This story I am about to tell is completely true, but the dates may not be completely correct due to it happening some years ago. I was 13 years old and living in Cheltenham, England, and it was around the month of April/May of 2001.
My grandfather was seriously ill with bowel cancer and basically on his death bed. He wished to die at home because my grandmother died a couple of years earlier in the same house. We are a big Irish family, so the whole family was always around the house helping out with looking after my grandfather and taking turns to go in and comfort him.
One day my cousin Joe and I went in by request of my mother to sit with gramps while they had a cup of tea and so on. While sitting in our grandfather's room, Joe and I were just sitting and chatting with each other while gramps slept. He was on huge amounts of morphine and would often wake up and speak to us saying some funny random things. He was a funny man anyway and his thick Irish accent would often make us laugh.
On this one occasion, I was holding his hand while he was in and out of sleep. My gramps woke up and wide eyed he looked at me dead in the eyes and proceeded to tell me not to cross the road. I then proceeded to tell him with a bit of a chuckle that I wasn't going to cross the road because I was sitting inside with him. He really started to squeeze my hand, looked right into my eyes, and just kept saying it: "Don't cross the road!"
After 30 seconds or so, he just went back to sleep. My cousin and I just laughed it off. I told my mother and auntie about it and that was the last of it... or so I thought.
A month later, my grandfather had sadly passed on and we all started to get back on with our lives and so on. Well, about a month after my gramps had passed, I was on my way to school on my bicycle. I was pretty lazy when I was younger, and instead of going to the crossing, which was about 80 meters away, I used to just cross where I came out from my road.
This was a very busy road and cars used to go down it quite fast! I crossed the road and when I was just about to get to the other side -- Bang! I was hit by a car.
All I can remember was the initial hit, then I blacked out. Then all I can remember was that I felt like I was floating over the car. I could see everything and it was all in slow motion. It genuinely felt like someone or something was carrying me over the car.
Then I woke up and it was all reality again. I was rolling down the road. The force of impact was so big that it knocked the shoes off my feet! After lying there, I didn't want to open my eyes because I was so scared. I was rushed to hospital where they sent me down for x-rays. When they brought me back up to the ward, they told my mum they were going to send me back down for more x-rays. My mum, fearing the worst, asked them if it was because I was so badly injured. They replied, "We are sending him down again because we can't believe he has not even broken one bone in his body!"
My mother rang my auntie and told her the news. Five minutes later, my auntie rang my mum back and with pure shock reminded her of what my grandfather had said months earlier!
Well, years on and I have been to Iraq and done two tours in Afghanistan. I believe to this day that my grandfather has been there for me since that accident to help me on my way.
