May 2, 2007

Daddy Donald

Rate this encounter:[an error occurred while processing this directive] Shannon Sullivan, Carlotta, California, 1999 and 2004

My daughter Serrina's father died in a motorcycle accident when our she was only one month old. Even though she never really knew her father, I always made sure she knew who he was through stories and pictures. Serrina grew up referring to her father as Daddy Donald, as Donald was his name.

When Serrina was 6 years-old, we went camping at a place called Swimmers Delight in Carlotta, California. Donald and I had camped there a few times together before Serrina was born. That night as I slept in the tent with Serrina, at 3:30 AM Donald came to me in my dream and he started yelling at me to wake up.

He was screaming at me that our daughter was down at the river, and he told me that she was going to drown. Then he got like 1-inch from my face and screamed super loud "WAKE UP!"

I sat straight up and I could still hear him. Just as I awoke and was sitting up, I heard and saw our tent opening from the outside, and my daughter Serrina came through the tent door crying. Serrina told me that she woke up standing down at the river bar, and that her Daddy Donald brought her back to the tent. Needless to say, I didn't go back to sleep that night, and we left the following day.

Several years later when Serrina was 11, my mother took my daughter back to Swimmers Delight to go swimming for the day. As my mother sat on the riverbed watching my daughter swim, a man in the water kept yelling up at the river bar, "Serrina! Serrina!" My mother noticed a woman responding to the man in the water.

When my daughter got out of the water my mother told my daughter, "That lady there has your same name." My daughter Serrina went over to the lady and asked her how she spells her name, as my daughter's name is not the common spelling. The lady replied that they're names were spelled the same.

My daughter Serrina told the lady that her dad Donald who had died when she was a baby had named her after a girl he knew in second grade that he had a crush on. The lady asked my daughter what her dad's full name was. When my daughter told the lady Donald's full name, the lady began to cry. The lady my daughter was talking to at the swimming hole that day was the lady that she was named after.