TERRY MOSHER
Just now I was listening to Mac Wiseman sing “Bringing Mary Home.” It’s the first time I have ever heard this song and it brought chills up and down my arms and tears to my eyes.
Before I tell you how that jogged my memory and sent me into an emotional spin, here are the lyrics:
”I was driving down a lonely road one dark and stormy night
When a little girl by the roadside showed up in my headlights
I stopped and she got in back and in a shaky tone
She said: My name is Mary, please won’t you take me home?
She must have been so frightened all alone there in the night
There was something strange about her, for her face was deathly white
She sat so pale and quiet in the back seat all alone
I’ll never will forget that night I took Mary home
I pulled into the driveway where she told me to go
Got out to help her from the car and opened up the door
But I just could not believe my eyes ’cause the back seat was bare
I looked all around the car but Mary wasn’t there
A light shone from the porch, someone opened up the door
I asked about the little girl that I was looking for
Then a lady gently smiled and brushed a tear away
She said: It sure was nice of you to go out of your way
But thirteen years ago today a wreck just down the road
Our darling Mary lost her life and we miss her so
Thank you for your trouble and the kindness you have shone
You’re the thirteenth one who’s been here bringing Mary home.”
Now this is a true story and one which I have told numerous times before but bear repeating. It was May 26, 1989 that our granddaughter Sarah Mary Ann was killed when a truck loading a boat from a lake in Idaho backed over her. Sarah Mary Ann , or Junior as I called her because she had my wife’s names, was just three and half years old and was the love of my life.
What is important to this story is how it is similar to the song “Bringing Mary Home.” Just like in the song, Junior appeared and spoke after her death and in doing so reaffirmed to me the existence of God.
It took me a while to be accepting of that reaffirmation – a year in fact. I went on a year-long search for the truth and when I finally found it I had an amazing seven days during which I cried constantly. The crying stopped on the seventh day and I experienced what it is to know True Love, if only for a few hours on that seventh day.
True Love, which I believe we cannot experience on this Earth because it is devoid of any of the agenda’s that creep into our daily lives like jealousy, anger, bitterness and all the other human emotions we all have at one time or the other. Those emotions keep us from experiencing True Love.
What happened after the terrible accident that took Junior’s life is our daughter Wendy, Junior’s mother, getting on a plane in Spokane and flying to Sea-Tac where we – I, Mary and our son Todd – went to pick her up.
Wendy would later tell us that all the way on the flight from Spokane to Sea-Tac Junior was with her, appearing on the outside of the plane looking through the plane’s window at her.
Then as Mary, Todd and I descended down the escalator at the South Terminal at Sea-Tac to catch the underground train I started to hear “Amazing Grace” being played. There is no music there at that particular location. Never has been and still isn’t any. But I heard “Amazing Grace” plain and clear and then just a couple seconds before the train arrived I heard Junior speaking to me. She said, “Don’t worry about me, I walk with the grace of God.”
The train then arrived, the doors opened, Wendy was the first one out, stumbling and collapsing into her mother’s arms. She was hysterical. It was a terrible scene and one I wish no one would ever have to experience.
Maybe a month later, Junior appeared to her sister, Julia, who was playing in the front yard of her house. Julia came in and explained it all to Wendy, describing down to the fine details the injuries Junior had suffered in her death. There is no way possible way Julia could have known of the injuries, but she clearly did and that was the final incident related to Junior’s death that was not of this world.
During that year-long search – a spiritual awakening, as I call it – I came to realize that Junior was an Angel sent here to straighten out our family. She accomplished her mission because we all have become very spiritual in the aftermath, including Wendy and her husband Craig who went on to found their own church.
There are questions left unanswered. One is why did somebody on the other side feel the need to help out our family? We are not special people here on Earth that needed to be saved for the benefit of humanity. Not that we are bad people, but I don’t see us rescuing the world, which as we all know is in terrible shape.
So why did Junior come to our rescue?
On a personal level, I have had several other experiences not of this world and at least two of them make no sense at all. Twice I have been told in advance the winner of a horse race, including Summer Bird’s winning trip in the 2009 Belmont Stakes, the third leg of the Triple Crown.
One brother dismissed these two experiences as the devil trying to get me to gamble. Well, if that is the case it has failed miserably. I don’t gamble.
I’m sure I will find the answers to these questions once I get back on the other side. But for now it’s a puzzle that I can’t solve.
Anyway, that’s it for today from here in my perch overlooking the water and the boats and the birds and flowers.
Be well pal.
Be careful out there.
Have a great day.
You are loved.