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The Rose Petals

Phil Whitt

Ohio

philwhitt@sbcglobal.net

I have been experiencing “visits from heaven” since I was about twelve-years-old. I would hear voices and even wake up to see the silhouette of someone in my room. Back then I was afraid of these experiences, but now I realize that these phenomena are a blessing.

My stepmother crossed over when I was fifteen-years-old. I was staying at my dad's house in Niles, Ohio for three days during the funeral. And I was not prepared for what would take place at the house during my visit.

I was lying in bed when I clearly heard footsteps climbing up the stairs to the top landing just outside the bedroom that my brother and I shared. I quickly woke Rick up, but the noise stopped. A few minutes later my brother fell back to sleep, and the footsteps started again. I was scared and tired but finally fell back to sleep with the covers over my head.

The interesting thing was my stepmother always wore shoes with small hard heels which made the exact sound I had heard on the stairs. The following morning I asked my father to take me back home to Cleveland, Ohio, which he did. Two weeks later my stepmother paid me another visit. I was lying on the couch watching television when I dozed off. Suddenly, I sensed that I was not alone and could have sworn I heard someone say, “Phillip.” I opened my eyes slowly and yelled, “NO.” There standing just a foot away from me was my stepmother.

She stood there smiling at me wearing a pink nightgown which is what she was buried in. As soon as my yelling brought my younger brother Rick running into the room, she was gone.

I didn't mention what had happened to me in either Niles or Cleveland until years later. When I did, Dad told me that he, too, heard the same hard-heeled footsteps and that this is what prompted him to eventually move. I spoke to people who had moved into the house after he left and found that the sound of hard-heeled shoes was still being heard by the new occupants. They were as amazed as I was that my stepmother's footsteps could still be heard a decade after her death.

During another “visit,” I had a vivid dream about my grandfather a year after he passed away. In the dream my grandfather and I were on a bus from the 1950s or ‘60s. Back then these buses contained pull cords so that passengers could alert the bus driver when their stop arrived.

My grandfather was sitting down, and I was standing up holding on to keep myself balanced. He looked up at me and asked, “Peno,” a nickname he had always called me. “Is this my stop?” I replied, “Yes, Grandpa,” to which he stood up and walked to the back of the bus. He then took off running into darkness.

I woke up with tears in my eyes. What I found interesting about this dream is that he had broken his hip when I was little and could never run after that.

My grandfather came to me again. Only this time, he gave me what I would later find out was a validation. He simply said, “Go to see your grandmother. She is going to be with me soon.” This was all so real, and I knew it was my grandfather speaking to me. So I did as I was told and paid my grandmother a visit. Two weeks later she had a stroke and died.

Years later my mother crossed over after a long illness, and I ordered a spray of flowers for her casket. The spray was made up of an array of multi-colored carnations. But in the midst of the carnations were two pink roses and one white rose to represent my mother's three children. The pink roses were from my sister and me while the white rose was in remembrance of my younger brother who had crossed over three years earlier.

After the funeral service, I wanted to remove the roses from the spray and keep them in remembrance of my mother, but they were gone. I asked my sister, the funeral director, and others if they had taken the roses, but no one had. The funeral director told me that they had been there when the flowers were brought to the cemetery. No one could figure out what had happened to the roses.

A few days later strange things began to happen. I kept finding single pink rose petals everywhere. I found a pink petal lying peacefully on my computer keyboard on two separate occasions and then later found another one lying right outside my backdoor. At first, I couldn't figure out where these rose petals were coming from. I was the only one who had keys to my house so no one else could have been leaving them.

The rose petals continued to show up in unusual places. About a month later my girlfriend Sandy and I went to the cemetery to visit my mother's gravesite. The ground was covered with leaves, and we were cleaning up around my mother's headstone. I happened to look down and noticed a red rose petal lying right there at my feet.

Before I bent down to pick up yet another hello from my mother, I asked Sandy who was standing a few feet away if she could see any new gravesites in the area. I wanted to make sure there was no chance that it could have blown over from another gravesite fresh with flowers. She looked at me like I was crazy wondering why I would ask such a thing. I explained what had happened and asked her to come over to look at the rose petal. We were both in awe.

Even though I had no doubt that these rose petals were from my mother, I decided to visit with a local medium. You can just imagine my excitement when I was told, “Your mother says she is leaving you rose petals.”

I haven't received any more rose petals from my mother since that day in the cemetery. Perhaps, she doesn't need to leave them anymore since I get the message. Her spirit is alive and well. And as for that last rose petal, it remains in an airtight bag…a very special reminder that we do receive “visits from heaven.”