Editor’s Note: This heartwarming story about reincarnation gives us goosebumps. Wayne was a firm believer that we are eternal beings having a temporary human experience, and he believed that children “come into this world in a state of perfection. […] Before they have been exposed to all of the lesson that focus on their limitations, they are a grand source of wisdom and inspiration.” Wayne included this grandmother’s amazing story — and many others like it — of a young child having very specific memories of having lived a previous lifetime as someone in their current family, in his new book, Memories of Heaven.
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I am, among other things, the mother of three children — two daughters and one son. I grew up in a strict Christian religion in southwest Virginia and went on to be a hippie chick, so the belief in reincarnation was not something I had even heard about.
On the evening of November 27, 1987, I was involved in a car accident that resulted in the death of my two-and-a-half-year-old son, Nathan. I cannot say with words how dark my world became in that moment, and it stayed that way for several years after, because in that darkness was the only place I thought my son existed anymore.
After a couple of years in the darkness, I reflected back on the day leading up to Nathan’s death, as I had done ten million times before. At this point I think something inside of me was hoping for some sense of closure, even though, intellectually, I didn’t know what I was looking for. I did need to accept the idea that Nathan was gone and he was never coming back, though.
As I worked at this acceptance and started examining things, I knew without a doubt that that was the day Nathan had chosen to leave his physical body—there were too many “coincidences” to dismiss his death as an “accident.” After a time of seeking acceptance, acceptance was found. And I came to see how intricately connected and interdependent everything and every event is.
There is no better reward in this life than having grandchildren. I know grandparents say this all the time, but it is so true. You think you could not possibly love anyone or anything more than your own kids, and then the grandkids come and you just think your heart is surely going to burst with all the love you experience. My eldest daughter had a son, then my youngest had a son soon after, then my eldest had another son then another son, and then nothing—it was as if the well dried up, but I really wanted a granddaughter.
A few years later I moved to a new city, and my youngest daughter came back to West Virginia with her husband and son. It wasn’t long after that she announced that she was pregnant. I was ecstatic—I already cherished this baby because I just knew it was my granddaughter. That was confirmed on Friday, April 13, 2008, when my Butterfly, little Kayla Bug, came forth into this world and she was just perfect.
I adored and cherished her, but it was not easy for her mother or me—this child cried for a solid year, and nothing we could do would console her. But then Kayla became a happy child and the very light of my existence. We had bonded even while she was in her mommy’s tummy, but that…
