to fear nothing at all."